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Elfriede Knauer PhD (née Overhoff; 3 July 1926 - 7 June 2010 ) was a German Classicist and Ancient historian specialising in Greek vase painting, the survival of classical themes in Renaissance art, the history of cartography, classical influences on Central and East Asian art, and the Silk Road.

Career
Born in Leverkusen with her twin sister Sibylle, Knauer was brought up with three other siblings by "almost intimidatingly intellectual parents", the businessman Julius Overhoff and his wife Edith, and in 1932 moved to Frankfurt where she was educated in French, English, and Latin despite the traumas and disruptions of this period in Germany. From 1945 she studied Classical Archaeology, Ancient History, History of Art, and East Asian Studies at the Goethe University Frankfurt, where she gained her PhD in 1951 on the subject of pre-Christian apsidal buildings in Greece and Italy, but was also influenced by anthropological approaches and African culture at the Frobenius Institute. It was supervised by Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg. Elfriede met Georg Nicolaus Knauer (a noted philologist) in 1948 and married him in 1951. She lived in West Berlin between 1954 and 1975; she worked as an assistant in the department of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the State Museums. The Knauers travelled widely together, particularly to the United States and in the Mediterranean countries. The Knauers both joined the University of Pennsylvania in early 1975, though rules at the time prevented husbands and wives from lecturing together - Elfriede was thus able to lecture only twice for the Department of the History of Art, in 1979 and 1981. This obstacle, however, has been cited as an important factor in allowing Elfriede nearly unlimited time for research and writing and contributed significantly to her substantial publication record. At the time of her death Elfried has written seventy-six books and articles. She was eventually appointed Research Associate in the Mediterranean Section at the Penn Museum and latterly served as a Consulting Scholar. In 1994 she was a visiting research fellow in classical archaeology and art history at the American Academy in Rome and was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1999. In 2002 she received the Director's Award for distinguished service to the Penn Museum.

Following her death, her archive of academic papers and photographs was donated to the Classical Art Research Centre at the University of Oxford.

Personal life
Elfriede's grandfather Edmund Kloeppel was a board member of the Bayer company. She has a twin-sister, Sybille (a noted Etruscologist). She married her husband Georg Nicolaus Knauer in 1951.

Selected publications

 * Knauer, E. R. 1965. Die Berliner Andokides-Vase. Stuttgart, Reclam Verl.
 * Knauer, E. R. 1976. "Fragments of a cup by the Triptolemos Painter" Greek, Roman and Byzantine studies 17 p. 209-216.
 * Knauer, E. R. 1998. The camel's load in life and death – iconography and ideology of Chinese pottery figurines from Han to Tang and their relevance to trade along the Silk Routes. Zurich, Akanthus.