Sophia and Heinrich Schliemann: An Unusual Relationship (Pt. I)

Posted: December 6, 2025 | Author: Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan | Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, Biography, History of Archaeology, Modern Greek History, Philhellenism, Women's Studies | Tags: daily-readings, ESPA 2021-2027, family, genealogy, Heinrich Schliemann, History, Ερρίκος Σλήμαν, Σοφία Σλήμαν, Sophia Schliemann, travel | 8 Comments

In 2024-2025 the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) implemented the project “Highlighting the Cultural Content of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens with the Help of Artificial Intelligence.” This initiative, within the framework of the Digital Transformation ESPA 2021–2027 Program of the European Union, included the digitization of roughly 80,000 documents from Heinrich Schliemann’s correspondence in the ASCSA Archives (now available online). The program also involved the creation of narrative digital exhibitions. Inspired by the correspondence between Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann, Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan and Leda Costaki staged a bilingual digital exhibition titled Sophia and Heinrich Schliemann: An Unusual Relationship (Σοφία και Ερρίκος Σλήμαν: Μια ασυνήθιστη σχέση), a version of which is presented here in two sequences to reach a wider audience.

Posted by Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan and Leda Costaki, ca. 2,738 words, 14′ read time

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) came to Greece in 1869, having sold his businesses in Russia and divorced his Russian wife. Schliemann was looking for a new partner to share his dream of excavating the Homeric acropolises of Troy and Mycenae, so as to prove that the Iliad was not a fairy-tale.

In September 1869 Heinrich married Sophia Engastromenou. He was 48 years old, and she was 18. Following an unsuccessful honeymoon, in the course of which the couple were on the verge of divorce, Schliemann left for Troy to start excavating. The couple did not separate, and in fact they became famous for their discoveries, remaining together till Heinrich’s death in 1890. In 1936 their children, Andromache and Agamemnon, donated their archive to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

The following story draws from a digital exhibition that the Archives of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) prepared following the digitization of Schliemann’s correspondence funded by an European Union grant (ESPA 2021-2027) to the American School. The exhibition aimed at providing a visual record of the Schliemanns, as a couple, using photographs and letters from the archive, and complementing the publications by Eleni Bobou-Protopapa, Sophia Engastromenou-Schliemann: Letters to Heinrich (2005) and Danae Κoulmasi, Schliemann and Sophia: A Love Story (2006).

An Arranged Marriage: Bride and Groom on the Verge of Divorce

On the 1st September 1869, Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy German businessman, married Sophia Engastromenou in Athens. Heinrich was 47 and Sophia was 17. It was an arranged marriage, and a second marriage for Schliemann, who had just divorced his Russian wife of 20 years, Ekaterina Lyschina. Schliemann, having liquidated his business enterprises in Russia, was seeking a new way of life, in order to prove that the Homeric cities of Troy and Mycenae were real and not mythical. The choice of a Greek wife was part of this ‘dream’. The couple signed a pre-nuptial agreement to the effect that during Heinrich’s lifetime Sophia would have no claim on his fortune.

After an extended and disastrous honeymoon in Europe, during which Heinrich tried unsuccessfully to present the inexperienced Sophia to Parisian high society, the couple returned to Athens on the 19th February 1870, ready to divorce. Sophia’s letters to her family from Paris make reference to the couple’s busy social life, but reading between the lines it is clear that on the one hand Sophia was unable to respond to her husband’s excessive demands, and on the other that she was bitterly homesick for Greece and her family. On arriving in Greece, Heinrich was confronted by Sophia’s mother and elder brother, who accused him of not having presented his wife with a single jewel of any value.

Dreading the scandal of a divorce, and with Schliemann having already left for Troy for the preliminary trial digs, Sophia’s family moderated their combative stance. Since the Ottoman authorities had not granted him formal permission to excavate Troy, Heinrich soon returned to Greece.

In the belief that his young wife was ill, he took her on another journey to Europe, to the Schweizermühle sanatorium in Germany. There Sophia was diagnosed with ‘hysteria,’ a favorite medical diagnosis at the time for women who had difficulty adjusting to the demands of married life.

The couple returned to Athens on the 2nd June 1870, and Schliemann was due to embark for France the next day. In a letter that he gave Sophia when they landed, but which he had written on board, he represented himself as the victim of the marriage and Sophia as the bad wife, a victim of her family’s decisions. However, what we glean from a reading of the letter is that Heinrich felt uncomfortable in the face of the unexpected disobedience and the emergent powerful personality of his young wife.

