Gustav Riek

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Johannes Gustav Riek (born May 23, 1900 in Stuttgart , † November 1, 1976 in Feldstetten ) was a German prehistoric scientist . In addition to his services to the prehistory of Baden-Württemberg, there is also his involvement in crimes in the Third Reich , in which he was involved as SS-Hauptsturmführer in the SS special camp in Hinzert .

Scientific career

After studying geology , Riek was initially a scientific assistant in Halle (Saale) , then at the Prehistory Institute of the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen . In 1931 he dug in the bear cave in Wolfstal near Lauterach , where finds from the Neolithic and Bronze Age came to light. Then in the same year he headed the excavations in the Vogelherd cave in the Lone valley . Publication in a monograph cemented his reputation as a scientist. In 1934 he completed his habilitation with this thesis and received the license to teach prehistory and early history , at the same time he became a private lecturer at the University of Tübingen . In 1935 he became associate professor and director of the Institute for Prehistory and Protohistory.

In 1937 Riek joined the SS (membership number 289.678) and worked in the SS-Ahnenerbe in the following years . His research was under the sign of Nazi ideology and was primarily promoted from the point of view of Germanic research on prehistory. The investigations on the Hohmichele , a burial mound from the Hallstatt period , were "under the protection of the RFSS, the Reichsführer SS" Heinrich Himmler . An SD dossier from 1938 identified Riek as "politically and ideologically absolutely reliable" "old National Socialists".

Function holder in the Third Reich

Riek became a member of the NSDAP as early as 1929 (membership number 142.993). After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he also joined the SA in 1933 .

From January 1940 to March 1942 he was employed in the SS special camp Hinzert near Hermeskeil in the Hunsrück, first as SS-Obersturmführer of the Waffen-SS , then as Hauptsturmführer . This rank corresponded to a captain of the Wehrmacht , after the commandant and his deputy he had the third highest SS rank in the camp. Riek was responsible for the “political training” of the prisoners. In German-occupied Luxembourg, he was able to carry out archaeological excavations on the Aleburg near Befort at the same time ; So he commuted between the excavation near Befort and the SS special camp in Hinzert.

According to Alexandra Gatzen Riek was in the fall of 1941 in the Hinzert concentration camp in the murder of seventy Soviet soldiers from the POW camp Baumholder by cyanide involved injections. Riek and the soldiers of the guard company blocked all roads and other entrances to the camp, and another part of the guard company cordoned off the mass grave in the nearby forest that had been dug to remove the bodies. Soldiers from the guard company were also involved in transporting the bodies to a truck inside the camp. Riek's guard company was apparently supposed to prevent passers-by on the public road leading past the camp from witnessing the murder against Soviet prisoners of war. In December 1961, Riek was heard as a witness in the proceedings against Brendel and Fennel from the SS special camp in Hinzert before the jury court at the district court in Trier, but was not charged himself.

Research activity after 1945

After the war he was first a prisoner of war and then interned until 1948. Subsequently, he was not allowed to resume his professional activity, so that Kurt Bittel and then Wolfgang Kimmig were appointed to prehistoric archeology in Tübingen . In 1956 Riek became associate professor again and was professor of prehistory at the University of Tübingen until 1968 . From 1955 to 1964 he carried out excavations near Blaubeuren . In the Brillehöhle (1955–1963), the Hohlefels (1958–1961) and the Great Grotto near Blaubeuren (1959–1964), important layers of finds from the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic were examined. In the Helga Abri above the Hohlefels (1958–1960) finds from the late glacial of the Würm Ice Age and the Mesolithic were discovered.

In 1965 he suggested the establishment of the Blaubeuren Prehistory Museum . The close cooperation between the museum and the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen goes back to Riek to this day .

