HUBERT KNACKFUSS

Hubert Knackfuß (born June 25, 1866 in Dalheim near Aachen ; † April 30, 1948 in Munich ) was a German building researcher who played a key role in the excavations of the ancient cities of Miletus and Didyma . He is considered one of the co-founders of ancient building research as an independent discipline within the archaeological sciences.

His grandfather was the Prussian major general Friedrich Ludwig Karl Knackfuß (1772–1842). His parents were the rent master of Burg Eltz Eduard Knackfuß (1823-1893) and his wife Bernhardine von Martial (1823-1883). His brothers were the history painter Hermann Knackfuß and the Catholic. Theologian and painter Eduard Heinrich Knackfuss .

Knackfuß studied architecture at RWTH Aachen University and had been involved in the excavations of the Royal Museums in Berlin in Asia Minor since 1901 . In collaboration with Theodor Wiegand , he led the excavation of several important buildings from the Roman era in Miletus, including the theater, the town hall and the famous market gate . For the latter, Knackfuß designed the reconstruction, which was carried out in 1929 in the Berlin Pergamon Museumwas implemented according to his plans. However, the gate was not set up in its original way, as Knackfuß and Wiegand had requested, but rather strung onto a steel frame, which gave it more stability. Knackfuß is said to have been so outraged that he stayed away from the inauguration and allegedly never saw the building, which was rebuilt according to his design. With the reconstruction of the market gate of Miletus began his work in the field of ancient building research, which soon became his main occupation. Like no other before, he tried to document the structural remains of ancient monuments as precisely as possible in order to later be able to reconstruct them in drawings on this basis, which earned him a lot of recognition and leveled the ground for future building researchers.

Knackfuß remained active in Asia Minor for the time being. Before and after the First World War , he led the excavation of the Apollo sanctuary at Didyma near Miletus , which was the largest sanctuary in Hellenistic Greece. He researched this monument for years and published his results in 1941 in the most extensive historical study of an ancient building to date. At the same time, in his capacity as second director of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens, he was involved in excavations in Olympia and other ancient Greek sites. In 1919 Knackfuß finally went to Munich , where he attended the Technical University He taught ancient architecture until he had to hand over the chair to Alexander von Senger in 1934 under pressure from the National Socialists .