On 7 May 2022, Maria Radnoti-Alföldi died at the age of 95. The German-Hungarian numismatist and ancient historian influenced generations of scholars.
Maria Alföldi was born in 1926 in Budapest. A student of Andreas Alföldi, she worked at the Hungarian National Museum and in 1957 fled to West Germany after the unsuccessful Hungarian Revolution. In Munich, she qualified as a university lecturer in the newly founded subject of Ancient Numismatics. Then she went to Frankfurt am Main, where she taught as a professor at the Seminar for Greek and Roman History from 1973 until her retirement in 1991. Also in 1991, the Festschrift “Die Münze. Bild – Botschaft – Bedeutung” dedicated to her was published. In the 1970s, Radnoti-Alföldi presented her two-volume introduction to Ancient Numismatics, and her book “Bild und Bildersprache der römischen Kaiser. Beispiele und Analysen” (1999) was also met with great interest.
As a specialist for ancient numismatics – particularly for the Roman imperial period – R.-Alföldi was honoured with numerous awards, including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
A detailed obituary will be published soon.