Medical Advice

Doctor Miltiadis Venizelos (1822-1887), who was the same age as Schliemann and in charge of the mentally and physically distraught Sophia, in two letters written on the 22nd and 23rd June 1870, tried to persuade Schliemann to abandon the idea of divorce. For one thing, a second divorce would irrevocably blight his reputation, and for another he was in large part responsible for the situation, as he should have foreseen that marriage to such a young girl would not be easy (‘την διαφοράν ταύτη ώφειλες Συ να προΐδης’). Thus, it was not Sophia alone who was to blame, and who according to Venizelos was a woman ‘with a good heart, a healthy mind and a high spirit.’ Contrary to the diagnosis of the German doctor at the Schweizermühle sanatorium, the Greek physician did not attribute Sophia’s behavior to hysteria. Schliemann should show greater patience and try harder to make Sophia happy, the implication being that many problems would be solved if she got pregnant.

Schliemann followed the Greek doctor’s advice, with positive results. Koulmasi (2006, 64-65) believes that the change in Schliemann’s behavior had another more fundamental cause. Schliemann ‘wanted to keep the dream alive… he still saw Sophia as an inalienable part of his life and work.’ In July 1870 Heinrich and Sophia went to Paris and thence to the north coast of France, where they spent August in Boulogne-sur-Mer, and Sophia relaxed beside the sea she adored. During the months that followed, Schliemann, who was again away on his business travels, was transformed into an affectionate husband, sending her loving letters with words of advice and caution: Sophia was pregnant.

Nine months later, on the 25th April 1871, their first child Andromache was born. Heinrich and Sophia would find refuge in peaceful Boulogne-sur-Mer many times in the course of their twenty years of marriage. In the summer of 1877, the successful appearance of the Schliemann couple at the Royal Institute of Archaeology in London was followed by six weeks of holiday at Boulogne-sur-Mer. A few months later, on the 16th March 1878, Sophia gave birth to their second child, Agamemnon.

Ερρικάκι and Σοφιάκιον

Sophia and Heinrich exchanged hundreds of letters in the course of their twenty-one years of marriage, far more than most couples at the time. Heinrich’s frequent and lengthy absences from the family roof, whether for excavations or for other reasons, and the obligatory summer breaks for Sophia, usually without Heinrich, in various European watering places, were the main reasons for such frequent correspondence.

Most of Sophia’s letters to Heinrich have been published by Eleni Bobou-Protopappa (2005). Heinrich’s letters to Sophia have not been published separately. Koulmasi in her book (2006) quotes extracts from his letters, but as they are not referenced it is very difficult to locate them in the archive.

Popularized version of the lives of Heinrich and Sophia, in comic-book form (Spanish), February 17, 1971. ASCSA Archives, Curtis Runnels Papers.

After the turmoil of their first months of marriage, their trip to Boulogne-sur-Mer in August 1870, Sophia’s pregnancy and the birth of Andromache in April 1871, we observe a striking improvement in the couple’s relationship. In the Sophia Schliemann archive are preserved ten letters from Heinrich, sent during a 6-month period between August and December 1871. In one of his letters from this period he addresses her ‘Αγαπητόν μοι συζυγάκιον Σοφάκιον’ (‘my dear little wife, little Sophia’ – my [unfair] translation).

Sophia is a little more conventional in her expressions: ‘My dear and much-loved husband’ (Ακριβέ και περιπόθητέ μου σύζυγε) on the 25th April 1872, the day of Andromache’s first birthday when Schliemann was away at Troy, and also ‘My dear husband Errikaki’ (Αγαπητέ μοι σύζυγε Ερρικάκι) [28th September 1875], ‘My beloved Errikaki’ (Φίλτατέ μοι Ερρικάκι) [4th October 1875], a time when their relations were again strained. She usually ends her letters either with her name and surname, or ‘with love from Your faithful wife Sophia’ or ‘The children and I embrace You’ (18th July 1883).

Koulmasi lays special emphasis on the couple’s private life, and despite the difference in age and the prudishness surrounding sexuality in the 19th century, it would seem that there was a strong sexual bond between them. Although there are hints of this here and there in their letters, most of the information comes from the correspondence between Heinrich and the doctor/anthropologist Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902), a contemporary of Schliemann and a family friend. Both Sophia and Heinrich turned to him for advice when they encountered problems in their relationship (Koulmasi 2006, 224-228). On April 3, 1880, Schliemann confided to Virchow that he experienced problems of periodic impotence (especially when he was devoted to the study and publication of his excavations) which caused strain in the couple’s relationship. In response to Virchow’s earlier advice that Schliemann and Sophia should not sleep together for a while, Schliemann replied that this was impossible with a Greek wife, who, in order to sleep, always lay down in her husband’s arms.

