Alix Hansel

Alix Hänsel , née Hochstetter (born May 9, 1951 in Bergisch Gladbach ) is a German prehistoric archaeologist .

Life

Alix Hänsel grew up as the youngest daughter of the doctorate in law and theologian Helmut Hochstetter and his wife Alix, née Fiedler, in Bergisch Gladbach. She comes from a German-Austrian pastor family whose ancestors included the geologist, geographer and researcher Ferdinand von Hochstetter .

From 1972 to 1978 Alix Hänsel studied prehistory, classical archeology, ethnology, folklore, geology and social sciences at the universities of Bochum, Heidelberg, Kiel and Hamburg. With a thesis on the Bronze Age Barrows in Lower Bavaria, she completed her doctorate in 1978 at the University of Hamburg with a major in Prehistory and Protohistory under Vladimir Milojčić (deceased) and Helmut Ziegert.

She began her academic career as a research assistant at the excavations in Kastanas in northern Greece, which were funded by the German Research Foundation . The investigation she carried out on the settlement hill ( Toumba ) there from the Bronze and Iron Ages from 1975 onwards provided information about the typological composition of ceramics for one of the longest settlement stratigraphies in Greece. In particular, she worked out the characteristics of local Macedonian ceramic production from the Middle Helladic to early Hellenism .

Hänsel has worked at the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Protohistory since 1986 , where she has held the post of chief curator and deputy director since 2001 . From the beginning, the focus of her scientific work in Berlin was the European Bronze Age. In addition to this extensive specialist lecture, she has been in charge of Heinrich Schliemann's collection of Trojan antiquities there since 2000 and the specialist lecture for the prehistoric cultures of the Mediterranean region since 2005.

Starting in 1987, at the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Hänsel worked together with the Near Eastern archaeologist Eva Strommenger to develop the scientific and didactic concept for a permanent exhibition on the oldest advanced cultures in Europe and the Near East, which was shown between 1989 and 2001 in the Langhans building at Charlottenburg Palace . In the backdrop-like exhibition architecture by Ralf Schüler , alienated by paneling , Hänsel and Strommenger brought a series of archaeological find ensembles and information walls, which made the most important results and the latest state of archaeological research on the earliest human history clear and understandable to a broad audience.

In 1997, Alix Hänsel, in collaboration with Bernhard Hänsel, developed the exhibition Gaben an die Götter , which, for the first time after the reunification of Germany, combined the most important Bronze Age treasures from the formerly four large prehistoric museum collections in Berlin under one overall concept. After its presentation in the Japanese Palais in Dresden, it was shown, expanded in content, under the title Bronze Age - Early Forms of Cultural Communication from 1999 as part of the permanent exhibition in the Langhans building of Charlottenburg Palace.

In cooperation with the classical archaeologist Dieter Hertel , Hänsel has been leading an interdisciplinary working group since 2000, the aim of which is to scientifically review and completely re-submit Heinrich Schliemann's archaeological finds from Troy.

Alix Hänsel was also heavily involved in the scientific conception of the permanent exhibition on the prehistoric cultures of Europe and Asia Minor in the New Museum in Berlin, which reopened in 2009 . In particular, the exhibition areas Schliemann's Troy in the flat-dome hall, the gold hat in the star room and the bronze age in the western art chamber show her scientific and didactic signature. The repositioning of the Heligoland stone box, which has now been rediscovered in the inventory, was also important . Her husband Bernhard Hänsel had already researched Heligoland copper in the 1970s and published an essay that is much criticized today, which she defends with the reinterpretation of the stone box. In addition, she coined the term "Heligoland copper lords" and assigned Heligoland to a "so-called Doggerland ". In the process, she was also able to rehabilitate Jürgen Spanuth's research results .

Since 2009, Hänsel has been responsible for the scientific management of the German contribution to the exhibition project Bronze Age - Europe Without Borders . This binational cultural project, which was decided upon at the 12th German-Russian government consultations in 2010 in Yekaterinburg, is to be implemented by museums in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Berlin by 2013 and also deal with cultural goods, so-called looted art , that were relocated during the war . Alix Hänsel has been viewing, documenting and evaluating the relevant depot holdings of Russian museums since 2010 with a working group of archaeologists and archivists on behalf of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation .

Alix Hänsel published specialist books on topics from the European Bronze Age and on the Schliemann Collection as well as several archaeological children's books. She took part in various archaeological excavations in Greece, Serbia and Germany. As editor of the archaeological journal Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica and the Berlin Contributions to Prehistory and Early History, she has played a key role in shaping the scientific profile of both series of publications since 1988 and 1999, respectively. She has been a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute since 1999 and has been a member of the board of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory since the same year . Alix Hansel was married to Bernhard Hansel , Professor of Prehistoric Archeology at the Free University of Berlin .

