Conrad Schick: Pineering Architect, Archaelogist and Historian of Nineteenth Century Jerusalem

Abstract

Among the hundreds of Orientalists, archaeologists, and missionaries who visited or lived in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century, none left such an impact on the city as Conrad Schick. Not an architect by training, he nevertheless designed and supervised the construction of a large number of nineteenth century buildings in the city. He was not an archaeologist either, but he researched different historical periods, carried out excavations in different locations of the city, and published a large number of articles and archaeological reports. Schick was not trained in making models, he excelled in the production of attractive and accurate models of monuments in Jerusalem. And though he was not a geographer, he documented the city through maps. It could be said that on the whole Conrad Schick embodied the sum of imminent European concerns in Jerusalem in the second half of the nineteenth century, typifying the different historical and social sciences in combination with an unequivocally unique personality