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Full Name: Kähler, Heinz

Gender: male

Date Born: 1905

Date Died: 1974

Place Born: Tetenbüll, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Place Died: Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), architecture (object genre), Roman (ancient Italian culture or period), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Scholar of Greek and Roman architecture and sculpture. Kähler studied classical archaeology and art history at the university of Freiburg im Breisgau. He wrote his dissertation under Hans Dragendorff in 1929. After securing a travel stipend from the DAI (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut or Geman Archaeological Institute) Kähler spent 1930-31 in France, Spain, Greece, Rome and Asia Minor. Returning to Germany, he worked at the Pergamon Museum 1936-37 and then as assistant to the Archaeological Seminar of Ernst Buschor at the University of Munich (1937-1941) as well as in the museum of casts. His study of the sculpture of the Great Pergamon Altar appeared in 1942. He completed his habilitationssschrift there in 1943 while serving in the German military during World War II. After the war his study of Hadrian’s Villa appeared in 1950. He was appointed Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University Saarbrücken between 1953-1960. His work on the Arch of Constantine (1953) and the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia of Praeneste, 1958, both date from his Saarbrücken years. He co-founded with Jacques Moreau the Monumenta Artis Romanae book series, supplying personally the volume on the Augustus Prima Porta (1959). In 1960 he succeeded Andreas Rumpf at the University at Cologne (Institut für Klassische Archäologie) where he taught until 1973. At Cologne he authored his survey, Rom und sein Imperium, 1962, which was translated into English in 1963 and became widely-used text for Roman art. A second volume in the Monumenta Artis Romanae book series on the Gemma Augustea appeared in 1968.

Selected Bibliography

[habilitation:] Die große Fries von Pergamon. Munich, 1942, published as Der große Fries von Pergamon: untersuchungen zur Kunstgeschichte und Geschichte Pergamons. Published Berlin, Gebr. Mann, 1948; Rom und sein Imperium. Baden Baden: Holle, 1962, English, The Art of Rome and her Empire. New York: Crown, 1963; Die Augustusstatue von Primaporta. Monumenta artis Romanae 1. Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1959; Der Fries vom Reiterdenkmal des Aemilius Paullus in Delphi. Monumenta artis Romanae 5. Berlin: Mann, 1965; Die frühe Kirche: Kult und Kultraum. Berlin: Mann, 1972; Das Griechische Metopenbild. Munich: Besher F. Bruckmann, 1949; Der griechische Tempel: Wesen und Gestalt. Berlin: G. Mann, 1964; Hadrian und seine Villa bei Tivoli. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1950; and Mango, Cyril. Die Hagia Sophia. Berlin: G. Mann, 1967, English, Hagia Sophia. New York: Praeger, 1967; Lindos. Zürich: Raggi-Verlag, 1971; Pergamon. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1949; Die römischen Kapitelle des Rheingebietes. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1939; Die spätantiken Bauten unter dem Dom von Aquileia und ihre Stellung innerhalb der Geschichte des frühchristlichen Kirchenbaues. Saarbrücken: Universität Saarbrücken, 1957; Zwei sockel eines triumphbogens im Boboligarten zu Florenz. Berlin: Leipzig, W. de Gruyter, 1936; Die Gebälke des Konstantinsbegens. vol. 2 of Toebelmann, Fritz. Römische Gebälke. Heildeberg: Carl Winter, 1953; and Voit, Ludwig, and Bengl, Hans. Römisches Erbe: ein Lesebuch lateinischer Literatur. Munich: Bayerischer Schulbuch-Verlag, 1950.

Sources

Schwingenstein, C. Heinz Kähler. Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 293-294; Ridgway, David. Kähler, Heinz. Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, p. 628.