In 1966 Gustav Riek was appointed full professor at the Tübingen Institute, and retired the following year .

student

The mammoth hunters from the Lone Valley

How the meeting of Cro-Magnon people ("modern" people) and Neanderthals could have happened in his opinion, Riek described in his 1934 story Die Mammutjäger vom Lone Valley . The prehistorian Miriam Haidle writes about it: “In this story, modern people are forced, due to their higher number of children, as a 'people without space' to displace the local, friendly but intelligently inferior Neanderthals. The Neanderthals will be exterminated in quick and short attacks without any major aversion, more out of the feeling of the need for an unpopulated living space. ”The plot bears clear traits of a racist ideology. According to the current state of science, armed conflicts between modern humans and Neanderthals cannot be proven. So far, no skeletons with corresponding injuries are known.

Publications (selection)

  • Cultural images from the Paleolithic Wuerttemberg (1935).
  • The Hohmichele . In: Robert Wetzel / Hermann Hoffmann (Hgg): Wissenschaftliche Akademie Tübingen des NSD.-Dozentbundes, Volume 1: 1937, 1938, 1939 , Tübingen: Mohr 1940, pp. 131-139.
  • A Fletthaus from the turnaround older-younger Hunsrück-Eifel culture near Befort in Luxembourg. Germania 26, 1942, pp. 26-34.
  • The palaeolithic of the eyeglass cave near Blaubeuren. Research u. Ber. Before u. Mornings Bad-Württ. 4/1, Stuttgart 1973.
  • Three Upper Palaeolithic stations on the Bruckersberg in Giengen an der Brenz. Publ. State Office for monument protection Stuttgart A 2, Stuttgart 1957.
  • The Hohmichele. A princely grave mound from the late Hallstatt period. Heuneburg Studies 1. Röm.-German. Forsch. 26, Berlin 1962.
  • The ice age hunter station at Vogelherd in the Lonetal , vol. I: The cultures . Leipzig 1934.
  • Die Mammutjäger vom Lonetal (story) Stuttgart, 1934. New editions: Ulm 2000, Bad Schussenried (Gerhard Hess Verlag) 2010, 2014 ISBN 978-3873364622 .

