# Balduin Saria

Balduin Saria (born 5 June 1893 in Ptuj (Pettau in German), Lower Styria, died 3 June 1974 in Graz, Austria) was a classical historian, archeologist, epigraphist and numismatist.
After receiving his doctorate in the field of prehistory and classical archaeology from the University of Vienna in 1921 he was employed as a librarian in the university's Archaeological-Epigraphic Seminar. In 1922 he moved to Belgrade, as the head of the Prehistoric, Roman and Numismatic Department in the Yugoslavian National Museum. In 1926 he started to teach prehistory, classical archeology and numismatics at the University of Ljubljana. After Italy occupied the southern part of Slovenia including Ljubljana in 1941, Saria moved to Styria, to teach Roman antiquity and epigraphy at the University of Graz.
His academic career came to an abrupt end in 1945; he was forced into early retirement.

## Photo gallery

It contains photos of Saria's birthtown and of several Roman monuments, the discovery of which took place in his youth and greatly changed the Slovenian archaeological landscape. The first photo shows the Roman relief built into the outer wall of the house where Saria was born.
* Nutrices-dedicated relief
* Mithras carrying the bull
* Birth of Mithras from a rock
* Altar dedicated to Cautes
* Main Mithras altar fragment
* Orpheus monument
* Steles in the Ptuj town tower
* Ptuj old town
* Ptuj Castle
* Drava river at Ptuj

