Henner von Hesberg
Henner von Hesberg (born 24 December 1947 in Lüneburg) is a German classical archaeologist. Henner von Hesberg studied classical archaeology, ancient history, classical philology and art history from 1968 to 1975 at Bonn, Marburg and Wurzburg. He received his doctorate at the University of Marburg from Heinrich Drerup for his dissertation "Zur Entwicklung und Funktion des Konsolengeison im Hellenismus und in der frühen Kaiserzeit" (On the development and function of the Konsolengeison in the Hellenistic and early Imperial period). After that he received a scholarship from the German Archaeological Institute and was employed by them in  Berlin and Rome. From 1979 to 1983, von Hesberg was an Assistant lecturer at the University of Munich and he received his habilitation there in 1983 for "Formen privater Repräsentation in der Baukunst des 2. und 1. Jahrhunderts v. Chr" (Forms of private display in the architecture of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC). In 1984 he became a C2-Professor at Munich and in 1987 he received a Chair at the University of Cologne, where he was spokesman for the graduate programme "Formierung und Selbstdarstellung städtischer Eliten im Römischen Reich" (Formation and Self-Representation of Civic Elites in  the Roman Empire) and Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy from 1995 to 1997. From November 2006 until spring 2014, von Hesberg was the first director of the of the German Archaeological Institute. For this time he was on a leave of absence from the university of Cologne. At the end of February 2014 he formally retired from his position at Cologne. His successor since 2006 has been Michael Heinzelmann. Von Hesberg is an ordinary member of the Mainz Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. In 2008/9 he delivered the "Jerome Lecture Series" at the University of Michigan. Henner von  Hesberg focused especially on Hellenistic and Roman architecture, urbanism, architectural decoration, Roman tomb structures, Hellenistic court art and art in the Roman provinces. A geographic focus of his work was ancient Italy, especially the city of Rome and its neighbourhood.