Fonts (selection)

• The Barrow Bronze Age in Lower Bavaria (= material booklets on Bavarian prehistory. Row A: Find inventories and excavation findings. 41). Text tape. Lassleben, Kallmünz 1980, ISBN 3-7847-5041-9 (also: Hamburg, University, dissertation, 1980).
• Kastanas. Excavations in a settlement mound from the Bronze and Iron Ages of Macedonia 1975–1979. The handmade ceramics, layers 19 to 1 (= prehistoric archeology in Southeastern Europe. 3, 1–2). 2 volumes (text and table volume). Wissenschaftsverlag Spiess, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-88435-105-2 (text volume), ISBN 3-88435-106-0 (table volume).
• Kastanas. Excavations in a settlement mound from the Bronze and Iron Ages of Macedonia 1975–1979. The small finds (= prehistoric archeology in Southeast Europe. 6). Wissenschaftsverlag Spiess, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-89166-023-5 .
• with Bernhard Hänsel: Gifts to the gods. Treasures of the Bronze Age in Europe (= Museum of Prehistory and Early History. Inventory catalog. 4). Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-88609-201-1 .
• The Bronze Age finds from Bavaria (= Museum for Prehistory and Early History. Inventory catalog. 5). Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-88609-415-4 .
• The cyclist. A story from the Celtic times. Oetker-Voges, Kiel 1999, ISBN 3-9804322-7-0 (Revised new edition. Roseni, Hamm 2006, ISBN 3-9810469-1-9 ).
• Heinrich Schliemann's collection of Trojan antiquities in the Museum of Prehistory and Early History. DuMont, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8321-7374-9 .
• Heinrich Schliemann's collection of Trojan antiquities. Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-88609-493-6 .
• Ranulf and the Varus Battle. A historical novel from Roman times. Roseni, Hamm 2004, ISBN 3-9807434-7-0 .
• as editor with Dieter Hertel and Matthias Wemhoff: Heinrich Schliemann's collection of Trojan antiquities - new template . 2 volumes. National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 2008–2014;
  • Volume 1: Research history, ceramic finds from layers VII to X, needles, weights and perforated clay devices (= Berlin contributions to prehistory and early history. NF 14). 2008, ISBN 978-3-88609-626-8 ;
  • Volume 2: Investigations into the treasure finds, the silver and bronze artefacts, the casting technique, the vessel marks and the lead weights (= Berlin contributions to prehistory and early history. NF 18). 2014, ISBN 978-3-88609-757-9 .
• Schliemann and Troja (= The collections of the Museum of Pre- and Early History. 1). Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-7954-2270-7 .

literature

• Jan Filip : Encyclopedic manual on the prehistory and early history of Europe. Volume 3: Addenda. Compiled from the estate of Jan Filip, supplemented and corrected by Jiří Hrala. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1998, ISBN 80-86124-07-X , pp. 134-135.
• Horst Junker, Horst Wieder: On the staffing of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History since 1829. Personnel directories - short biographies - job overview. In: Wilfried Menghin (Ed.): The Berlin Museum for Pre- and Early History. Festschrift for the 175th anniversary (= Acta praehistorica et archaeologica. 36/37). Museum for Pre- and Early History, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-88609-907-X , pp. 542-543 (short biography Alix Hansel).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Irmtraud Schumacher: The earth turns and we turn with it. Pastor Dr. Dr. Helmut Hochstetter 1909–2009. A portrait. Bergisch Gladbach 2009.
2. ↑ German Gender Book . Bd. 146 = Swabian gender book. Vol. 8, 1968, ISSN  1438-7972 , p. 371 and 380
3. ↑ Biographical materials on the person of Alix Hansel. Museum of Prehistory and Early History, National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, archive signature SMB-PK / MVF, H-5c, MVF 2004/57.
4. ^ Eva Strommenger : Museum of Pre- and Early History. Reopening of the museum in the Langhansbau of Charlottenburg Palace. In: Museum journal. Vol. 3, No. 4, 1989, ISSN  0933-0593 , pp. 64-65.
5. ^ Wolfgang Lehmann: Apollo's swans in the Brandenburg moor? Bronze Age victims across Europe. In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 18, 1997.
6. ↑ Culture transfer in the Bronze Age. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 13, 1999.
7. ↑ http://epic.awi.de/28810/
8. ↑ Alix Hansel: The Bronze Age stone box grave of Helgoland in the Neues Museum, Berlin. In: Acta praehistorica et archaeologica. Vol. 44, 2012, ISSN  0341-1184 , pp. 15-24.
9. ^ German-Russian Bronze Age exhibition sealed.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Freie Presse , July 15, 2010.  

Web links

• Literature by and about Alix Hänsel in the catalog of the German National Library