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Jahn, Otto (1813-1869), German archaeologist, philologist, and writer on art and music, was born at Kiel on the 16th of June 1813. After the completion of his university studies at Kiel, Leipzig and Berlin, he travelled for three years in France and Italy; in 1839 he became privatdocent at Kiel, and in 1842 professor-extraordinary of archaeology and philology at Greifswald (ordinary professor 1845). In 1847 he accepted the chair of archaeology at Leipzig, of which he was deprived in 1851 for having taken part in the political movements of 1848-1849. In 1855 he was appointed professor of the science of antiquity, and director of the academical art museum at Bonn, and in 1867 he was called to succeed E. Gerhard at Berlin. He died at Göttingen, on the 9th of September 1869.

The following are the most important of his works: 1. Archaeological: Palamedes (1836); Telephos u. Troilos (1841); Die Gemälde des Polygnot (1841); Pentheus u. die Mänaden (1841); Paris u. Oinone (1844); Die hellenische Kunst (1846); Peitho, die Göttin der Überredung (1847); Über einige Darstellungen des Paris-Urteils (1849); Die Ficoronische Cista (1852); Pausaniae descriptio arcis Athenarum (3rd ed., 1901); Darstellungen griechischer Dichter auf Vasenbildern (1861). 2. Philological: Critical editions of Juvenal, Persius and Sulpicia (3rd ed. by F. Bücheler, 1893); Censorinus (1845); Florus (1852); Cicero’s Brutus (4th ed., 1877); and Orator (3rd ed., 1869); the Periochae of Livy (1853); the Psyche et Cupido of Apuleius (3rd ed., 1884; 5th ed., 1905); Longinus (1867; 3rd ed. by J. Vahlen, 1905). 3. Biographical and aesthetic: Üeber Mendelssohn’s Paulus (1842); Biographie Mozarts, a work of extraordinary labour, and of great importance for the history of music (3rd ed. by H. Disters, 1889-1891; Eng. trans. by P. D. Townsend, 1891); Ludwig Uhland (1863); Gesammelte Aufsätze über Musik (1866); Biographische Aufsätze (1866). His Griechische Bilderchroniken was published after his death, by his nephew A. Michaelis, who has written an exhaustive biography in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, xiii.; see also J. Vahlen, Otto Jahn (1870); C. Bursian, Geschichte der classischen Philologie in Deutschland.