Machiel Kiel

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Photo by Machiel Kiel from 1970: Arta Bridge (Greece)

Machiel Kiel (born February 28, 1938 in Wormerveer ) is a Dutch professor of art history who specializes in Ottoman architecture in the Balkans .

As a stonemason and restorer, Kiel was involved in the restoration of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam from 1958 to 1976 . In 1959 he traveled to the Balkans for the first time: In Greece he was involved in the restoration of water systems in Ioannina . As a result, he repeatedly toured the Balkans. In 1972 he became a member of the international committee of Byzantijnse Studies Nederland , the local representative of the Association Internationale des Études Byzantines .

After an accident at work in 1976, he was no longer able to work as a restorer. He then studied at the Universiteit van Amsterdam and received his doctorate in 1983 with the work Ecclesiastical Architecture and Mural Painting of Bulgaria in the Ottoman Period . As early as the 1970s, he met the Turkish historian Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, who had a major influence on his work. During his studies, Kiel already specialized in his field of Ottoman architecture in the Balkans and spent a long time researching on trips and in the archives of Istanbul and Ankara . He created extensive works such as Ottoman Architecture in Albania 1385-1912 and Studies on the Ottoman architecture of the Balkans , which appeared in 1990. For this purpose, on three trips between 1967 and 1983, he explored monuments in an adventurous way in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania , which at the time was hardly accessible.

"He is one of the few cultural historians who are familiar with the Ottoman history of the Balkans through their own study of sources."

- Christian Zindel : Albania

From 1993 Kiel held a chair at the University of Utrecht . After his retirement he was director of the Netherlands Institute in Turkey from 2003 to 2006 . In 2020 he was a Senior Research Fellow at this archaeological institute. Kiel was visiting professor at various universities and received an honorary doctorate from Ege Üniversitesi (1992) and a university in Bishkek .

Machiel Kiel has written over 300 publications in eight different languages, including 15 books.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Prof. Dr. Machiel Kiel. In: Turkish Culture Portal - Who's who. Turkish Cultural Foundation, accessed April 12, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Christian Zindel: Foreword . In: Christian Zindel, Andreas Lippert , Bashkim Lahi, Machiel Kiel (eds.): Albania. An archeology and art guide from the Stone Age to the 19th century . Böhlau, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-205-20723-8 , pp. 12 f .
  3. ↑ a b c d Holta Vrioni: The Daredevil Scholar: Machiel Kiel . In: Cornucopia Magazine . No. 47 . Istanbul 2012 ( cornucopia.net [accessed April 12, 2020]).
  4. ^ NIT Staff and Research Fellows. In: Netherlands Institute in Turkey. Retrieved April 12, 2020 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Kiel, Machiel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch Ottoman
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Wormerveer , Netherlands