Ibscher, Hugo |
| CONSERVATOR, RESTORER (GERMANY) |
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BORN 18 Sep 1874, Berlin - DIED 27 May 1943, Berlin CAUSE OF DEATH stroke GRAVE LOCATION Kleinmachnow (near Berlin), Brandenburg: Waldfriedhof Kleinmachnow (Ehrengrab) |
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Hugo Ibscher was the son of a Silesian who ran a pub in Berlin. After going to school he was apprenticed to a bookbinder. When he was sixteen years old he became assistant to Ludwig Abel to work wuth papyri. He also learned the typefaces of Latin, ancient Greek, Arabic and other languages. His skills for papyrus conservation became widely known internationally before he was thirty years old. In 1907 he visited England for the first time and he restored the Codex Argenteus for the library of Uppsala University.In 1926 he obtained a honourary doctorate fro the University of Hamburg. He restored papal documents at the Vatican and became friendly with Pope Pius XI himself. He also travelled to Istabbul, Turin, Vienna, Paris, Cairo and other cities. The tensions of the Second World War made it difficult for him to concentrate on his work, but he was able to save manuscripts of J.S. Bach from ink corrosion. After the war he planned on exclusively working on difficult cases abroad, but he suddenly died of a stroke in 1943. |
| Images |
 The grave of Hugo Ibscher at the Waldfriedhof, Kleinmachnow. Picture by Androom (28 Jan 2008) |
Sources • Hugo Ibscher - Wikipedia (DE) |
