Horn, Siegfried Herbert (1908–1993)

Siegfried H. Horn was a renowned archaeologist, chronologist, and Bible scholar.

Internment for six-and-a-half years during World War II divided Horn’s professional life into two unequal parts. From 1930 to 1940, prior to the war-time disruption, he served as a minister in the Netherlands and a missionary teacher-administrator in the Dutch East Indies. Upon gaining his freedom after the war, he emigrated to the United States where he completed his higher education. From 1951 to 1976, Horn taught at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary from which he retired as Dean and Professor Emeritus of Archaeology and History of Antiquity. Horn is known particularly for the influential archaeological expedition he initiated and directed at Tell Hesban in Jordan (1968-1973).¹

Early Life (1908–1930)

Siegfried Herbert Horn was born in Würzen, Germany, on March 17, 1908. His father, Albin Horn, was one of the world’s first aviators. His mother, Klara Kertscher, attended Friedensau, the Adventist seminary in Germany, from which she graduated as a Bible instructor. In the course of her work, Klara gave Bible studies in the home of Horn’s paternal grandparents with the result that several family members were baptized. Among them was Albin, an engineer, who fell in love with Klara and married her. Albin, who became director of a company in Hannover that built airplanes, was one of the pioneers in German aviation, trained by the famed Louis Blériot (1872-1936), who made the first flight across the English Channel in 1909. However, in 1913, when Siegfried was only five years old, his father was killed in a plane crash.²

To avoid attending school on Sabbath, Siegfried attended a Jewish school where he learned Hebrew. Later, like his mother, he, too attended Friedensau (1924-1928) where he took the ministerial training course.³ During his final year at Friedensau, the German Ministry of Aviation, in honor of his father, offered Siegfried training as a commercial pilot at their expense. He decided to do it, initially, but finally realized that this would not be his calling.⁴

Horn found his experience at Friedensau rewarding in many respects. It gave him “experience, inner maturity, many a nice hour and various ideals born in the forest.” Yet, at the conclusion of his studies there he also felt a little frustrated, wanting more that would help him develop a stronger faith along with intellectual understanding.⁵

Deciding he needed to learn English, Horn transferred to Stanborough College (later Newbold College) in England, where he studied from July 1929 to January 1930. Though his time there was brief, the school made a favorable impression on him, as did its principal (president), Lynn H. Wood, an Old Testament scholar: “Stanborough is a pattern for colleges,” he noted in his diary. “It has good and appreciable rules. It has a principal with principles. Mr. Wood has knowledge and a heart for young people. He gave me more spiritual thoughts than my whole life had before. He gives not only explanations of Bible but also a philosophy and foundation.”⁶ Another who made a favorable and lasting impression was George D. Keough, a veteran missionary to Egypt and at that time a Bible teacher.⁷

Decade of Mission Ministry (1930–1940)

Horn accepted assignment to mission service in the Netherlands East Indies Union Mission, and moved to Amsterdam in January 1930 in order to learn the Dutch language. As an unsalaried ministerial assistant in the Netherlands Conference during this preparatory period, he earned an income by canvassing Adventist literature.⁸ “Here I became a Bible worker and here I was able to win my first 12 souls, which makes this city even more dear to me,” he recorded in his diary.⁹

While in Holland he wrestled with the need to find a bride. After experiencing some disappointments along the way, he found a life partner in Jeanne Rothfusz from Delft in the Netherlands. They became engaged prior to his departure in 1932 to begin missionary service in Batavia, Java, Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia). Horn saw the assignment as an affirmation of his calling: “I came to Holland as a nobody in the church, but go out as a missionary. God has wonderfully let me live these 24 years through countries, schools, and strange experiences, but they all served to prepare me for my work in the work of the Lord.”¹⁰

Horn began service in the West Java Mission in October 1932 as district leader of five churches in Djkarta and supervisor of three church schools.¹¹ Jeanne joined him a year later, and they were married on October 4, 1933. In 1935, Horn was transferred to Semarang, the capital and largest city of Central Java. Here he was ordained in 1937,¹² and shortly afterwards became treasurer of the South Sumatra Mission.¹³ This responsibility required extensive travel through the territory and Horn undertook eight itineraries during 1937 to 1939.

