Full Name: Guyer, Heinrich Johann Samuel
Other Names:
- Samuel Guyer
Gender: male
Date Born: 31 May 1879
Date Died: 26 August 1950
Place Born: Marseille, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
Place Died: Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Home Country/ies: Switzerland
Subject Area(s): archaeology, architecture (object genre), Early Christian, and Early Medieval
Career(s): art historians
Overview
Architectural historian of early medieval middle-eastern buildings. Guyer was the son of Johannes Gujer (1837–1900), a German-Swiss pastor in Marseille; his mother was Emma Eugenie (Gujer) (b. 1847). His early education was in France before attending Gymnasium in Basel, Switzerland, from 1892 to 1898. His initial interest was theology which he pursued in Zurich. After satisfying the degree in 1902, he switched to art history. His doctorate was awarded in 1906 with a thesis, Die christlichen Denkmäler des 1. Jahrtausends in der Schweiz (Christian Monuments of the First Millennium in Switzerland) written under Johann Rudolf Rahn.
Guyer changed his research abruptly to early Christian architecture of Asia Minor and northern Mesopotamia, traveling to Cilicia (southern Anatolia) the same year as his completed dissertation. His field assistant was Ernst Herzfeld, also an important archaeological art historian. He focused on the buildings of Meriamlik and Korykos. Guyer married Hanna Bäschlin (1887-1952) in 1909. He contributed the section on Resafa (Sergiopolis), Syria, in Herzfeld’s and Friedrich Sarre‘s Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris-Gebiet of 1907-1908. In 1910/11 he visited Amida (Mesopotamia), now Diyarbakır, in Turkey, and Samarra (modern-day Iraq), where he took part in the excavations. Trips to northern Mesopotamia followed. His property in Istria was lost in the First World War, and he subsequently spent his later years in Florence, Munich and Switzerland. After 1930 he stopped traveling preferring to work on processing the material he had discovered in his archaeological sites. He worked on the recording of Swiss monuments until his death in 1950.
Guyer studied the relationship between the religious architecture of Asia Minor and Western, i.e., classical architecture. He concluded that elements of medieval church buildings, including the cruciform floor plan, the use of the crossing and crossing tower, were anticipated in Anatolian building as far back as the 6th century.
Guyer was involved in a feud with Josef Strzygowski over the dating of the
dating of the architectural sculpture of northern Mesopotamia. This acrimony bothered the sensitive and reticent Guyer. Contemporary opinion has vindicated Guyer (NDB). He never held an academic position. Guyer left his estate to the Burgerbibliothek in Bern, Switzerland. It includes his scientific notes, journals, and photographs the Middle East.
Selected Bibliography
- [dissertation:] Die christlichen Denkmäler des 1. Jahrtausends in der Schweiz. Mainz: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung,Theodor Weicher, 1907.
- Meine Tigrisfahrt. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1923.
- and Spanner, Harry; and Sarre, Friedrich. Rusafa, die Wallfahrtsstadt des heiligen Sergios. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1926.
- Venedig: Bauten und Bildwerke; Mit einem kunstgeschichtlichen Abriss. Augsburg: B. Filser, 1927.
- Monumenta Asiae Minoris antiqua. volume II of Herzfeld, Ernst. Meriamlik und Korykos. Zwei christliche Ruinenstätten des rauhen Kilikiens/Publications of the American Society for Archaeological Research in Asia Minor. London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1930.
- “Baukunst des inneren Kleinasiens für die allgemeine Kunstgeschichte.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift XXXIII (1933): 78-104, 313.
- “Le role de l’art de la Syrie et de la Mésopotamie a l’époque byzantine.”
Syria 14, no. 1 (1933): 56-70. - “Amida.” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft. XXXVIII, (1916): 193-237.
- Grundlagen mittelalterlicher abendländischer Baukunst: Beiträge zu der vom antiken Tempel zur kreuzförmigen Basilika des abendländischen Mittelalters führenden Entwicklung. Einsiedeln: Benziger 1950.
Sources
- Kollwitz, Johannes. “Guyer, Johann Samuel.” Neue Deutsche Biographie 7:359
- Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie
Archives
Burgerbibliothek Bern.