Georg Karo

Georg Heinrich Karo (11 January 1872 – 12 November 1963) was a German archaeologist who specialised in Mycenaean and Etruscan civilisation. He was twice director of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens (DAI), in which capacity he excavated the Mycenaean site of Tiryns. A colleague of Wilhelm Dörpfeld, who had worked with Heinrich Schliemann at Troy, Karo published the findings from Schliemann's excavations of Grave Circle A at Mycenae. The work was considered Karo's greatest contribution to scholarship.

Karo was born into a prosperous merchant family; both of his parents were non-practising Jews, who raised him as a Protestant Christian. Initially inclined towards classical philology, he became interested in archaeology as a student of Georg Loeschcke at the University of Bonn. After earning his doctorate from Bonn in 1896, Karo travelled widely in the Mediterranean region, developing interests in Minoan civilisation, the Etruscans and ancient biblical commentaries. He taught at Bonn between 1902 and 1905, before moving to the DAI in Athens as Dörpfeld's deputy. Known for his urbane manner and fluency in several languages, he became well connected in the international circles of Greek archaeology, and maintained the favour of both the Greek and the German royal families. His outspoken German nationalism led to his dismissal from the DAI in 1916: he spent some time in the Ottoman Empire, where he worked to conserve cultural heritage and was linked with various efforts to appropriate ancient artefacts and bring them to Germany.

Karo's views made him unpopular with the Entente-backed government that ruled in Greece after the First World War, and he took an academic post in Germany at the University of Halle, which he held until 1930. That year, he returned to Athens as director of the DAI. Although an early supporter of the Nazi government of Germany, Karo was forced from his post in 1936 by antisemitism against his Jewish ancestry. In 1939, he fled to the United States, supported by American associates including Carl Blegen and Bert Hodge Hill, and obtained a series of visiting professorships at the University of Cincinnati, Oberlin College and Claremont Colleges. He was accused of collaborating with the Nazi regime: though no evidence for this allegation was found, he was denied US citizenship and listed as an "Enemy Alien". He returned to Germany in 1952, and became an honorary professor at the University of Freiburg.