Hermann Gropengießer

Hermann Gropengießer (born October 9, 1879 in Braunschweig , † November 24, 1946 in Mannheim ) was a German high school teacher and prehistoric .

Life

Gropengießer attended high school in Mannheim from 1889 to 1898 . Its director Ferdinand Haug and the Latin and history teacher Karl Baumann aroused his interest in classical philology and archeology . Gropengießer studied Classical Languages, Classical Archeology, German Studies and Geography in Heidelberg . He received a special award for his thesis on an archaeological topic, which was written in Latin. After graduating in 1903, he completed his legal clerkship at the Grand Ducal Gymnasium in Heidelberg and from 1905 to 1907 Gropengießer was a part-time lecturer for Greek and Latin at the University of Heidelberg and gave private lessons. He also continued his education in classical archeology and in 1906 received a scholarship for a six-week study trip to Greece and Asia Minor. From 1906 to 1907 Gropengießer worked with interruptions as assistant to Wilhelm Dörpfeld at the German Archaeological Institute in Athens . He expanded his thesis into a dissertation, which was published in 1907 under the title “The graves of Attica of the pre-Mycenaean and Mycenaean times”. In 1907 he received his doctorate in Heidelberg. Nevertheless, he struck the school career again and worked from 1908/09 at the Mannheim Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium , from 1913 as a professor and civil servant for life. In 1910 he was also custodian of the grand ducal court antiquarian in Mannheim. In this place he also carried out his own excavations, for example from 1908 to 1912 in Ladenburg . During the First World War, Gropengießer was drafted into the 10th Jäger Battalion in 1915; In 1916 he was taken prisoner by the French and did not return to Mannheim until February 1920.

In 1922 he married Luise, née Lützel, with whom he had two children. From 1924 to 1927 Gropengießer was on leave from school service in order to set up the archaeological department of the castle museum , in 1926 he became director of this department in an ancillary service, which he was to remain until 1943. In the following years he continued his archaeological research, including several excavations. From 1927 to 1934 he was teaching prehistory and early history at the Mannheim Commercial College . He was also active in the Mannheim antiquity association , in the adult education center and in several natural and local history associations. Gropengießer was one of the scholars who significantly promoted the academization of prehistoric research in Germany.

The collection of antiquities that Gropengießer had compiled to a large extent perished during the air raid on Mannheim in September 1943 when the castle was reduced to rubble. In 1944, at the age of 65, Gropengießer became provisional director of the Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium because the director of the school had died of heart failure in an air raid. He stayed in this position after the end of the war and managed to get the school back into operation in December 1945. Gropengießer died in school in November 1946 of complications from appendicitis.

Works (selection)

• The graves of Attica from the pre-Mycenaean and Mycenaean times , Athens 1907, Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 1907.
• On the landscape of the lower Neckar in prehistoric and early historical times , Dortmund: Ruhfus, 1926.
• together with Adolf Strigel: Landscape design and prehistory of the Mannheim area , Freiburg i. Br., 1927.
• From the oldest history of the Neckar Delta . In: Badische Heimat, Vol. 14, 1927, pp. 29–38.
• New observations in Ladenburg. A preliminary report . In: Germania: Anzeiger der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission of the German Archaeological Institute, vol. 11, 1928, no. 1, pp. 56–57 ( online ).
• A place where Schnurkeramik lives near Mannheim . In: Badische Fundberichte, Vol. 2, 1929/1932, pp. 361–362. ( online ).
• Observations, finds and investigations in the Mannheim section of the Reichsautobahn: 1934/35 . In: Badische Fundberichte, Jg. 3, 1933/1936, pp. 308-315 ( online ).
• Baden-Baden in Roman times . In: Badische Heimat: mein Heimatland, Vol. 24, 1937, pp. 85-103.
• Late Roman Burgus near Mannheim-Neckarau . In: Badische Fundberichte Vol. 13, 1937, pp. 117–118. ( online ).

literature

• Friedrich Garscha: Hermann Gropengießer (1879–1946) . In: Badische Fundberichte, Vol. 18, 1948/1950, pp. 15-17 ( online )
• Hansjörg Probst: Hermann Gropengiesser October 9, 1879 - November 24, 1946. A Mannheim life picture . In: Mannheimer Hefte, 1990, pp. 21-27.