Otto Jahn

Born in Kiel on June 16, 1813, Otto Jahn was a German archaeologist, philologist, and writer on art and music. After studying at Kiel, Leipzig, and Berlin, he traveled in France and Italy, then taught at Greifswald, Leipzig, and Bonn.

Jahn worked across several fields at once. He produced important editions of ancient authors, contributed to classical archaeology and epigraphy, and became known for his studies of Greek vases and other material from the ancient world. His scholarship was admired for being exact, critical, and grounded in close study of sources.

Many readers know him best for his major biography of Mozart, published in the 1850s. That work gathered documentary evidence on the composer in a new way and helped shape later music biography as a serious historical discipline. Jahn died in Göttingen on September 9, 1869.