## Life and work

Saria was born 5 June 1893 in Ptuj, Austria-Hungary, now Slovenia, the oldest Styrian town (Poetovio in Roman times), located on the important communication route between the Eastern Alpine countries and the Pannonian Basin on the one hand and the central Danube region and the northern Adriatic coast on the other hand. He was the youngest of the three children in a German-speaking bourgeois family. His father Alois Saria, born in Guštanj came to Ptuj in the 1870s as a pioneer sergeant. He married Maria Oblack (also spelled Marija Oblak) from Ptuj, left the army and took over her family's trading business.
Saria's interest in ancient history developed in his early youth. A Roman relief depicting Nutrices, female deities, the protectors of nursing mothers and motherhood, was built on the front of the house in which he was born. On the town tower, ancient epigraphic monuments could be read, and during Saria's youth, a number of important archaeological finds were discovered in the vicinity, which aroused great interest among the general public, including a cult site dedicated to the Persian deity Mithras. In the two decades from Saria's birth till the end of his high school in 1912, at least one major excavation or chance discovery took place every year in or near Ptuj.
During his high school years, Saria was a member of the Ptuj Museum Society (Musealverein Pettau). He intensively dealt with the history of the Roman period of Ptuj and with great vigor participated in archaeological excavations and conservation of finds from the ancient Poetovio (its full name was Colonia Ulpia Traiana Poetovio). With an estimated population of 17,000 people in Roman times it was the largest settlement not only in what is now Styria but also in Štajerska, its Slovenian part.
In 1912 Saria moved to Vienna to study ancient history, archaeology and classical philology at the Archaeological-Epigraphic Seminar of the Faculty of Arts. His teachers included the ancient historian and epigraphist Eugen Bormann, the ancient historian and numismatist Wilhelm Kubitschek, the archaeologist Emil Reisch and the philologist Edmund Hauler, later also the archaeologist Emanuel Löwy and the prehistorian Oswald Menghin. In 1914, when the First World War broke out, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army, where he also experienced captivity as an Italian prisoner of war and the end of the war in the position of artillery first lieutenant. In 1919 he resumed his study in Vienna and as a promising student, he was soon included in the work of the Archaeological-Epigraphic Seminar. In the winter semester of 1919/20 he was a scholarship holder of the seminar and from the summer semester of 1920 he worked there as a librarian. In 1921 he completed the study with a doctorate, supervised by Emil Reisch. The dissertation title was On the development of the Mithraic cult image [Zur Entwicklung des mithrischen Kultbildes].
At that time he changed his religion from Catholic to Protestant, and also had to choose whether, as a German Styrian, he should pursue his career in Austria or return to Ptuj, which was now part of the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians. Vienna was still one of the most important scientific centres and could offer Saria a good international career, but in the war-torn Austria, which had shrunk to an eighth of its pre-WWI size in terms of population and area, job opportunities were very limited. The financial situation in the old homeland was not much better, too, the level of scientific production was modest and there was a deep mistrust of the German-minded people, especially in Lower Styria and Carniola. However, in the new state there was a great shortage of trained and capable specialists in most scientific institutions, with great employment opportunities. This argument was probably decisive.
In August 1922, he attended an archaeological conference in Yugoslavia, in Dobrna near Celje. Vladimir Petković, the respected Serbian art historian and archaeologist, the new manager of the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade wanted to reorganize the collections according to modern museum principles. Young scientist Saria fitted such a plan perfectly and after initial hurdles, Petković invited Saria in November to come to Belgrade.
From the end of 1922 to 1926 he worked at the National Museum, where he was soon entrusted with the management of the archaeological and numismatic department. During this time he also became an assistant, later an assistant professor in the Department of Ancient History at the Faculty of Arts, University of Belgrade. By participating in and later also leading excavations in Central Serbia and Southern Serbia, now Northern Macedonia (Viminacium, Scupi, Stobi) as well as studying available antiquities and the Serbian medieval numismatics, he acquired a thorough knowledge of the historical topography of these areas.
His work was noticed at the University of Ljubljana, founded in 1919 and where archaeological curriculum was established in 1923. After the first contacts in October 1924 he was invited to come to Ljubljana in October 1925, for the versatility of his scientific work, his excellent knowledge of classical languages, his previous achievements and the need to surpass the Italians .... Upon the retirement of Nikolaj Bubnov (an emigrant from Kiev after the First World War) in the spring of 1926, he took over the position of the associate professor of ancient history and the chair for ancient history and epigraphy. He gradually became the central figure of Slovenian Roman studies. He developed epigraphy, ancient military history, archaeological cartography and surveying to top level of Central European archaeology. Important part of his teaching was the participation of students in the field work. During that time he led excavations at several sites in Slovenia, including the Late Roman fortress at Velike Malence and the Roman aqueduct for Neviodunum.
In 1937, he was promoted to the title of full professor and until 1942 he continuously participated in the education of Slovenian historians and classical philologists (who at that time still combined the study of philology with the study of ancient history and ancient archaeology). In 1938 he published, together with Viktor Hoffiller, the seminal work Antique inscriptions from Yugoslavia / Noricum and Pannonia Superior. As many copies of this book were lost during the WWII, it was republished in 1970.
Saria considered himself a German and ideologically joined National Socialism. After the Italian occupation of the central-southern part of Slovenia in 1941, the newly formed Province of Ljubljana was made up of less than a third of pre-WWII Slovenia with one fourth of its population. University of Ljubljana lost most of its hinterland, its future was questionable and Saria searched for a suitable position in the German Reich. He found it in the city nearest to his birthplace, which replaced Ptuj as the center of Styria after the defeat of Hungarian army with its allies in the Battle of Mohács, and in 1942 started to teach Roman antiquity and epigraphy at the University of Graz. Though he kept an apolitical attitude in his texts from the war period, Saria, for no apparent reason, applied for membership in the Nazi Party in June 1944 and was officially accepted in January 1945. This decision proved fatal for his academic career – immediately after the capitulation of Germany in 1945 he was forced into early retirement.
From 1947 onwards he wrote several articles on ancient and modern history, intellectual history, cultural policy, and questions of ethnicity in south-eastern Europe. After 1949 he led excavations in Austria, on behalf of the Austrian Archaeological Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in Sankt Pölten (Aelium Cetium), in Winden am See (Roman estate) and especially between the villages Bruckneudorf and Parndorf. Between 1949 and 1955 a villa complex with the palatial main building, a large number of outbuildings and surrounding walls was uncovered here. The floor mosaics in the main building, over 300 m$^2$ in size are the largest such find in Austria. From 1953 to 1966, Saria was a freelance researcher at the Southeast Institute in Munich. Here his language abilities and diverse specialist knowledge, his familiarity with the historical and cultural circumstances in the South Slavic countries, his practical sense to deal with various agendas carefully and quickly were all put to good use.

