Jonas Grethlein

2016 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize winner

Jonas Grethlein (*1978 Munich) received the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize for his work in the area of Classical Philology.

Jonas Grethlein, a classicist and ancient historian, throws new light on ancient texts. His doctoral thesis was entitled Asylum and Athens. The Construction of a Collective Identity in Greek Tragedy (Asyl und Athen. Die Konstruktion kollektiver Identität in der griechischen Tragödie) and his habilitation thesis dealt with the topic of History, Historicity, and Narrative in the Illiad (Geschichte, Geschichtlichkeit und Erzählung in der Ilias).

He takes a very classical approach, meticulously dealing with the works, and then applies modern methods and concepts in order to shed an entirely new light on Homer’s epic. He is working on the topic of “Concepts of History in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature” (Geschichtsbildern in der griechischen Literatur der Archaik und Klassik) in an Emmy Noether independent junior research group funded by the DFG. In this project, Grethlein is interested in understanding the collective cultural and historical prerequisites for the Greek concept of history and also carrying out a literary comparison of the various genres. (Source:  DFG)