Brian Shefton

Brian Benjamin Shefton, FBA, FSA (born Bruno Benjamin Scheftelowitz; 11 August 1919 – 25 January 2012) was a German-born British classical archaeologist.^[1]

He was the founder of the Shefton Museum, which bore his name.^[1]

Early life and education

Scheftelowitz was born on 11 August 1919 in Cologne, Germany. He was the younger son of Isidor Isaac Scheftelowitz (1875–1934), a scholar and rabbi, and Frieda Scheftelowitz (née Kohn; 1880–1971).^[2] Following the rise of the Nazi Party, his father was sacked from his academic job at Cologne University;^[3] he had been Professor of Indo-Iranian Philology.^[1] Brian was being educated at de:Apostelgymnasium, a Roman Catholic gymnasium in Cologne, until he had to leave.^[2] In 1933, his family emigrated from Germany for England to escape from the Nazis.^[4]

For their first year in England, the Scheftelowitz family lived in Ramsgate, Kent, where his father taught at Montefiore College, a Jewish theological seminary, and Brian was educated at St Lawrence College, an independent school in the town.^[2] The University of Oxford made a number of positions "to assist Jewish scholars exiled from Germany", and so the family moved to Oxford in 1934; his father had been offered "hospitality" by Balliol College and a lecturership in the Faculty of the Board of Oriental Languages and Literature.^[5][6] In Oxford, Brian was educated at Magdalen College School, then an all-boys independent school.^[2] His father died of kidney failure in December 1934, but the family remained in Oxford.^[1] Having won an open scholarship, he matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford in 1938 to study Literae humaniores (i.e. classics).^[2][5] In 1940, he achieved second class honours in "mods", the first part of the degree that consisted of the study of Latin and Ancient Greek.^[2] He went on to specialise in Greek archaeology and among his lecturers were Paul Jacobsthal and John Beazley.^[1][5] He resumed his university studied after the end of the Second World War.^[1] He graduated from the University of Oxford with a first class honours Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1947.^[2]

Second World War

In 1940, following the fall of France, a large number of German and Austrian refugees in Britain were interned on the Isle of Man as "enemy aliens".^[5] Scheftelowitz was most likely not one of them,^[2][5] but his daughter would later claim that he was interned for a short period during the summer of 1940.^[1] However, in October of the same year, he interrupted his studies to serve in the British Army.^[5] He enlisted in the Pioneer Corps, which was the only British military unit in which enemy aliens could then serve.^[2][7] He trained at the Pioneer Corps centre in Ilfracombe, Devon,^[1] alongside a variety of Jewish and other anti-Nazi professionals and intellectuals which would form the "most intellectualised unit of the British Army".^[8] He then served with the 249 (Alien) Company Pioneer Corps which was involved in military camp construction in Catterick, Yorkshire, and then in Scotland.^[1][5] Having anglicised his name to Brian Benjamin Shefton, he transferred to the Army Educational Corps in November 1944, where he served until the end of the war.^[1][2]

Academic career

After graduation, Shefton joined the British School at Athens on a School Studentship in 1947.^[5] He would go on to receive a Derby Scholarship from the University Oxford a Bishop Fraser Scholarship from Oriel College, Oxford, thereby receiving funding for three years in Greece.^[1] He assisted on the British excavation at Old Smyrna in western Turkey, and studied the pottery (including Attic red-figure and East Greek pottery) from the American excavation in the Ancient Agora of Athens.^[2]

Personal life

On 30 June 1947, Shefton swore the Oath of Allegiance and became a naturalised citizen of the United Kingdom.^[9]