Jahn, OTTO, a famous archaeologist and philologist, was born at Kiel, June 16, 1813, and studied at Kiel, Leipzig, and Berlin. He next travelled in France and Italy, making a lengthened stay in Rome, and returned in 1839 to lecture at Kiel, whence he was called to Greifswald. In 1847 he accepted the chair of Archaeology at Leipzig, and here he founded an archaeological society, and served as director of an archaeological museum. Deprived in 1851 for his part in the political movements of 1848-49, he became in 1855 professor of the Science of Antiquity, and director of the Academic Art Museum at Bonn, whence he was summoned in 1867 to fill Gerhard's chair at Berlin. He died, however, before entering on his new duties, at Göttingen, 9th September 1869.
Jahn's contributions to archaeology were numberless, and of the first importance. Here may only be named works on Polygnotus, Die Hellenische Kunst (1846), Peitho (1846); a description of the vases in King Ludwig's collection (1854), and works on the representations of ancient life on vases (1861, 1868); and a work on the evil eye (1850). His works in philology include editions of Persius (1843), Censorinus (1845), Florus (1852), Pausanias descriptio arcis Atheniensis (1860), the Brutus (1849) and Orator (1851) of Cicero, Juvenal (1851), the Periochæ of Livy (1853), the Psyche et Cupido of Apuleius (1856), the Electra of Sophocles (1861), the Symposium of Plato (1864), and Longinus (1867). Among his numerous other works may be named his elaborate and masterly biography of Mozart (1856-60), a contribution of the first importance to the history of music; Gesammelte Aufsätze über Musik (1866); and his Biographische Aufsätze (1866).