Walter Andrae
Ernst Walter Andrae (18 February 1875 – 28 July 1956) was a German archaeologist and architect born near Leipzig.
Life and work
He was the son of the privy senior civil engineer Carl Hermann Andrae. Walter Andrae attended high schools in Chemnitz and Grimma. He then completed a year's military service and began studying architecture at the Dresden University of Technology, where he graduated as a government construction supervisor. He also became interested in architectural history. During his studies he became a member of the Sängerschaft Erato Dresden in 1894.
From 1898 to 1903, he worked as an assistant to Robert Koldewey on the excavations in Babylon, where he was temporarily in charge of the excavations. From 1903 to 1914, financed by the German Orient Society, he and Julius Jordan excavated, among other places, in the first capital of the Assyrian Empire Assur. Andrae also participated in other excavations in the Western Asia, such as that of the Late Hittite Samʼal.
In 1908, he traveled to Germany to complete his doctorate at the Technical University of Dresden and to attend the rehearsals and first performance in Berlin of the pantomime Sardanapal, commissioned by the Orient-enthusiast Kaiser Wilhelm II and for which Andrae had designed the stage sets. He was also a member of the German National Council of Arts and Sciences.
After his return from the Euphrates in 1914, Andrae married, was called up for military service and served in the staff of Field Marshal von der Goltz in the Near East. In 1921, he succeeded Robert Koldewey as curator of the Near Eastern department of the Berlin museums and in 1923 received an extraordinary professorship at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1926, he succeeded in releasing the finds from Assur in Portugal, which had been confiscated on their way across the Mediterranean during the First World War; in the same year, he achieved the removal of the finds in Babylon, which Koldewey had been forced to leave there in 1917.
Starting in 1923, he taught classes in architectural history at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1928, Andrae was appointed director of the Near Eastern Department of the Berlin Museums. In 1930, he opened the newly established Babylon Rooms there. In 1946, he was appointed full professor of architectural history and building surveying at the Technical University. In 1952, he became emeritus professor and retired from the museums.
He died in Berlin on July 28, 1956.
Of particular importance are Andrae's works Das wiedererstandene Assur and his autobiography Lebenserinnerungen eines Ausgräbers. Walter Andrae also left behind numerous drawings and watercolors, in addition to set designs, depictions of oriental landscapes and people, as well as reconstruction drawings of the complexes of Babylon. A note book he kept at the excavation site in Babylon identifies him as a talented caricaturist.
In 1953 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Works
- Der Anu-Adad-Tempel in Assur (1909)
- Die Festungswerke von Assur (1913)
- Die Stelenreihen in Assur (1913)
- Die archaischen Ischtar-Tempel in Assur (1922)
- Farbige Keramik aus Assur und ihre Vorstufen in altassyrischen Wandmalereien (1923)
- Hethitische Inschriften auf Bleistreifen aus Assur (1924)
- Die Kunst des Alten Orients (1925)
- Kultrelief an dem Brunnen des Assurtempels zu Assur (1931)
- Die Partherstadt Assur (1933; with Heinz Lenzen)
- Die ionische Säule. Bauform oder Symbol? (1933)
- Das wiedererstandene Assur'" (1938)
- Alte Festraßen im Nahen Osten (1941)
- Babylon. Die versunkene Weltstadt und ihr Ausgräber Robert Koldewey (1952)
- Lebenserinnerungen eines Ausgräbers (1961)
Notes
References
- Dictionary of the Ancient Near East by Piotr Bienkowski and Alan Ralph Millard
- Johannes Cramer, "Rebuilding the Past: The Mesopotamia of Robert Koldewey and Walter Andrae and the Berlin Architecture in the Twenties." In: Modernity and Early Cultures: Reconsidering Non Western References for Modern Architecture in a Cross-cultural Perspective. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2012, pp. 53–69.
External links
- Works by Walter Andrae at Gallica
- Assyrian origins: discoveries at Ashur on the Tigris: antiquities in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Walter Andrae