On April 28, 1939, the Horns’ only child, a baby boy, died at birth. “This is my sacrifice, my little grave, what I leave behind in the mission field,” he wrote. “I saw the little child with folded hands on the bier in the mortuary, bearing the wages of sin before it knew sin. Will we see it again? God grant us more faithfulness. May we be granted eternal life!”¹⁴

Reflecting on his marriage to that point, Horn gratefully observed, “After 7 years of marriage I still don’t regret my step, because a woman like her, who suits my idiosyncrasies can hardly be found again.”¹⁵

World War II brought Horn’s mission experience to an abrupt halt in 1940. After Germany invaded Holland, the Dutch, in retribution, incarcerated all Germans then living in their East Indies colony, including Siegfried H. Horn. Jeanne avoided detention because she was of Dutch nationality and she remained in Batavia to serve in the Adventist clinic during the war.

World War II Internment (1940–1946)

From May 10, 1940, to August 18, 1946, Horn spent 2291 days in five camps, with each move meticulously noted in his diary. The first was on the island of Onrust near Batavia, and the second in the Alus Valley of North Sumatra. He and his fellow detainees were “in mortal danger from disease, bombs and torpedoes, and often in despair,” he later wrote. “We have lived on a small island and with the monkeys in Sumatra’s jungle, on the edge of the Indian desert where camels and peacocks are domestic animals, and in the foothills of the Himalayas.”¹⁶

During his 18 months in the jungle camp in North Sumatra, Horn took advantage of a brief window of opportunity for prisoners to request shipment of books from their homes. Much to the surprise of fellow prisoners, who thought it prudent to request only one or two books at a time, Horn’s entire list of 75 books was approved and sent by Jeanne in three large boxes. Soon thereafter, the authorities discontinued the policy of permitting prisoners book orders.¹⁷

With the books, Horn managed to use his time in internment to accomplish much by way of study and writing. During this time he learned Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French. He wrote manuscripts for five books on biblical history including an introduction to the New Testament, a commentary on the Old Testament, a work on archaeology (“Spade in Bible Countries”), and a chronology of the Old Testament. He read through the Greek New Testament twenty-one and a half times, the Hebrew Old Testament two and three quarters times, and made a complete German translation of the Bible.¹⁸

In December 1941, with Japanese forces nearing Sumatra, the Dutch decided to transfer responsibility for their German prisoners to the British army in India, where they were located first at Ramgargh, then Deoli, and finally at Dehra Dun. Four ships were engaged for their transport. There were two German nationals named Horn, each assigned to a different ship. But the Dutch officers, in their haste, put them each on the wrong ship compared to the prepared passenger lists. The ship that Siegfried Horn was supposed to have been on was torpedoed with loss of life for all aboard. Hence Jeanne was notified by the authorities that her husband had been drowned. It was not until near the war’s end that she learned he was alive!¹⁹

American Education (1946–1951)

The General Conference arranged for the German Adventist prisoners in India to come to the United States in September 1946. Horn visited the Annual Council of the General Conference Committee held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that year, where Verner G. Anderson, president of the North Pacific Union Conference, arranged immediate acceptance for him at Walla Walla College in College Place, Washington. There, in addition to completing his B.A. degree in a year, Horn taught Greek and served a small German church as pastor.

In March 1947, he drove his recently acquired Pontiac to Los Angeles to meet Jeanne on her arrival from Java. They had been separated for nearly seven years! They spent the next few months in a two-bedroom apartment in College Place, getting used to each other again. Then, after Siegfried’s graduation in August 1947, they headed East, taking in the sights along the way to the Washington, D.C. area, where he started his M.A. degree at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in November. Jeanne began working as a nurse at the Washington Sanitarium in July 1948, and became a supporter of Siegfried’s plans for further study.

