Joachim Heiden

Joachim Heiden was born in Duisburg, in the Ruhr, on 3 February 1955. He attended the Aloisiuskolleg, a Jesuit school in Bad Godesberg near Bonn, and after his school leaving examination began to study classical archaeology at the Free University of Berlin in 1974. He completed a master's degree in 1982 and his doctorate in 1985 with a dissertation on Corinthian roof tiles and the development of Corinthian roofs, published in 1987.

While still a student he became involved with the German Archaeological Institute. From 1977 he took part in research projects of the architecture department at its headquarters, working with the building historian Wolfram Hoepfner, and in 1978 he joined excavation work at Kassope in north western Greece. In 1981 he travelled to the institute's Athens department for the first time to gather material for his dissertation on the roofs of ancient Olympia.

Heiden received the institute's travel scholarship in the mid 1980s. From 1987 to 1992 he was a research assistant on the German excavations at Olympia, the sanctuary of Zeus and home of the ancient Olympic Games. His monograph Die Tondächer von Olympia, on the clay roofs of the sanctuary's buildings, appeared in 1995 in the Olympische Forschungen series, and he contributed the Corinthian pottery section to the volume Archaische Keramik aus Olympia in 2000. He also wrote a cultural and archaeological guide to the Peloponnese, published in 2001.

From 1994 to 1999 he worked on the subject catalogue of the institute's Rome department, and from 1999 to 2007 on the same catalogue at its Berlin headquarters. In 2007 he returned to Athens as head of the photographic archive, the Fotothek, an important resource for documentation and research, and from 2009 he also headed the department's archive.

Between 2006 and 2012 he worked with Corinna Rohn and the then 7th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities on the ancient settlement topography of Triphylia, in the south of Ilia, examining sites including Samikon, Platiana and Lepreon. He edited the results as Die antike Siedlungstopographie Triphyliens, published in 2020.

In 2014 Heiden became director of the German Archaeological Institute's excavations at the Heraion of Samos. From 2016 to 2021 he led, with the hydrologist Christoph Külls of the Technical University of Lübeck, a research project funded by the German Research Foundation on water and cult in the sanctuary, which re examined the many water installations uncovered there over more than a century of excavation. He retired in 2020.

Heiden was known as Achim to friends and colleagues. Olympia remained at the centre of his personal relationship with Greece: near the archaeological site he restored an old house, and he was particularly attached to the village of Anilio. He was married and had a son and grandchildren.

Joachim Heiden died suddenly on 20 October 2026, aged 71, while on his way to Anilio, near Olympia. The cause of death was not made public.

The German Archaeological Institute at Athens announced his death, recalling his long research career, his approachable character and his readiness to support other scholars, and sent its condolences to his wife, son and grandchildren. On 22 October the Ephorate of Antiquities of Ilia published its own tribute, saying he had contributed substantially to knowledge of the history of the Panhellenic sanctuary at Olympia and to the understanding of ancient Triphylia. The tributes were reported by Greek media including BEST TV Kalamata, Ilia Live and Odigos. No funeral details had been published at the time of the first reports.

Heiden's publications on the roofs and pottery of Olympia remain standard references for the sanctuary's architecture, and his edited volume on Triphylia gathered years of field survey into a lasting account of the ancient settlements of southern Ilia. His work at the Heraion of Samos, including the study of water and cult in the sanctuary, added a new environmental dimension to one of the longest running German excavations in Greece. Colleagues remembered him above all as a generous and collegial scholar who connected generations of researchers.