Ewald Schuldt

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Ewald Adolf Ludwig Wilhelm Schuldt (born January 3, 1914 in Mechelsdorf , † June 1, 1987 in Schwerin ) was a German prehistorian .

Life

The early years

Ewald Schuldt was born in Mechelsdorf near Rerik and grew up as an only child in simple circumstances. He never got to know his father, a farm laborer, because he died as a soldier in France in 1914. His mother's second husband was an understanding surrogate father who, as a gardener, also became Ewald Schuldt's professional role model. Ewald Schuldt attended the village elementary school and the Reriker middle school. He did not take a high school diploma. In 1928 he began an apprenticeship as a gardener in Rostock at the Bernier nursery or in the local horticultural school and finished this in 1931 with his assistant examination, which he passed with distinction. He had to break off further training as a garden technician at the Braunschweig Horticultural School due to financial problems. Instead he worked as a gardener in Wendisch Priborn and received the master's title in 1935. In that year he began the six-month Reich Labor Service and then the two-year military service.

Already at this time Ewald Schuldt was an employee of the Mecklenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and took part in prehistoric and early historical excavations in Mecklenburg. He found his first practical activity during the excavations on the Neolithic flat burial ground on the island of the dead in Ostorfer See near Schwerin under the direction of Willy Bastian . From 1938 he was rewarded for his work and held the office of scientific draftsman for prehistoric and early historical recordings in the Mecklenburg State Office for Monument Preservation.

Times of war

In August 1939, Ewald Schuldt was drafted into military service and, after being wounded twice in 1945, was discharged from the army as a first lieutenant, unfit for service. For his military service he received the Iron Cross II. Class and the Wound Badge, he was spared captivity. During the war, he married his first wife, Anneliesa Drews. From this marriage the children Eike (* January 20, 1944) and Sabine (* September 1, 1945) emerged, who later accompanied him on some excavations. On August 15, 1945 he returned to his old place of work, but found an orphaned prehistoric section of the former Mecklenburg State Museum for Prehistory and Early History . Finally, in the absence of other skilled workers, he was appointed department head of the prehistoric and early historical department, that is, the ground monument curator for Mecklenburg. Due to the difficult circumstances shortly after the war, this office seemed a burden to him. One of the first tasks after the war was to secure the extensive museum holdings of the cultural assets collected by its predecessors and to transfer them from Schwerin Castle back to the museum building at the Old Garden. The castle had to be cleared of all museum holdings within a few days for a staff of the Red Army.

A grave from the Neolithic Age (2500 BC - Funnel Beaker Culture ) - The Urdolmen is one of the oldest construction forms of the large stone graves.

promotion

In 1946 he rearranged the prehistoric exhibition collection of the Mecklenburg State Museum, which was made accessible to visitors again in 1947. A first exhibition, free of Nazi ideas, arose in the Soviet occupation zone. Between 1946 and 1950 he worked on the Pritzier urn cemetery from the late Roman Empire. Before the founding of the GDR, he joined the SED and the FDGB , and later he also became a member of the Kulturbund and the Society for German-Soviet Friendship . He was also the long-time chairman of the District Committee of the National Front .

In 1950 he succeeded in forming a working group or a research program with the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin . From this collaboration, he met Wilhelm Unverzagt in 1949, with whom he then had a lifelong friendship. In 1950 the Historical Institute in Rostock suggested plans to excavate a large Slavic settlement on the Burgwallinsel in Teterower See . As the conservationist responsible for this region, Ewald Schuldt absolutely wanted to accompany them. At first he was denied participation as a non-academic, but in the end he was commissioned with the local implementation. The research was a first high point in the archeology of the north-west Slavic tribes and brought new insights into Slavic road and bridge construction. His wife Anneliesa died in the same year. Ewald Schuldt soon married Renate Härtel (born September 29, 1928), who is the mother of his second son Michael. In 1951 he was admitted to the Humboldt University of Berlin as an unscheduled academic aspirant by a decree of the State Secretary for Higher Education for special training for the next generation of scientists and university lecturers . His supervisor was Wilhelm Unverzagt, who at that time was chairman of the commission for prehistory of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

The title of his dissertation was Pritzier, an urn cemetery from the late Roman period in Mecklenburg . It deals with the urn grave field, the largest and best-studied ground monument of its kind in Mecklenburg at the time. Pritzier provided a flawless sequence of burials for the early humans (200-450 AD). Ewald Schuldt's doctorate was regarded as the standard work on the investigation of prehistoric graves and received the rating "very good". On October 29, 1953 he was promoted to a doctorate in philosophy.