Horn turned down calls back to Java, then to Argentina, and even to Germany, in order to complete his M.A. in August 1948 and take a semester-long course with America’s leading biblical archaeologist, William Foxwell Albright, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In September, Horn started his doctoral studies at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and Jeanne transferred to Hinsdale Sanitarium in the city’s western suburbs where the couple was given an apartment in the nurses’ dormitory.²⁰

“I had to study hard for 2.5 years to learn hundreds of hieroglyphs, learn demotic, cuneiform and also the associated languages with all the vocabularies and grammars,” Horn wrote of his studies at Chicago.²¹ Then came his dissertation, “Relations of Egypt and Asia during the Middle Kingdom,” which he defended cum laude. He was awarded the Ph.D. on March 16, 1951, at age 42.²² In his diary, he expressed his gratitude: “I’m very thankful to God that He has given me success and that I can now take a place in His work again. May He grant the same success that He gave me during the past years and make me useful in His kingdom’s affairs.”²³

That summer Horn moved back to Washington, D.C., where he joined his old professor, Lynn Wood, teaching in the Old Testament Department of the SDA Theological Seminary. Horn became a naturalized American citizen on February 8, 1955, with Charles Weniger, his friend and dean of the seminary, as witness.

SDA Theological Seminary and Andrews University Years (1951–1976)

For 25 years, Horn was the seminary’s Old Testament historian and biblical archaeologist. The school remained in Washington, D.C., until 1960 when it was moved to the campus of Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. The move to Michigan was “a fateful decision which gave me much unhappiness,” Horn observed later.²⁴

An influential seminary professor, Horn taught a series of Old Testament Backgrounds courses, Introduction to the Old Testament, the Chronology of the Old Testament, Exploration of Bible Lands, and occasional exegesis classes. He chaired the Old Testament Department until the last three years of his tenure when he served as seminary dean. He brought into his Old Testament Department faculty Leona Running, Gerhard Hasel, Lawrence Geraty, William Shea, Abraham Terian, and Hans Erbes. As dean, he tried unsuccessfully to bring theologian Richard Rice and social ethicist Charles Teel, Jr., onto his faculty.²⁵

Looking back on his 25 years at the seminary, Horn expressed gratitude for several major accomplishments, including: numerous former students then engaged as ministers and teachers in many countries; books published in four languages and hundreds of articles that appeared in many countries; the archaeological museum that he founded on the Andrews campus; Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS), the denomination’s first scholarly journal, which he initiated in 1963 and edited for 12 years; the Andrews University Monograph Series of which he published the first 7 volumes; and, the excavations of biblical Heshbon that he began and directed—the first archaeological expedition under Adventist auspices. In addition to these, one of Horn’s significant academic achievements was the accreditation of the Doctor of Theology (D.Th.) program in 1974, considered by Andrews University president Richard Hammill “the crown of Horn’s career.”²⁶

Scholarship

In addition to six unpublished book length manuscripts written during his internment years, Horn wrote 12 percent of the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, the seven-volume series written by the denomination’s leading scholars and published from 1953 to 1957 by the Review and Herald Publishing Association. Horn authored the notes for Genesis, Exodus, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel 2-6.²⁷ His most ambitious achievement was the authoring and publication of the acclaimed Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary, also published by Review and Herald, revised in 1979.²⁸ Horn called this his “best product.”²⁹

In archaeology circles, Horn is known for the publication of the most important Ammonite inscription so far found, the Amman Citadel Inscription.³⁰ Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, invited Horn to be part of his Advisory Council.³¹ Horn was very active in such scholarly organizations as the American Oriental Society (1950-1976), the American Schools of Oriental Research (1966-1976),³² and the Chicago Society of Biblical Research (for which he served as president, 1966-1967), as well as the Adventist Society for Religious Studies (1975-1990).³³

A review and analysis of Horn’s publications appeared in Lloyd Willis, Archaeology in Adventist Literature, 1937-1980 (Andrews University Press, 1980). Horn’s primary contribution was helping his denomination become acquainted with the finds of archaeology that help throw light on Scripture. His other important books include: The Chronology of Ezra 7, co-authored with L. H. Wood (Review and Herald, 1953, rev. 1985); The Spade Confirms the Book (Review and Herald, 1957, rev. 1980); Records of the Past Illuminate the Bible (Review and Herald, 1963, rev. 1975); Biblical Archaeology After Thirty Years (1948-1978) (Andrews University Press, 1978, rev. 1985).

