Background
Conrad Schick was born in Bitz, Kingdom of Württemberg, Germany.
architect anthropologist archaeologist
Conrad Schick was born in Bitz, Kingdom of Württemberg, Germany.
At the age of 24, after completing his studies in Basel, he settled in Palestine in October 1846. The Saint Chrischona Pilgrim Mission at Bettingen sent him out as missionary. The house that Schick built for his family, Tabor House, or Beit Tavor, on Jerusalem"s Street of the Prophets, is still standing.
The name of the house is based on a verse from Psalms (89:12): "The north and the south, Thou has created them.
Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Thy name." The façade is decorated with carvings of palm leaves and the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, symbolizing the beginning and the education Schick was chosen to design Mea Shearim, one of the first neighborhoods in Jerusalem built outside the walls of the Old City.
Other buildings designed by Schick are Saint Paul"s Anglican Chapel and the German Deaconesses Hospital (today the eastern wing of Bikur Holim Hospital), both on Street of the Prophets. Schick is also remembered for his fifty years of archaeological investigations of Jerusalem and its surroundings.
He worked for many years for the Palestine Exploration Fund, publishing frequently in the Fund"s journal.
In 1872, Schick was permitted to conduct research on the Temple Mount, which was generally off limits to foreigners. Consequently, he built models of the Temple Mount (see below). Two wooden models of the Temple Mount he built were exhibited in the Turkish pavilion at the Vienna World Exposition of 1873.
Haim Goren of Tel-Hai Academic College says that one of the models, measuring 4 by 3 meters, did not find a buyer after the end of the World Fair.
lieutenant was housed at the Chrischona mission near Basel, Switzerland for 138 years. lieutenant was recently purchased by Christ Church in the Old City of Jerusalem., King Charles I of Württemberg bought the other and subsequently raised Schick to the rank of Royal Württembergian Hofbaurat (Privy Construction Councillor) for his excellent work.,
His replica of the biblical Tabernacle was visited in Jerusalem by several crowned heads of state, toured the United Kingdom, and was exhibited at the 1873 Vienna World Fair.
Schick built a replica of the Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock for the Ottoman Sultan. His final model, in four sections, each representing the Temple Mount as it appeared in a particular era, was exhibited at the Saint Louis World"s Fair of 1904.
Two models of the Temple Mount created by Schick are located in the basement of the Schmidt School for Girls on Nablus Road, just outside the Old City of Jerusalem near the Damascus Gate.
One model shows the Temple Mount as it was in the 1870s, based on his research. The other is a somewhat fanciful model of the Jewish Temple. The Conrad Schick Library in Christ Church, Jerusalem in the Old City of Jerusalem is named for him.