Obituaries / tributes

  • E. Wagner: Find reports from Baden-Württemberg 3, 1977, 617–618.
  • Raymond Waringo: The "Aleburg" at Befort . In: Beaufort im Wandel der Zeiten Vol. 1, Beaufort 1993, pp. 55–82. ISBN 2919985000 (Here: The SS special camp in Hinzert and the role of Rieks in Hinzert, pp. 77-81.)
  • Michael Strobel: Lively and völkisch prehistory. A contribution to the history of prehistoric archeology in Württemberg between 1918 and 1945 In: Christoph Kümmel et al. (Hrsg.): Archeology as art. Presentation - effect - communication . Tübingen 1999, on this p. 76 note 48.
  • Uta Halle: “The Reichsführer SS will be very interested in positive results on the Externsteine.” Medieval archeology in the field of tension between National Socialist research and propaganda. In: Communications of the Working Group for Archeology of the Middle Ages and Modern Times 12, 2001, Internet publication
  • Albert Pütz: The SS special camp / Hinzert concentration camp 1940–1945: Members of the former camp SS, Gestapo and Nazi judiciary in court. Part 2; Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2001; ISBN 3-631-37679-0 .
  • Achim Leube / Morten Hegewisch (ed.): Prehistory and National Socialism. Central and Eastern European Prehistory and Early History Research in the years 1933–1945 . Studies on the history of science and universities 2, Heidelberg 2002. [Riek is discussed in particular in the contributions by Michael Strobel (282, 283) and Laurent Oliver (591-594)].
  • Hans-Peter Kuhnen (Ed.): Propaganda. Power. History. Archeology on the Rhine and Moselle in the service of National Socialism . Series of publications by the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier 24 Trier 2002.
  • Gatzen (1): Alexandra Gatzen: The excavation on the Aleburg near Befort in 1941. In: L'archéologie nationale-socialiste dans les pays occupés a l'Ouest du Reich. Actes de la table round international “Blood and Soil” tenue à Lyon (Rhône) in the cadre du Xe congrès de la European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), les 8 and 9 September 2004 / sous la dir. de Jean-Pierre Legendre, Laurent Olivier. Gollion, Infolio, 2007, pp. 257-270. ISBN 978-2-88474-804-9 .
  • Gatzen (2): Alexandra Gatzen: Johann Gustav Riek. In: L'archéologie nationale-socialiste dans les pays occupés a l'Ouest du Reich. Actes de la table round international “Blood and Soil” tenue à Lyon (Rhône) in the cadre du Xe congrès de la European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), les 8 and 9 September 2004 / sous la dir. de Jean-Pierre Legendre, Laurent Olivier. Gollion, Infolio, 2007, pp. 457 f. ISBN 978-2-88474-804-9 .
  • Martijn Eickhoff, Uta Halle, Jean-Pierre Legendre and Otto H. Urban: The continuation of archaeological careers. In: Trench for Germania. Archeology under the swastika. Published by the Focke-Museum [Bremen] with the collaboration of Sandra Geringer u. a. Accompanying publication to the exhibition of the same name in the Focke Museum - Bremen State Museum for Art and Cultural History, March 10 to September 8, 2013. Bremen and Stuttgart 2013, pp. 164–171.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gustav Riek: The ice age hunter station at Vogelherd in the Lonetal, Vol. I: The cultures. Leipzig, 1934
  2. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 486.
  3. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd updated edition, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 497.
  4. ↑ Gatzen (1) 2007, p. 259.
  5. ↑ See Pütz 2001, p. 146, p. 158f. and p. 159f. in the facsimile text of the judgment of the Trier Regional Court of July 24, 1962 against Brendel and Fennel (page count therein p. 17, p. 29f. and p. 30f.). Pütz has blackened the name Riek, but from the context of the judgment text described, the person is certain. On p. 146 in Pütz and p. 17 in the judgment text it says: "SS-Hauptsturmführer Prof. Dr. R ... held political lectures as a 'training leader' to the 'pupils' of the prisoner camp. Most of the time, however, he stayed to carry out research assignments (excavations) in Luxembourg and France. " On page 158f. or p. 29f. it says: "Towards evening the SS-Hauptsturmführer Prof. Dr. R ..., who was recalled the day before from a research project in Luxembourg, received the order from camp commandant Pister to cordon off all roads and other entrances leading to the camp with people from the guard company. ... Dr. R ... [here the title] claims to have assumed that the prisoners were lawfully convicted, otherwise they would not have been handed over by the Wehrmacht to the SS. Internally, however, he opposed this type [this word in the sentence underlined] the execution ("cumshot") rebelled ". In the Federal Archives in Berlin there is a five-page typewritten report by the "SS-Obersturmführer der Reserve" Gustav Riek of December 26, 1940 about his "educational measures" against the "pupils" of the camp, but no statement about the later Crime.
  6. ↑ The article by Eickhoff et al. a. 2013 speaks of Riek's "part in the Nazi terror" (p. 169), but does not refer to the murder of the Soviet prisoners of war in the autumn of 1941 in the Hinzert camp or the 1961 trial at the Trier district court.
  7. ↑ Gatzen (2) 2007, p. 458.
  8. ^ Ice Age archeology on the Swabian Alb. The sites in the Ach and Lone Valley and in their surroundings , ed. by Nicholas J. Conard , Michael Bolus, Ewa Dutkiewicz and Sibylle Wolf, Kerns Verlag Tübingen, 2015, p. 257, ISBN 978 3 935751 24 7
  9. ↑ Gustav Riek: The mammoth hunters from the Lone Valley. With 26 drawings by Willy Planck and drawings based on the author's findings. Stuttgart, Thienemann, 1934.
  10. ↑ a b Miriam Haidle: Family reunions, competition or techtelmechtel? Encounters between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans ( memento from October 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). In: Nicholas John Conard, Stefanie Kölbl, Wolfgang Schürle (eds.): From Neanderthals to modern people. Ostfildern, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2005. ISBN 3-7995-9087-0 , pp. 95-104.
personal data
SURNAME Riek, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Riek, Johannes Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German prehistorian
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH November 1, 1976
Place of death Feldstetten