CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Two promising young German scholars have won prestigious fellowships from a German foundation to work at the University of Illinois on the correspondence of two of the most brilliant German humanists of the 19th century.
The scholars, Stephan Heilen and Markus Dubischar, are recipients of the Feodor Lynen Fellowships of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Bonn. They are working in the UI classics department with their host, classics professor William M. Calder III, on a project to publish the first edition of the correspondence between Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Georg Kaibel.
Fellows are chosen on the basis of their projects and the eminence of their host professors and departments. Heilen and Dubischar will work at the UI for a year. Olms/Weidmann Verlag in Hildesheim will publish their edition of the correspondence.
Heilen is an authority on ancient astrology and astronomy. His 700-page dissertation is the first edition of a newly discovered Renaissance poem in Latin that is a Christian rewriting of Lucretius’ “On the Nature of the Universe.” Heilen holds a doctorate degree in classical philology with a double summa cum laude from the University of Mnster.
Dubischar, who holds a doctorate with a double summa cum laude from the University of Griefswald, wrote his dissertation on the Greek tragedian Euripides.
Calder, the W.A. Abbott Oldfather Professor of the Classics, is a world authority on Heinrich Schliemann, the 19th century German archaeologist of Troy, and in particular, on several of the frauds perpetrated by Schliemann.
The UI classics department is the only classics department in the United States selected to host a Lynen fellow this year. Some 130 new Lynen fellows currently are pursing their projects at sites worldwide.
