Rudolf Feustel

Rudolf Feustel (born May 26, 1925 in Zeulenroda ; † February 28, 2018 ) was a German prehistorian .

Life

After attending school Feustel received vocational training as a typesetter . Following his military service and imprisonment, he graduated from the Workers and Farmers Faculty of the University of Jena in 1948 . Until 1952 he studied geography, prehistory and early history, history and folklore at the University of Jena and received a diploma in geography in 1953. Until 1955 he was a lecturer at the workers 'and farmers' faculty at Jena University.

From 1955 to 1990 he worked at the Museum of Prehistory and Early History of Thuringia - the research center for the preservation of monuments in the districts of Erfurt, Gera and Suhl in the GDR. He wrote his dissertation on the subject of the flint artifacts of the Mesolithic stations of Thuringia in 1956 at the University of Jena. Later there was a specialization in ancient and Middle Stone Age research.

In 1969 he completed his habilitation at the University of Jena on the subject of Stone Age technology . The printed version of the habilitation thesis 1973 (2nd edition 1983) became a standard work for student education and research on the Stone Age of the 1970s and 80s.

Feustel's work History of Human Descent achieved six editions. With the beginning of his employment in Weimar Feustel worked in the archaeological monument preservation on various research focal points. First and foremost were the excavations at the Upper Palaeolithic stations in the Saale region in Jena-Oelknitz, Lausnitz, in the Bärenkeller in Königsee-Garsitz, at the Fuchskirche near Allendorf and the Devil's Bridge on Gleitsch near Saalfeld-Obernitz . The excavation program found its journalistic conclusion in several material templates.

During the Neolithic , Feustel dealt with the subject of huts for the dead / collective graves and with problems relating to Central German corded ceramics . In the years 1954–1957, 1959–1961 and 1967/68, Middle Bronze Age burial mounds were excavated in southern Thuringia under his leadership . The hills of Schwarza , in the district of Schmalkalden-Meiningen, provided the material for an interdisciplinary find template, which set standards in 1958, particularly through the investigations on textile residues, which were unique at the time.

The research of the pre-Roman Iron Age was concerned with Feustel's excavation on the Herrenberg in the Sonneberg district and the processing of flat graves from the early La Tène period in Creuzburg in the Wartburg district. In 1979 he published the brochure Keltenforschung in Südthüringen , which dealt with the problem area around the Steinsburg. Previously, the permanent exhibition of the Steinsburg Museum in Römhild had been redesigned for the 50th anniversary of this house under his direction from Weimar. At an international colloquium on the subject of Celtic-Germanic relations in the low mountain range in May 1989, the lectures of which were later summarized by Sigrid Dušek as part of the series Weimar monographs on prehistory and early history , the focus was again on the pre-Roman Iron Age. It was Feustel's last scientific event that he helped initiate and of which the museum in Weimar was under his direction. With the publication of the noble grave of Nordhausen in 1984, Feustel also took part in the discussion about a traditional topic of Central German Imperial research.

The medieval settlement of the Thuringian Forest and its trades were excavations that Feustel carried out on the medieval wasteland of Glasbach near Steinbach in the Wartburg district and Gumperda in the Saale-Holzland district.

Feustel encouraged the development of type tables on prehistory and early history for the further training of voluntary soil monument conservationists in the GDR and, in cooperation with specialist colleagues, took over the editing of the reference work on behalf of the specialist group on prehistory and early history of the GDR Kulturbund .

In addition to his specialty, the prehistorian Feustel worked in almost all prehistoric periods.

Fonts (selection)

• Bronze Age barrow culture in the area of ​​Schwarza (South Thuringia) (= publications of the Museum for Pre- and Early History of Thuringia. 4, ISSN  0077-2291 ). Böhlau, Weimar 1958.
• Sexological reflections on Upper Paleolithic objects. In: Alt-Thyringen. Volume 11. Weimar 1971.
• Stone Age technology. Archaeolithic, Mesolithic (= publications by the Museum for Pre- and Early History of Thuringia. 4). Böhlau, Weimar 1973, (2nd edition, ibid 1985, ( online )).
• Human descent history. Fischer, Jena 1976, (6th, revised and expanded edition. Fischer, Jena 1990, ISBN 3-334-00272-1 ).

literature

• Thomas Grasselt: Dr. phil. habil. Rudolf Feustel on his 80th birthday. In: Old Thuringia. 38, 2005, pp. 344-348 .
• Thomas Grasselt: In memory. Rudolf Feustel (1925-2018). In: Old Thuringia. Volume 45, 2016/2017 (2018), p. 5 ( PDF; 2.38 MB ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf Feustel in the catalog of the German National Library