Hans Dragendorff was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 scholar who introduced the first classification system for the type of Ancient Roman pottery

Ancient Roman pottery

Pottery was produced in enormous quantities in ancient Rome, mostly for utilitarian purposes. It is found all over the former Roman Empire and beyond...

 known as Samian ware or Terra Sigillata

Terra sigillata

Terra sigillata is a term with at least three distinct meanings: as a description of medieval medicinal earth; in archaeology, as a general term for some of the fine red Ancient Roman pottery with glossy surface slips made in specific areas of the Roman Empire; and more recently, as a description...

, in 1896, using type numbers. His scheme was based on the varying forms the vessels took and although it has since been augmented and refined by others, it is still common to refer to 'Dragendorff type 37' bowls for example.

Dragendorff studied in Dorpat, Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Bonn

Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

 with Georg Loeschcke

Georg Loeschcke

Georg Loeschcke was a German archaeologist who was born in Penig, Saxony.He studied archaeology under Johannes Overbeck in Leipzig, and afterwards at the University of Bonn, where he was a student of Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz...

 and received his doctorate in 1894 for his work on Terra Sigillata. He held an extraordinary chair in Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

 till 1902, when he became director of the newly founded "Römisch-Germanische Kommission" (RGK) of the 'Deutsches Archäologisches Institut' (DAI), a post which he held till 1911. 1911-1922 he was secretary general of the DAI. In 1922, he got a chair in Freiburg

Freiburg

Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In the extreme south-west of the country, it straddles the Dreisam river, at the foot of the Schlossberg. Historically, the city has acted as the hub of the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Plain...

, a post he held till 1933.

Dragendorff was member of the DAI (1901, corresponding member since 1898), member of the directorial board of the DAI from 1931-1941, member of the RGK 1902-1941, member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences

Prussian Academy of Sciences

The Prussian Academy of Sciences was an academy established in Berlin on 11 July 1700, four years after the Akademie der Künste or "Arts Academy", to which "Berlin Academy" may also refer.-Origins:...

(1916) and the Society of Antiquities of London (1933).

Sources

• for an obituary, see 'Nachrichtenblatt für Deutsche Vorzeit' 17, 1941, 57-62.
• Hans Dragendorff Biography (via University Basel)
• Potsherd Searchable database by Dragendorff and other classification systems.