Friedrich Oscar Oertel (9 December 1862 – 22 February 1942) was a Kingdom of Hanover-born engineer, architect, and archaeologist. He is best known among Indian art historians and archaeologists for having excavated the archaeological site of Sarnath (India, Uttar Pradesh) in the winter of 1904–1905. It was here that in March 1905 he unearthed the Lion Capital of Ashoka of an Ashokan pillar, which was to become the national emblem of India. However, probably because he was mainly involved as a civil engineer and architect in the Public Works Department, his contributions to the fields of art history and archaeology are largely overlooked in the historiography of South Asian art and archaeology.
Life
Friedrich [Frederick] Oscar Emanuel Oertel was born 9 December 1862 in Hannover, Kingdom of Hanover. He renounced his German citizenship before leaving for India as a young man and was naturalised British. He married Margaret Haywood Lechmere (1882–1969) on 25 July 1903, with whom he had two children. Retiring around 1920, he returned to England and from 1921 added the name of his wife to his own, thus publishing under the name of "F.O. Lechmere-Oertel". He died in New York on 22 February 1942.
India: 1883-1920
Oertel left Germany for India where he studied at the Thomason College of Civil Engineering (now Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee). From March 1883 to March 1887 he was assistant engineer on railway and building construction for the Indian Public Board, being posted to the North-Western Provinces and Oudh. From 1887 to 1888, he returned to England where he studied architecture under Richard Phené Spiers. On his way back to Europe he was nearly killed on 17 April 1887, when the P&O Tasmania (de) which he had boarded sailing from Bombay (today Mumbai) to Marseille, sunk on the south-western coast of Corsica.
Oertel then started upon a brilliant career in the Public Works Department, being first sent on diverse missions and then appointed in various locations. Sent by the Government of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, in the winter of 1891–92 he surveyed the monuments and archaeological sites in North and Central India before reaching Rangoon in British Burma in March 1892. Then, and in the following month, Oertel visited Mandalay, Amarapura and Sagaing, from where he travelled down the Irrawaddy to Pagan and Prome (today Pyay). Back in Rangoon, he travelled south to Pegu (today Bago), Moulmein (today Mawlamyaing), Martaban (Mottama) and Thaton. On his return, he wrote a lengthy report illustrated with original photos which was published as Note on a Tour in Burma in March and April 1892. The photographs he took during this journey also were used to illustrate George W. Bird's book Wanderings in Burma, published a few years later, along with photos by Felice Beato.
In 1900 he was sent to Sri Lanka by the Royal Asiatic Society to visit the Abhayagiri dagoba and make suggestions on the best way to preserve or restore it. As Executive Engineer in the "Buildings and Roads" branch of the Public Works Department, North-West Provinces and Oudh from 1902 on and then as Superintending Engineer after 1908, he was posted in various places of Uttar Pradesh: from 1903 to 1907, he was in Benares, in 1908 he was located in Lucknow, and from 1909 to 1915, in Cawnpore; he was then sent to Shillong, Assam, where he remained up to 1920. Throughout this period he was also involved in supervising or participating in the construction of numerous buildings in Uttar Pradesh (Allahabad, Agra, Lucknow, Cawnpore). This firsthand experience helped him to formulate his opinion concerning the construction of the new capital at New Delhi, which he made public with a lecture delivered before the East India Association at Caxton Hall, Westminster, on 21 July 1913. There he strongly advocated that the architects of New Delhi should be inspired by a "really national Indian style".