Dorow, Friedrich Ferdinand Wilhelm

Diplomat, Court Councillor, Archaeologist

born: 02.11.1790 in Königsberg

died: 16.12.1846 in Halle/Saale

During his stay in Wiesbaden (1817-20), Dorow, as a close confidant of the Prussian State Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg, established friendly relations with Johannes Weitzel, whom he persuaded, in agreement with Hardenberg, to move to Bonn with the "Rheinische Blätter". The project only failed at the last moment.

Dorow, on the other hand, was successful as an archaeologist. He was the first to investigate the prehistoric burial mounds around Wiesbaden. His findings were published in two volumes in 1819 and 1821 under the title "Opferstätten und Grabhügel der Germanen und Römer am Rhein" by Ernst Ludwig Theodor Schellenberg. With their numerous lithographic plates, the two volumes are extremely rare today as documents from the early days of archaeology.

Dorow became the founding director of the Bonn Museum of Antiquities in 1820, where he took the objects he had excavated in Wiesbaden and the surrounding area.