Heidemarie Koch

Heidemarie Koch (17 December 1943 – 28 January 2022) was a German Iranologist.

Life and career Koch was born in Merseburg, Saxony, Prussia, Germany. She studied mathematics as her major between 1963 and 1966. Subsequently, she worked as a teacher in Hanover, Lower Saxony, West Germany, until 1972.

In 1972, she started Iranian studies at the University of Göttingen and received her doctorate in 1976. The topic of her dissertation under Walther Hinz was the religious conditions under Darius I, based on Elamite tablets of Persepolis ("Die religiösen Verhältnisse der Dareioszeit. Untersuchungen an Hand der elamischen Persepolistäfelchen."). Koch took as her minor subjects Classical archaeology, Byzantine art history, and Christian archaeology.

From 1977 to 1986 she was employed at the Department of Iranian Studies and Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Göttingen. In 1986, at the University of Marburg, she worked on the topics of labour administration and the economy in the Persian heartland at the time of the Achaemenids, and taught as a lecturer. In 1990–91 Koch worked on research projects funded by German Research Foundation. Between 1993 and 1994 she taught for two semesters as a substitute professor at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Since 1995 she was professor of Iranian studies in the context of ancient history at the University of Marburg.

Her main subject areas were the Persian history and Persian languages of the pre-Islamic period. She focused on cultural and economic history, management and religion, utilising both written sources and the archaeological remains. A second research focus was the exploration of Elam and its neighboring regions, especially in terms of the influences that they exerted on the subsequent Persian Empire.