## Personal life and death

In his Belgrade years Saria visited the village Nova Ševa (German Neu Schewa), now Ravno Selo in Bačka, 150 km to the northwest of Belgrade, where pre-WWII a large share of inhabitants were of German origin. He met a local girl, Jolanthe, maiden name Hartmann, born 1904, 11 years younger than him. In February 1928 they married in Nova Ševa. They lived in Ljubljana, before relocating first to Ptuj in the spring 1942 and to Graz in December 1943, and had two daughters, Reingard Jolanta (born 1931) and Gertruda Katarina (born 1935).
In 1970 Saria suffered a mild stroke, in 1971 he underwent a surgery. He recovered well and a month before his death he served as a guide on a day trip organized by the Historical Society of Styria. Saria died of heart failure in Graz June 3, 1974, two days before his 81st birthday. His last scientific work was in Slovenian, about his hometown: an "Overview of the Topography of Poetovio". It was published posthumously in Maribor, in the journal Časopis za zgodovino in narodopisje [Journal of History and Ethnography] together with his obituary.

## Legacy

Professor Saria's work was largely devoted to the study of antiquities in the South Slavic countries. He had a particularly thorough knowledge of the antiquity in Slovenia, and to address its issues, what was missed and needed, he was preparing an outline of the history of the classical antiquity for the eastern-Alpine region. Unfortunately WWII and his personal decisions related to it prevented him from completing this work. Nevertheless his extensive opus, not only articles in scientific journals but especially selectively written lexical-analytic reviews for the Practical encyclopedia of classical antiquity and entries in many other lexicons will continue to inform the world about the state of ancient Roman studies for places such as Nauportus, Neviodunum, Ocra pass below the Nanos plateau, Poetovio, Stobi, Ulpianum or Viminacium.

## Selected publications

* Ceramiae-Deuriopos, Mitteilungen des Vereins klassischer Philologen 2 (1925) p. 34–38, 102–103
* Vor- und frühgeschichtliche Forschung in Südslawien [Prehistoric and early historical research in South Slavia], Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 16 (1926) p. 86–118
* Bathinus flumen [Bosnia River], Mélanges F. Šišić (1929) p. 137–142 (also see Klio 23 [1929] p. 92–97 and Klio 26 [1933] p. 279–282)
* Zur Geschichte des Kaisers Regalianus [On the history of Emperor Regalianus], Klio 30 (1937) p. 352–354
* Pozorište u Stobima [Theater in Stobi], Godišnjak muzeja Južne Srbije 1 (1937) p. 1–68 (also see Archäologischer Anzeiger 1938, p. 81–148)
* Der spätantike Limes im westlichen Jugoslawien [The Late Antique Limes in Western Yugoslavia], Studi Bizantini e neoellenici 5 (1938) p. 308–316
* Die Inschriften des Theaters von Stobi [The inscriptions of the Stobi theater], ÖJh Beiblatt 32 (1940) p. 5–34
* Noricum und Pannonien (ein Forschungsbericht) [Noricum and Pannonia (a research report)], Historia 1 (1950) p. 436–486
* Der römische Gutshof von Winden am See [The Roman estate of Winden am See], Burgenländische Forschungen 13, 1951, p. 16–22
* Die geographischen Kenntnisse der Griechen und Römer vom Ostalpengebiet [The geographical knowledge of the Greeks and Romans of the Eastern Alps], Ostdeutsche Wissenschaft 4 (1958) p. 89–98
* Der römische Herrensitz bei Parndorf und seine Deutung [The Roman manor house near Parndorf and its interpretation], Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten aus dem Burgenland 35 (1966) p. 252–271
* Die antike Stadt in Südosteuropa [The ancient city in southeastern Europe], Südosteuropa-Jahrbuch 8 (1968) p. 11–22