Horn contributed to the General Conference’s Biblical Research Institute (originally called the Biblical Research Committee [BRC]), organized in 1952, and helped in its reorganization in 1969.³⁴ However, he along with Review and Herald book editor Raymond F. Cottrell became concerned that newly-appointed BRC director, Gordon Hyde, and Gerhard Hasel of the seminary faculty were taking issue with other Adventist scholars on disputed matters in what they saw as an overly assertive manner.³⁵

Archaeology

On Horn’s very first trip to the Middle East in 1953, he stayed in Baghdad at the home of Robert Hasso where he discovered an inscription being used as a doorstopper. Getting Hasso’s permission to take it home with him to Chicago, Horn showed it to Ignace Gelb, one of his cuneiform professors, who found it was an Assyrian King List! Hasso insisted on it being called the SDA Assyrian King List, an historically valuable object which is now in the Baghdad Archaeological Museum.³⁶ Since Adventists were always interested in the “ark,” Horn accompanied evangelist George Vandeman on his fruitless search for Noah’s ark in 1960 and also traveled to investigate Tom Cotser’s search for the ark of the covenant.³⁷

Horn involved himself in the Archaeological Research Foundation (1960-1968) which helped sponsor his three archaeological fieldwork seasons (1960, 1962, 1964) at Shechem in Palestine and then in the initiation of his own dig at Heshbon in Jordan. It was this latter multidisciplinary project which he directed in 1968, 1971, and 1973 (continued under his successor, Lawrence T. Geraty) that brought Horn his greatest satisfaction and renown. His work was scientifically performed, promptly published, and respected in the scholarly community.³⁸ Horn spent a sabbatical year in 1970-1971 as director of the American Center for Oriental Research (ACOR)³⁹ in Amman, Jordan, and participated in the groundbreaking for its permanent headquarters in 1984.⁴⁰

Travel

Horn led Bible Lands Tours for the seminary in 1957, 1959, 1966, and, with Geraty, in 1975.⁴¹ During Horn’s years at Andrews University, he made a total of 25 overseas trips, including one round-the-world trip (1965-1966), two trips to the Far East (1962, 1976), seven trips to Europe only, and fifteen trips to Europe and the Near East, one of which was extended to East Africa (1971).⁴²

Thinking it was time for his wife, Jeanne, to visit the Holy Land in which he had so often travelled, Horn arranged an itinerary for her and her longtime friend, Jeanne Kirkwood (1912-1988), in 1970. During that trip, his wife died from a heart attack she experienced on Mount Carmel in Israel where she is buried.⁴³

Throughout his entire life, Horn carefully recorded statistics. For instance, for the 15 years ending in 1983, he says he travelled by car 232,700 miles, by train 47,700 miles, by boat, 22,100 miles, and by air 590,000 miles. He taught for 1,470 hours, lectured or preached 590 times in 16 countries, published 166 articles and 16 books, and wrote 9,500 letters.⁴⁴ By 1977, Horn had read the entire Hebrew Bible 12 times and the Greek New Testament 40 times.⁴⁵

Retirement Years (1976–1993)

In 1976, Horn retired and also married Jeanne Kirkwood on February 12. He wanted to retire near friends and to have easy access to good libraries, so he and Jeanne moved into a townhouse in Pleasant Hill, California. In 1978 Horn survived a heart attack in a Cheyenne, Wyoming, motel.⁴⁶ He continued leading Bible lands tours—two organized by Richard Fenn (1978, 1980), and a final one, organized by Vandeman, in 1981.⁴⁷

