Johannes Hendrik Thiel

Thiel's parents, the lawyer Jan Hendrik Thiel, and Thiska, née Wehrbein, moved to Haarlem in 1903, where Johannes Hendrik Thiel attended grammar school. In 1914, he began studying classical philology at the University of Amsterdam. The experience of the First World War awakened his interest in history. His academic teacher was the ancient historian Ursul Philip Boissevain. This was followed in 1920/21 by a year of study in Berlin under the Greek scholar Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf and the historian Eduard Meyer.^{[citation needed]}

On 31 May 1922, he completed his doctorate under Boissevain with a thesis on Xenophon; his expectations of being appointed Boissevain's successor were not fulfilled. In the summer of 1922, after his marriage, he became a teacher of ancient languages at his former grammar school in Haarlem. From 1927, he was assistant to the classical archaeologist and ancient historian Alexander Willem Byvanck as a private lecturer in ancient history at Leiden University, and became an associate professor in 1930. In 1938 he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.^{[citation needed]}

During the German occupation, he resigned like many other Dutch professors after the bomb explosion in Leiden (1942).^[1] After his release, he was temporarily imprisoned and had to be careful afterwards. In his free time, Thiel turned to a new subject, ancient naval history. In 1946, Thiel was appointed to the Chair of Ancient History at the University of Utrecht, succeeding Hendrik Bolkestein. The almost 50-year-old gave a programmatic inaugural speech on the independence of Classical Archaeology and Classical Studies. He became emeritus professor in 1964.^{[citation needed]}