10 Facts About Carl Humann

Carl Humann was a German engineer, architect and archaeologist.

Carl Humann never studied archaeology or took an advanced degree of any kind, exemplifying the nineteenth-century self-made archaeologist, akin to Heinrich Schliemann and Wilhelm Dorpfeld.

Carl Humann was representative of a generation of rough and ready pioneers, who had developed an antipathy for philologists and got easily aggravated by their slow and careful approach to excavations.

On behalf of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, Carl Humann later made recordings of the ancient archaeological sites of Angora, in both the upper Euphrates as well as northern Syria.

Carl Humann continued to work and expanded his research during his time in Smyrna, and became a world-renowned host of foreign guests to the area.

Carl Humann worked in June and July 1887 on the site of Hierapolis.

Carl Humann married Louise Werner in 1874 and together they had two children.

Maria Carl Humann, who married the archaeologist Friedrich Sarre in 1901, and Hans Carl Humann, who became an officer of the Imperial German Navy, naval attache, diplomat as well as businessman.

Carl Humann died on 12 April 1896 in Smyrna, in Turkey, and was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Izmir.

Carl Humann's remains were reinterred at Pergamon in 1967, just south of the altar.