Horn continued residing in Pleasant Hill after his second wife, Jeanne, passed away on September 30, 1988. In 1990, he went for his customary morning walk and was found in a ditch by a neighbor. He never knew what happened but was taken to a hospital where he was in a coma for four weeks and underwent brain surgery. During a seven-week convalescence, he was nursed back to health by a friend, Elfriede Heffner.⁴⁸ Horn married his nurse, Betty (Elizabeth Leppers), in Reno, Nevada, in 1991, and they moved the next year to a home in Paradise, California.⁴⁹ Upon her death, in March 1993, Horn moved into an apartment in Silverado Orchards, St. Helena, California, where he died on November 28, 1993.⁵⁰

Recognitions

Siegfried H. Horn was recognized by his scholarly colleagues as a serious archaeologist. He knew and corresponded with numerous world-renowned scholars including Americans W. F. Albright, Joseph Callaway, William Dever, George Cameron, Ted Campbell, D. N. Freedman, Nelson Glueck, John Holladay, Paul Lapp, James Pritchard, Walter Rast, and G. E. Wright; Israelis Yohanan Aharoni, Ruth Amiran, Nahman Avigad, Michael Avi-Yonah, David and Miriam Ayalon, Gabriel Barkay, Avraham Biran, Moshe and Trude Dothan, Amihai Mazar, Benjamin Mazar, and Yigael Yadin; Britons Crystal Bennett and Kathleen Kenyon; and French Pierre Benoit, Roland DeVaux, and Claude Schaeffer.⁵¹

Biographical and autobiographical works have been published bringing wider recognition to Horn’s remarkable life story. At the time of his retirement in 1976, Geraty and Andrews University president J. G. Smoot recruited Joyce Rochat to write Horn’s biography. She travelled to the Heshbon dig that summer to interview him in his archaeological environment. Only the first volume, Survivor (Andrews University Press, 1987), covering his early years through his war internment, was ever published. Horn was pleased with the book but troubles with the author meant no more would appear.⁵² Horn’s own account of his war internment years, “A Stranger—Preserved and Freed,” appeared in God’s Hand in My Life, edited by Lawrence T. Geraty (Southern Publishing Association, 1977), and later in his Promise Deferred (Review and Herald, 1987), which includes an introduction on the significance of his career by Geraty.

An indication of the esteem for Horn in archaeological circles came in November 1986 when some 200 scholars gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, for the surprise presentation to him of a book of essays in his honor, The Archaeology of Jordan and Other Studies Presented to Siegfried H. Horn, edited by L. T. Geraty and L. Herr. Published by Andrews University Press in 1986, the volume contains contributions by some thirty leading archaeologists and biblical scholars from around the world.

The numerous honors conferred on Horn reflect fulfillment of his 1951 prayer that God would make him “useful in His kingdom’s affairs.” Among them:

1974—General Conference Medal of Merit

1975—Andrews University Alumni Association Hall of Fame

1978—Andrews University Archaeological Museum named for Horn

1979—Charles Weniger Award of Excellence

1982—Walla Walla University Alumnus of the Year

1986—Presented with Festschrift at Society of Biblical Literature

1988—Commendation from General Conference Executive Committee

1992—Andrews University Honorary Doctorate.

Sources

“Adventist Educator Siegfried Horn Dies.” ARH, December 23, 1993.

Geraty, Lawrence T. “Adventists and Archaeology.” In the Oxford Handbook of Seventh-day Adventism, eds. M. Campbell, C. Chow, D. Kaiser, and N. Miller, 337-351. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.

Geraty, Lawrence T. “Introduction.” In Siegfried H. Horn, Promise Deferred, 9-13. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1987.

Geraty, Lawrence T. “A Tribute to Siegfried H. Horn.” Biblical Archaeologist 57, no. 1 (1994): 58-59.

Geraty, Lawrence T. and Larry G. Herr, eds. The Archaeology of Jordan and Other Studies. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press.

Horn, Siegfried H. Diary, 35 vol. Center for Adventist Research, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI.

Horn, Siegfried H. Promise Deferred. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1987.

Horn, Siegfried H. “A Stranger—Preserved and Freed.” In God’s Hand in My Life, edited by Lawrence T. Geraty, 71-86. Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1977.

