Otfried Deubner


Otfried Deubner was a German classical archaeologist and diplomat. During World War II, Dr Otfried Deubner worked as a linguist in Pers Z S, the signals intelligence agency of the German Foreign Office.

Life

Otfried Deubner was the son of the classical philologist and religious historian Ludwig Deubner. He attended the Lessing-Gymnasium in Frankfurt am Main and the Berthold-Gymnasium in Freiburg im Breisgau. In Easter 1926 he successfully passed the university-preparatory school leaving qualification Abitur. Subsequently he studied for one semester each at the University of Stuttgart and Technical University of Munich, before he studied Classical Archeology, Classical Philology and Ancient History in Freiburg, Heidelberg, Berlin, Koenigsberg and Munich. On December 17, 1931, he was promoted by the archaeologist and translator Ernst Buschor in Munich. For 1932-1933 he received the travel scholarship of the German Archaeological Institute. From Autumn 1933-1935 he worked as an employee of the excavation of Pergamon in the Asclepeion. From 1935 to 1936 he was employed as an assistant to the Department of Rome of the German Archaeological Institute. From November 1937 to February 1938, he served his military service. From April 1, 1939, he worked as a scientific assistant at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. From July 11, 1940, he worked as a research assistant in the intelligence and communications department of the Foreign Office.
After the war, he was briefly interned by the Americans, before he taught at the University of Marburg as Deputy Assistant, from November 1, 1945, to March 31, 1949. He received his Habilitation as a professor in classical archeology on 18 December 1946. Since April 1946 he had been active in the Hessian debt service and passed the State exam on 26 July 1946. From May 1949, he was a teacher at the boarding school of Schule Schloss Salem. In 1949, he rejected a call to take the Chair for Classical archaeology at the University of Jena.
Otfried Deubner was a member of the Archaeological Society of Berlin until 1975.

Work

On 7 December 1950, he was reemployed in the Foreign Office and was initially placed in the headquarters in Bonn. From 1953, until his retirement on December 31, 1971, he served as cultural adviser in the German agencies in Lisbon, Dublin, Damascus, Bern and at the Holy See. He last lived in Munich.

Publications