Ute Wagner-Lux died on 15 September 2026 at the St. Chrischona care home near Basel, at the age of ninety-five. With her death, we remember a remarkable scholar whose life and work were closely bound to Jerusalem, Israel, Jordan and the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in the Holy Land. For nearly two decades, she was part of the history of the Institute – first as a young archaeologist and assistant to Martin Noth, and later, following his unexpected death, as its director.
Ute Lux was born on 19 April 1931 in Georgenthal, Thuringia. Her father, Arthur Lux, was a physician specialising in tropical medicine and veterinary medicine. For several years, the family lived in what was then German South West Africa, today’s Namibia, where her father worked. In the mid-1930s they returned to Thuringia.
The experiences of the following years were shaped by war, political upheaval and the division of Germany. After her father’s death in 1951, her mother moved to West Berlin, while Ute initially remained in Thuringia. She first trained as a catechist and then began studying theology in Halle. In 1956 she left the German Democratic Republic and moved to West Germany. In Bonn she continued her theological studies and came into contact with Martin Noth, the distinguished Old Testament scholar who was to become one of the most important figures in her professional life.
But theology alone did not define her interests. She studied Classical Archaeology, Ancient History and philosophy as well. From the beginning, she saw the ancient world through several disciplines at once. Biblical traditions, historical sources and archaeological remains were not separate worlds for her. They belonged together.
After completing her doctorate, she worked for the German Archaeological Institute in Athens and Olympia from 1962 to 1964. These years gave her practical archaeological experience and brought her into the wider world of Mediterranean archaeology. Then, in 1964, came the decisive step: she went to Jerusalem as Martin Noth’s assistant at the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in the Holy Land. Jerusalem became the centre of her life.
She arrived at a time when the Institute was rebuilding its archaeological work after the disruptions of the Second World War. Together with Noth and her colleagues, she became part of a new generation of German archaeological research in the Holy Land. She took part in the Institute’s excavations in Madaba and was involved in the investigation of the Church of the Apostles, where an important mosaic was discovered.
Then, suddenly, everything changed. On 30 May 1968, Martin Noth died unexpectedly during an excursion in the Negev. The Institute had lost its director, and Ute Lux, still a relatively young scholar, was called upon to take responsibility. She first became acting director and subsequently director of the Institute.
It was a remarkable appointment. She was not simply taking over an established institution. She was leading it at a moment when the political landscape of the region had been transformed. The Six-Day War of 1967 had changed the conditions under which archaeological research could be conducted. The Institute’s traditional links between Jerusalem and Jordan had been disrupted. For Wagner-Lux, however, this was not a reason to withdraw. It was a challenge to find a new way forward.
One of the most important results of her directorship was the establishment of a permanent German Protestant archaeological presence in Amman. Wagner-Lux recognised early that archaeological work in Jordan could no longer be organised adequately from Jerusalem alone. She therefore worked persistently towards a second base in the Jordanian capital. In 1975, land was acquired, and between 1976 and 1980 the new building was constructed with support from the Volkswagen Foundation. The Institute in Amman was formally inaugurated in 1982.
The significance of this achievement became apparent only over time. The Amman Institute was not merely a second address. It created the conditions for long-term archaeological work in Jordan and for close cooperation with Jordanian scholars and institutions. The structure established during Wagner-Lux’s directorship has remained an essential part of the DEI’s work to this day.
In the same year she secured the Canaan House on the Mount of Olives, part of the historic Kaiserin Auguste Victoria Foundation complex. The Volkswagen Foundation funded its renovation and conversion for the Institute. The new Jerusalem premises were formally opened on 22 April 1982, marking an important step in the DEI’s development and establishing its enduring home on the Mount of Olives.
Her own archaeological interests were closely connected with this development. From the 1970s onwards she worked at Gadara, today’s Umm Qais, together with Karel J. H. Vriezen and Jordanian colleagues. The ancient Decapolis city became one of the major fields of archaeological research associated with the Institute. Wagner-Lux remained connected with this work for many years, contributing to its publication long after her directorship had ended.
Israel and Jerusalem, meanwhile, remained equally important to her. In the early 1970s she directed the excavations beneath the Church of the Redeemer in the Old City. The excavations provided important evidence for the ancient topography and development of Jerusalem and led her to question earlier interpretations of the city’s fortifications. The work became one of the best-known archaeological projects of her career.
There was a characteristic quality to her approach. She did not regard archaeology as an isolated academic discipline. Her archaeological questions grew out of her theological and historical interests, but they were answered through excavation, stratigraphy and material evidence. At the same time, she understood that archaeology in the Middle East could succeed only through cooperation with the people and institutions of the countries in which it was carried out.
In 1975 she married the Basel theologian Max Wagner and thereafter worked under the name Ute Wagner-Lux. The southern Levant nevertheless remained at the centre of her scholarly world. When her period as director came to an end in 1982, she left behind an Institute that was very different from the one she had inherited in 1968: an institution with an established archaeological presence in both Jerusalem and Amman and with a network of scholarly and personal relationships extending across the region.
In the same year, she was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande by the Federal Republic of Germany.
Looking back today, it is difficult to separate Ute Wagner-Lux’s archaeological achievements from the personal qualities that made them possible. She was a woman working in a scholarly environment that was, at the time, overwhelmingly male. She took on responsibility at a young age and in circumstances that were anything but easy. Yet she did not make a career by choosing between theology and archaeology, between scholarship and institution-building, or between Germany and the Middle East. She combined these different worlds. This combination was perhaps her greatest strength.
For those who knew her, however, the memory of Ute Wagner-Lux will not be confined to institutional achievements or archaeological publications. Behind the director and scholar was a woman whose life had taken her across political borders and through times of profound change. She had experienced the division of Germany at first hand. She had made a new beginning in the West. She had come to Jerusalem at a decisive moment in the history of the Institute and remained connected with the region for the greater part of her life.
The German Protestant Institute of Archaeology owes much to Ute Wagner-Lux. She helped to shape its work at a formative moment and, above all, helped to establish the institutional foundations for its continuing presence in Jordan. The archaeological projects with which she was associated have become part of the scholarly history of Jerusalem and Gadara. The Amman Institute, whose creation she pursued with determination, remains a living expression of her vision.
We remember her with gratitude – as a scholar, an archaeologist, a director and, above all, as a person whose life was deeply and enduringly connected with the Holy Land.
Dieter Vieweger and Katja Soennecken for the DEI Jerusalem/Amman