Director of the Museum of Prehistory and Protohistory

Shortly afterwards, Ewald Schuldt created the Museum of Prehistory and Early History from the prehistory department of the State Museum . In the following years he took part in numerous excavations from the Mesolithic to the Slav period in Mecklenburg. His work as a conservationist resulted in the discovery of hundreds of new monuments and thousands of archaeological finds. He published his notes on the knowledge gained in more than 200 publications.

Further excavations

Lancken-Granitz (island of Rügen), one of the seven well-preserved large stone graves from the Bronze and Stone Ages

From 1953 to 1955 he led excavations on a prehistoric residential area discovered in 1952 near Hohen Viecheln on the north shore of Lake Schwerin , one of the most important sites of the time. Investigations into the castles of Behren-Lübchin followed until 1961 . This allowed the detailed reconstruction of a Slavic princely castle and new knowledge about bridge and road construction as well as the wall fortifications of the Slavs. As part of this research, Ewald Schuldt created a chronology and typology of Slavic ceramics according to the shape and decoration of the vessels, which he revised and specified again in 1981. This is still used today. At the same time, excavations were carried out on the wall and inner surfaces of the old Slavonic castle of Liepen . From 1962 further investigations of the old castle of Sukow followed , especially the construction of roads and roads by the north-west Slavic tribes. From 1963 to 1964 he was able to research the ten Slavic ceramic groups he had declared on the basis of the excavations on the Neu Nieköhr / Walkendorf castle wall . The 106 Neolithic large stone graves he examined between 1964 and 1970 (there were no stone boxes among them ) were largely reconstructed as a monument. In the course of this work, Ewald Schuldt presented an overview of the types of Mecklenburg megalithic tombs from the Neolithic . They should enable the objects in the work area to be subdivided and named. This and subsequent excavations finally led to the award of the professor's title in 1964.

Culmination of his research

In 1973 he began extensive investigations in the old Slavic settlement chamber on the Sternberger See with the castles Groß Raden , Groß Görnow and the Sternberger Burg. A year later an old Slavic temple was discovered there near Groß Raden. This discovery heralded the successful conclusion of his many years of research, which also went hand in hand with his retirement as director of the Museum of Prehistory and Protohistory.

He decided to build the archaeological open-air museum Groß Raden , which should be based on the excavations there. Ewald Schuldt provided the templates for the construction of the museum building, created the models and the script for the exhibition as well as the documents for the buildings to be built in the open-air section; In 1984 the foundation stone for the museum house was laid. The opening of the “Old Slavonic Temple Place Groß Raden” museum took place on May 13, 1987 in the presence of the Deputy Minister for Higher and Technical Education, Gerhard Engel . It should be a teaching example for the Slavic culture in the Mecklenburg area. Ewald Schuldt saw the inauguration of the museum, but a few days later he died after a long-term, incurable illness on June 1, 1987 at the age of 73.

meaning

Ewald Schuldt is one of the most famous and successful Mecklenburg archaeologists. He succeeded in lasting research, especially in the area of ​​prehistory and early history. His scientific work follows on from the research begun by GCF Lisch in 1835 and continued by Robert Beltz from 1880 to 1942 . The focus of his scientific work was on excavations of large stone graves, the burial sites of the Neolithic peasant population around the middle of the 3rd century BC. And on the excavations on Slavic sites (600 to 1200 AD). Excavations from this period gave him insights into the social, economic and cultural life of the ancient Slavs. Up until 1945 hardly anything was known about them in Mecklenburg, thanks to which our knowledge of them increased many times over. Particularly noteworthy are its extensive bibliography and numerous awards.

