Hermann Parzinger is a German historian who is a specialist in the culture of the Scythians. He has been president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation between 1 March 2008 and 27 May 2025 and the Executive President of Europa Nostra since 2018.
After studying at LMU Munich, Saarland University, and the University of Ljubljana, he earned his doctorate and habilitation at LMU Munich. He first worked as a university assistant, then became Deputy Director of the Romano‑Germanic Commission and, in 1995, Founding Director of the Eurasia Department of the German Archaeological Institute. In 2003, he assumed the presidency of the DAI, and from 2008 to 2025 he headed the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. In parallel, he was active in numerous scholarly academies and committees and shaped German cultural and science policy for decades.
Parzinger’s scholarly work encompasses an exceptionally broad spectrum of archaeological cultures and periods.
He gained international recognition through the discovery of the Scythian princely tomb of Aržan (Tuva) with around 6,000 gold objects, as well as through the recovery of a tattooed ice mummy in the Altai.
Excavations in Spain (Castro Soto de Bureba), Turkey (Aşağı Pınar), Iran (Arisman), Kazakhstan (Bajkara) and Russia (Yenisei region). Interdisciplinary large‑scale projects – including a Volkswagen Foundation project on early tin extraction in Central Asia and paleogenetic studies on the mobility of Eurasian mounted nomads.
Parzinger is among the defining figures of the German cultural sector, also through his involvement in the Excellence Cluster Topoi, the founding directorship of the Humboldt Forum, and numerous international collaborations that significantly influenced the research and communication of early historical cultures.
Parzinger, as President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, made provenance research on human remains a central priority. The project investigating around 1,100 skulls from the former colony German East Africa is considered a milestone. Parzinger publicly emphasized the willingness to immediately return the remains to the countries of origin and made the results transparently available. International cooperation — The collaboration with Rwandan experts was praised as a “great success” and is regarded as a model for future restitution processes. As important as Parzinger’s initiatives were, the project also clearly revealed structural shortcomings. Leadership rested with the archaeologist Bernhard Heeb, who was responsible as curator for the anthropological collection.
Media related to Hermann Parzinger at Wikimedia Commons