‘I am endeavoring to make Sophia an archaeologist’

If there was one thing that Schliemann wanted more than Sophia, it was her active participation in his excavations. This was quite unusual at a time when the roles of the spouses were distinct and married women were not involved in their husbands’ professional life. Sophia refused to accompany Schliemann in the autumn of 1871 for his first official digs at Troy, with the excuse that Andromache was too little to be left in the care of others. Schliemann did not write to her for a while, and when he decided to reply (in French, not in Greek) he reminded her of how hurt he was by her refusal to go with him to Troy.

After the 1871 excavations, Schliemann returned to Troy in April 1872. By late May, Sophia went to join him, leaving one-year-old Andromache with her parents. At first, Schliemann set her to oversee two workers, but later he placed her in charge of an excavation trench. It is clear he wanted Sophia with him at the dig and not in some subsidiary role in the house at the site. He not only relied on her to write his Greek reports about the excavation but had no hesitation in giving her credit for them.

The excavations at Troy were continued in February 1873, with cold and bad weather. Sophia traveled to Troy in April, intending to stay with him for the duration of the dig. This time he put her in charge of the excavations at Pasha Tepe (Koulmasi 2006, 129), but the news of her father’s death obliged her to leave Troy at the beginning of May. At the end of May, Schliemann discovered the Treasure of Priam. He did not share what was possibly the most important moment of his life with Sophia, even though in his books he asserted that she was with him at the discovery. Much ink has been spilled by researchers in their attempt to explain why Schliemann pretended that Sophia was present when the Treasure was discovered. The most likely answer is in a letter he sent to the Director of the British Museum, Charles Newton, on the 27th December 1873 (the letter is in the Museum Archives and was published by Lesley Fitton).

On acc[oun]t of her father’s sudden death Mrs Schliemann left me in the beginning of May. The treasure was found end of May; but since I am endeavouring to make an archaeologist of her, I wrote in my book that she had been present and assisted me in taking out the treasure. I merely did so to stimulate and encourage her, for she has great capacities. So f[or] i[nstance] she has learned Italian here in less than two months (Fitton 2012).

On the hard cover of the diary of the excavations at Troy for the year 1873, Schliemann wrote ‘Henry und Sophia’, even though she was only with him at the dig for a few days that year. Sophia never refuted Schliemann, even after his death. In fact, sometime between 1873 and 1877 Sophia posed for a photograph as Helen of Troy, wearing part of the so-called Treasure of Priam. She would be identified by this image not just during her lifetime but after it (Stager 2022). It is the most used photograph on the covers of books dealing with Heinrich Schliemann and the excavations at Troy.

Insofar as she was able, particularly before the birth of their second child in 1878, Sophia accompanied Heinrich to the excavations and actively participated in the laborious everyday life of the site. It should be noted (and has gone relatively unremarked in the research) that Sophia suffered many miscarriages during her life. At Mycenae she was with him at the discovery of the intact shaft graves of Grave Circle A in 1876. Once again, Schliemann drew attention to her presence, showing her participation in the excavation.

On the other hand, he chose to downplay the role of the archaeologist Panayotis Stamatakis who had been sent by the Archaeological Society to oversee the excavations at Mycenae. We learn from Stamatakis’s diaries (Vasilikou 2011) that in some cases Sophia conducted herself with a regal haughtiness which astounded Stamatakis, who wrote in a letter to Stephanos Koumanoudis, secretary to the Archaeological Society:

My relations with Mr Sch. remain broken off, and we communicate through the overseers. His lady has returned here from Athens, but it would be better if she had not come. For she has been the cause of everything and I much fear the same will happen again (Vasilikou 2011, 203).

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TO BE CONTINUED

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REFERENCES
Bobou-Protopappa, E. 2005. Sophia Engastromenou-Schliemann: Letters to Heinrich, Athens.
Fitton, L. 2012. “‘The help of my dear wife’: Sophia Schliemann and the discovery of Priam’s Treasure” in Archaeology and Heinrich Schliemann. A Century after his Death. Αssessments and Prospects. Myth – History – Science, ed. G. S. Korres, Ν. Karadimas & G. Flouda, Athens, 421-424. https://www.aegeussociety.org/images/uploads/publications/schliemann/Schliemann_2012_421-424_Fitton.pdf
Koulmasi, D. 2006. Σλήμαν & Σοφία: Μια ιστορία αγάπης, Athens.
Stager, J. 2022. “Sophia’s Double: Photography, Archaeology, and Modern Greece,” Classical Reception Journal 20, 1-42.
Vasilikou, Ν. 2011. Το χρονικό της ανασκαφής των Μυκηνών 1870-1878, Athens.

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