Theodor Wiegand

Theodor Wiegand (30 October 1864 – 19 December 1936) was a German archaeologist.

Wiegand was born in Bendorf, Rhenish Prussia. He studied at the universities of Munich, Berlin, and Freiburg. In 1894 he worked under Wilhelm Dörpfeld at the excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. From 1895 until 1899 he excavated the ancient Greek city of Priene, and from 1899 to 1911 he worked at Miletus. He took part in the excavations of the sanctuary of Didyma (1905–11) and of Samos (1910–11). In Pergamon he discovered, in 1927, the arsenals of the castle at the acropolis and excavated the large sanctuary of Asklepios outside the city. He also finished the excavations at Baalbek in Lebanon and published the results.

From 1899 until 1911, he worked for the museums of Berlin as a foreign director in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and was the science attaché of the German Embassy there. From 1912 to 1930 he worked as the director of the Department of Antiquities in the museums of Berlin, when they built the Pergamon Museum for ancient architecture that houses part of the Antikensammlung collection, along with the Altes Museum.

In 1922, Wiegand was accepted as a full member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. In 1930, the year he retired from the Prussian civil service, he was elected a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. In 1931 he was made a member of the civil order Pour le Mérite for Science and Art and, in 1932, he was elected to the presidency of the German Archaeological Institute. On 11 July 1933, Prussian Minister President Hermann Göring appointed him to the recently reconstituted Prussian State Council. He was one of the signatories of an open letter by German scientists in August 1934, endorsing Adolf Hitler succeeding Paul Hindenburg as German head of state.

Wiegand died in Berlin of late effects of malaria in December 1936. He is buried at the Waldfriedhof Dahlem. Provided by Wikipedia