Appreciations

Works

  • The millennial temple town of Gross Raden. Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Schwerin 1987.
  • 25 years of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Schwerin. Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Schwerin 1977.
  • The Mecklenburg megalithic tombs. German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1972.
  • Mecklenburg - prehistoric. Petermänken, Schwerin 1954.

literature

  • Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990. Volume 2: Maaßen - Zylla. Addendum to Volume 1. Saur, Munich et al. 1997, ISBN 3-598-11177-0 .
  • Klaus-Dieter Gralow (Ed.): Ewald Schuldt. Archaeological expeditions in his own country (1950–1984). Stock & Stein, Schwerin 2005, ISBN 3-937447-14-8 .
  • Klaus-Dieter Gralow: His basic principle: almost constant presence on excavations. The archaeologist Prof. Dr. Ewald Schuldt. In: Mecklenburg. Vol. 46, No. 9, 2004, ISSN  0177-8625 , pp. 14-15.
  • Horst Keiling : Ewald Schuldt: A difficult start. In: Mecklenburg. Vol. 43, No. 4, 2001, pp. 17-18.
  • Horst Keiling: Ewald Schuldt for his 65th birthday. In: Ethnographic-archaeological journal. Vol. 20, No. 1, 1979, ISSN  0012-7477 , pp. 133-135.
  • Horst Keiling: Ewald Schuldt in memory. In: Schweriner Blätter. Vol. 8, 1988, ISSN  0232-7902 , pp. 95-97.
  • Horst Keiling: Stone Age graves and Slavic castles. In memory of Prof. Dr. Ewald Schuldt. In: Heimathefte for Mecklenburg and Vorpommern. Vol. 14, No. 2, 2004, ISSN  0948-1265 , pp. 4-7.
  • Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X .
  • Rolf Seiffert: The man who excavated Mecklenburg: Prof. Dr. Ewald Schuldt (January 3, 1914 - June 1, 1987). In: Mecklenburg-Magazin. No. 14, 1990, ZDB -ID 1084691-8 , pp. 1-2.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Klaus-Dieter Gralow (ed.): Ewald Schuldt: archaeological expeditions in one's own country (1950-1984). Stock & Stein, Schwerin 2005, p. 317.
  2. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Gralow (ed.): Ewald Schuldt: archaeological expeditions in one's own country (1950-1984). Stock & Stein, Schwerin 2005, p. 117.
  3. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Gralow (ed.): Ewald Schuldt: archaeological expeditions in one's own country (1950-1984). Stock & Stein, Schwerin 2005, p. 16.
  4. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Gralow (ed.): Ewald Schuldt: archaeological expeditions in one's own country (1950-1984). Stock & Stein, Schwerin 2005, p. 9.
  5. ↑ Horst Keiling: Stone Age Graves and Slavic castles: in memory of Prof. Dr. Ewald Schuldt. In: Heimathefte for Mecklenburg and Vorpommern. Vol. 14, No. 2, 2004, pp. 4-7.
  6. ^ The Berlin Academy of Sciences and Medieval Archeology in the GDR ( Memento from October 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). German Society for Archeology of the Middle Ages and Modern Times V. Accessed January 12, 2010.
  7. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Gralow (ed.): Ewald Schuldt: archaeological expeditions in one's own country (1950-1984). Stock & Stein, Schwerin 2005, p. 120.
  8. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Gralow (ed.): Ewald Schuldt: archaeological expeditions in one's own country (1950-1984). Stock & Stein, Schwerin 2005, p. 10.
  9. ^ Humboldt University of Berlin: University archive: Doctoral files: Schuldt, Ewald.
  10. ↑ a b Horst Keiling: Ewald Schuldt in memory. In: Schweriner Blätter. Vol. 8, 1988, pp. 95-97.
  11. ↑ a b Klaus-Dieter Gralow: His basic principle: almost constant presence on excavations; the archaeologist Prof. Dr. Ewald Schuldt. In: Mecklenburg. Vol. 46, No. 9, 2004, pp. 14-15.
  12. ↑ a b Rolf Seiffert: The man who excavated Mecklenburg: Prof. Dr. Ewald Schuldt (January 3, 1914 - June 1, 1987). In: Mecklenburg-Magazin. No. 14, 1990, pp. 1-2.
personal data
SURNAME Guilty, Ewald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schuldt, Ewald Adolf Ludwig Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German prehistorian
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Mechelsdorf
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1987
Place of death Schwerin