Born: 30 May 1819, Germany
Died: 1 April 1902
Country most active: Germany
Also known as: NA
Dr. Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann on early German-speaking archaeologists transcript
The following is excerpted from a 2025 interview with Dr. Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann, co-investigator for AktArcha, a project researching early female archaeologists from German speaking areas. A German biography can be found on the AktArcha site.
So from German archaeology, we have two very good examples for women who had paid positions in archaeology. Both had these positions because they came from middle class backgrounds, most likely like Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen, and those women also had the education that was expected from women of these middle class and aristocratic backgrounds.
But their families weren’t wealthy, so they either had to marry or they had to find a way to provide for their own living. And both examples I will introduce in a moment, choose not to marry but to make their own living with working in archaeology, especially in museums collections.
So the first example of this woman is Amalie Buchheim. She was born in 1819 and died at a very high age at 1902. She was a museum’s custos and may be considered the first female archaeologist in a paid position in Germany. But she started working in the museum’s collections with her father in 1835 at the age of 16. She lived at a time when, on the one hand, the princely houses were opening their scientific collections, at least partially to an interested public, and on the other hand, when many scholars associations were founded to research local history throughout Germany. This was, in the 19th century, one of the effects of the growing nationalism in Germany, especially in middle class backgrounds. Amalie Buchheim was working in the collections of the Duke of Schwerin with her father from 1835 when these collections were opened to interested persons. So Amalie Buchheim may be considered as a representative of women employed in museums and universities in the 19th century for so-called auxiliary works in collections, archives, libraries and laboratories. She was working in the collections of the Duke of Schwerin with her father and after his death with her mother since she was 16 years old. But only after her mother died in 1860, her employment became official. So before 1860, she was working there, but she was not compensated for her work. The money, the earnings first went to her father and then to her mother. So in 1860, her employment became official. But at first, her salary was so low that she had to continue earning extra money by sewing in the afternoons, like she did before when she was working with her father and her mother.
Her work in the collections included cataloguing new acquisitions, the restoration of prehistoric objects and she was also the person who showed the collections to visitors. And this work showing the collections to visitors also links her to other women working in archaeology. In 1877, we know that one of her guests was Marie von Windisch-Grätz, later known as Marie Herzogin von Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Marie Herzogen von Mecklenburg-Schwerin became famous for excavating Iron Age graves in Slovenia and Austria in the beginning of the 20th century. And maybe her visiting the Schwerin collections as a young woman sparked her interest in archaeology and led to her archaeological engagement later in her life.
And earlier on in the 1860s, Amalie Buchheim showed her ways of working in a museum to Johanna Mestoff, who later became the first female museum director in a prehistoric collection connected to the University of Kiel.