Klaus Schmidt

I had started my day with a coffee as usual. I saw that word at the daily Cumhuriyet in an article written by Özgen Acar: “Wish tree.”  

The article was about the great archeologist who we lost on July 20: Dr. Klaus Schmidt.

At the end of the 1970s, a local from a village brought a statue to a museum. The statue was so primitive that it was not taken seriously by the museum officials; it was thrown into a corner in the depot. Years passed, and then the statue attracted the attention of Turkish and foreign archeologists who were conducting excavations in Şanlıurfa.

Professor Klaus Schmidt, a pioneer of excavations in Göbeklitepe, known as the “zero point in history” in the eastern Turkish province of Şanlıurfa, died of a heart attack while swimming in Germany at the age of 61.