Archaeology and Heinrich Schliemann 2012

Wilhelm Dörpfeld: Schliemann’s important discovery 329Fig. 1. Wilhelm Dörpfeld in 1911, after The Builder(June 30, 1911).studies. The revised notion of architecture includedthe idea that excellence in design was attained byemulating the classical builders.II. Dörpfeld’s career preparationThe late nineteenth century in neo-classical BerlinEight years before Schliemann visited Olympia,Dörpfeld went to Berlin and enrolled in a program tostudy building construction at the Bauakademie. Bythat time, Berlin had become both the capital of Prussia,and an important cultural and architectural center,due in part to the neoclassical designs by KarlFriedrich Schinkel, the state architect. The buildingsby Schinkel included the Royal Theater, the AltesMuseum, and the Berliner Bauakademie. The AltesMuseum, located near the Bauakademie, was one ofthe first structures in Western Europe to be designedspecifically to house public collections of artistic andhistorical works. The museum, and the collections itcontained, afforded Dörpfeld a large body of ancientobjects, and it served as an arena for exercises in identifying,interpreting, and classifying them.Studies at the BauakademieThe program of study at the Bauakademie wasbased on treatises like those by Alberti, Palladio, Stuartand Revett, Percier, and Durand. Although all ofthese treatises deal with historical material, their generalapproach is typological. They focus on such topicsas materials, methods of construction, or spatialorganization. Although the treatises are not concernedwith the actual process of design, Dörpfeldwould have used them as references in his planningof contemporary buildings. He thus could have produceda building like Schinkel’s Royal Theater, theAltes Museum, or the Bauakademie.Dörpfeld studied architectural history under ProfessorFriedrich Adler (1827-1908), the Hauptdozentder Baugeschichte at the Bauakademie. Adler wasprobably the individual most responsible for developingDörpfeld’s understanding of the epochs andstyles of architecture. Dörpfeld would have been introducedto such readings as Stuart and Revett’s documentationof the monuments at Athens, and Winckelmann’sAnmerkungen über die Baukunst derAlten. Through the readings and Adler’s instruction,Dörpfeld came to regard the forms of ancient monumentsas expressions of organic stylistic development.The instruction of design at the Bauakademie hadtwo facets: one was concerned with a technical analysisof the classical orders; the other was devoted to thecompositional planning of buildings. In analyzing theorders, Dörpfeld studied their elements and proportions,their mouldings, and their organization in theplans and on the facades of buildings. Sources for thisanalysis likely included works by Italian Renaissancetheorists, such as Alberti and Palladio. In his studiesof planning, Dörpfeld would have been required toprepare several designs of a single official building,like a law court. Each design was to be in a differentstyle, using illustrations in treatises like those byPercier and Durand. By the end of his analysis andplanning exercises, Dörpfeld mastered the differentstyles, their vocabulary of architectural elements, andthe rules for their composition.III. Dörpfeld’s contribution to theprogression of progressAt Olympia with Adler and CurtiusThe Berliner Bauakademie fostered Dörpfeld’samazing ability to combine an understanding of