Klaus Mertens (building historian)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Klaus Mertens (born April 4, 1931 in Beuthen OS ; † July 10, 2014 in Dresden ) was a German architectural scientist and building researcher.

Life

Klaus Mertens grew up in Breslau . After fleeing from Silesia in 1945, the family first settled in Greiz , where Mertens graduated from the secondary school there in 1949. This was followed by a degree in architecture at the Technical University of Dresden (today TU Dresden ), where Mertens turned to the history of architecture, especially under the influence of the lectures by Walter Hentschel and Eberhard Hempel .

After graduating in 1956, Mertens initially worked as an assistant at the Department of Art History at the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin until 1958, and from 1959 as an assistant - from 1960 senior assistant - until 1968 at the Institute for Art History in the Faculty of Building at the TH Dresden. In 1962 Mertens received his doctorate with a thesis on the Großsedlitz baroque garden . After completing his habilitation in 1967, he worked as a senior assistant at the architecture section from 1969, where he received the Facultas Docendi for the history of older architecture in 1970.

However, the following teaching activity was interrupted after a short time because Mertens did not comply with the party demand to submit his (anyway nonexistent) lecture manuscript on Romanesque churches in the Eastern Harz Mountains and to have it checked for conformity with Marxism-Leninism, which he called " Refusal to work ”was interpreted. Although the dismissal without notice was withdrawn after four weeks of unemployment, Mertens remained persona non grata until the end of the GDR and was only given an extraordinary professorship for the history of architecture and garden art at the Technical University of Dresden due to a regulation in the unification agreement in October 1990 .

In 1993 Klaus Mertens, who had meanwhile taken over the chair for building history at the Technical University, was elected founding dean of the restored Faculty of Architecture. In this position he played a key role in her staff renewal. In 1997 Mertens retired, but continued to devote himself to his scientific research for a long time.

Mertens was buried in the Old Catholic Cemetery in Dresden.

Fonts

  • Erfurt Cathedral. Berlin 1955. Revised and amended version 1955 ( The Christian Monument. Special Issue 4).
  • The Severikirche in Erfurt. Berlin 1957. 6th revised edition 1972 ( The Christian Monument. Issue 27).
  • The park at Großsedlitz. Dissertation. TU Dresden 1962.
  • The castle church in Altenburg. Berlin 1969 ( The Christian Monument. Issue 79).
  • Romanesque hall churches within the medieval borders of the Meissen diocese. Habilitation thesis. TU Dresden 1967. Leipzig 1973.
  • with Hartmut Wiehr: Knaur's cultural guide in color Saxony. Munich 1991, ISBN 3-426-26488-9 .
  • The city churches in Thuringia. Berlin 1972. 3rd unchanged edition 1990, ISBN 3-374-00445-8 .
  • The Saxon construction authority and Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann. In: Kurt Milde, Klaus Mertens (ed.): Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann 1662–1736 and the architecture of the time of August the Strong (= Fundus books 125). Dresden 1990, ISBN 3-364-00192-8 , pp. 28-39.
  • Architectural-historical aspects of castle construction. In: Castle research from Saxony. 1. Waltersdorf 1992, pp. 75-87.
  • Evangelical Churches Kamenz. Munich 1992 ( Small Art Guide. 2011 issue).
  • Otto Schubert and Spanish Baroque Architecture. 1999.
  • Klaus Mertens:  Pöppelmann, Matthaeus Daniel. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , pp. 570-572 ( digitized version ).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Klaus Mertens: Obituaries. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung /lvz-trauer.de. July 14, 2014, archived from the original on September 5, 2014 ; Retrieved September 4, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Mertens, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architectural scientist and building researcher
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Beuthen OS
DATE OF DEATH July 10, 2014
Place of death Dresden