Prof. Dr. Winfried Schmitz

Winfried Schmitz focuses on many aspects of ancient slavery, especially in Greek archaic and classical times (8th-4th century BC). Slaves worked in ancient agriculture, craft and commerce as well as in mining, where living conditions were very hard and many slaves died. Better conditions existed for slaves in craft and commerce, where they operated quite autonomously and paid their masters a daily fee charge. The possibilities to become free were better for these slaves than for slaves in households, agriculture and mining. Winfrid Schmitz' additional areas of research include special forms of ancient slavery such as Spartan helotage, the klarotai in ancient Crete and the penestai in Thessaly.

7 monographs, 5 edited volumes 64 articles, ca. 100 articles in dictionaries and ca. 150 invited talks and lectures.

1995
Habilitation and Venia legendi in Ancient History, University of Freiburg, Germany

1985
Ph.D. in Ancient History, University of Freiburg, Germany

1977–1985
M.A. in Ancient, Medieval and Modern History and Classical Archaeology, Universities of Cologne and Freiburg, Germany

since 2003
Professor for Ancient History, University of Bonn, Germany

1998–2003
Professor for General History with a Special Focus on Ancient History, University of Bielefeld, Germany

1996–1998
Professor for Ancient History, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

1989–1991
Scientific Trainee at the Directorate of the Rheinische Landesmuseum Bonn, Germany

1985–1989
Research Associate at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute of the Free University Berlin, Germany

since 2010
Full member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz, Germany

since 2010
Joint management of the project "Research on Ancient Slavery" at the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz (sole lead since 2013)

2005–2006
Co-spokesperson in the program of the North Rhine-Westphalian state "Geisteswissenschaften gestalten Zu­kunftsperspekiven" [Humanities Create Future Perspectives]

2002–2012
Member of the scientific advisory board of the Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy Munich, Germany

Head of the DFG-project "Katalogisierung und Digitalisierung der Bonner Papyrussammlung zwecks Langzeitsicherung und Bereitstellung im Internet (DFG-LIS)" [Cataloging and Digitization of the Bonn Papyrus Collection for Long-Term Protection and Provision for the Internet] together with Prof. Dr. Konrad Vössing

Full member of the German Archaeological Institute