KLEIN, WILHELM

KLEIN, WILHELM (1850–1924), classical archaeologist. Born in Karansebes, Hungary, Klein taught at the German University of Prague. He made field trips to Greece and Italy on behalf of the Austrian government primarily to study Greek vase painting. He published a book on Euphronios (1879) who was one of the outstanding Attic red-figure vase painters active between 515 and 500 B.C.E. It was the first comprehensive study of the Athenian ceramists and their great potters' workshops. In 1898–99 he published two books on Praxiteles. Here he tried to reconstruct from existing Roman copies the work of the leading sculptors of the Greek classical period whose work had been lost or destroyed. In his last publication, Vomantiken Rokoko (1921), Klein distinguishes between two stylistic trends, the baroque and the rococo, within the development of Hellenistic sculpture. (Penuel P. Kahane)