Horn, Siegfried Herbert. Secretariat Appointee Files, RG 21, Box WH 2677. General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists Archives, Silver Spring, MD (GCA).

“Jeanne Hillegonda Horn obituary.” ARH, December 17, 1970.

Rochat, Joyce. Survivor. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1987.

Willis, Loyd. Archaeology in Adventist Literature, 1937-1980 (Andrews University Press, 1980.

Notes

1. Horn kept a handwritten diary between 1926 and 1993 in 35 bound volumes along with five volumes of his indices. These volumes are held at the Center for Adventist Research, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI. Citations hereafter are abbreviated using “H” for Horn Diary, followed by the volume and page numbers, e.g. H18, 127.↩

2. Lawrence T. Geraty, “A Tribute to Siegfried H. Horn,” Biblical Archaeologist 57, no. 1 (1994): 58; Siegfried H. Horn, “A Stranger—Preserved and Freed,” in God’s Hand in My Life, ed. Lawrence T. Geraty (Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1977), 76-77.↩

3. Horn, “A Stranger—Preserved and Freed,” 77; Siegfried Herbert Horn, Biographical Information, June 3, 1978, Secretariat Appointee Files, RG 21, Box WH 2677, GCA.↩

4. Geraty, “A Tribute to Siegfried H. Horn,” 58.↩

5. H1, 104.↩

6. H1, 144.↩

7. Horn to Keough, 14 May 1952, Newbold College Library, Keough Papers, folder 4.↩

8. Horn, “A Stranger—Preserved and Freed,” 71-74; Horn Appointee File, GCA.↩

9. H1, 269.↩

10. H2, 40.↩

11. Horn, “A Stranger—Preserved and Freed,” 80.↩

12. Horn Appointee File, GCA.↩

13. Yearbook 1937, 132.↩

14. H3, 192.↩

15. H3, 232.↩

16. H4, 463.↩

17. Horn, “A Stranger—Preserved and Freed,” 82-85.↩

18. H4, 464.↩

19. Horn, “A Stranger—Preserved and Freed,” 85.↩

20. Geraty, “A Tribute to Siegfried H. Horn,” 58; Horn Appointee File, GCA.↩

21. H5, 292.↩

22. Geraty, “A Tribute to Siegfried H. Horn,” 58.↩

23. H5, 291-292.↩

24. H12:1, 22.↩

25. H18, 68.↩

26. H16, 35; H18, 68.↩

27. H6, 32-34; 222-223; H7, 10, 25-27, 36.↩

28. H7, 240; H8, 257, 449, 435; H17, 276-277; H21, 212-215.↩

29. H8, 424.↩

30. Siegfried H. Horn, “The Ammān Citadel Inscription,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR), 193 (February 1969): 2-13.↩

31. H21, 212.↩

32. Later renamed American Society of Overseas Research.↩

33. Lawrence T. Geraty, “Introduction,” in Siegfried H. Horn, Promise Deferred (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1987), 10-11.↩

34. H12B, 344-345.↩

35. H15B, 503-504.↩

36. H6, 223-226.↩

37. H8, 273-294; H24, 6-7.↩

38. Geraty, “A Tribute to Siegfried H. Horn,” 58-59.↩

39. Later renamed American Center of Research.↩

40. H13, 358 to H14, 361; H26 155-156.↩

41. H7, 264-344; H8, 114-186; H11, 132-188; H17, 91-159.↩

42. H18, 344.↩

43. H13, 209; “Jeanne Hillegonda Horn obituary,” ARH, December 17, 1970, 24.↩

44. H25, 121-122.↩

45. H19, 303.↩

46. H20, 193.↩

47. H20, 79-121; H22, 79-125; H23, 13-49.↩

48. H32, 61-64.↩

49. H33, 227-229.↩

50. “Adventist Educator Siegfried Horn Dies,” ARH, December 23, 1993, 6.↩

51. Geraty, “A Tribute to Siegfried H. Horn,” 59.↩

52. H18, 174-175,180; H21, 47-48, 108-109; H29 147, 162-164.↩