Friedrich Klopfleisch

Friedrich Klopfleisch

Friedrich Klopfleisch (born August 12, 1831 in Heusdorf near Apolda ; † May 30, 1898 in Jena ) was a German prehistorian and art historian , professor at the University of Jena , founder and long-time director of the Germanic Museum of the University of Jena and one of the founders of the Ur - and the prehistoric collection of the University of Jena

academic career

Friedrich Klopfleisch was born on August 12, 1831 in Heusdorf near Apolda as the son of a pastor. After attending school in Jena (from 1840) and grammar school in Weimar (from 1847), he studied medicine and natural sciences from 1852 and, two years later, aesthetics and archeology , poetry and education as well as philosophy in Jena and Munich . During his studies in 1852 he became a member of the Arminia fraternity in the castle cellar . In 1856 he was at the University of Jena with a dissertation moments that are of concern to a higher development of German art doctorate , 1859 habilitation he specialized in art history , obtained the venia docendi and then taught as a lecturer. Following his interest in local archeology, in addition to his events on art history and “German mythology ”, he also offered “archaeological excursions” and “archaeological exercises” at irregular intervals. Jena is one of the first universities in Germany to offer prehistory and early history as a subject.

In 1862, Klopfleisch married Helene Selma Stark (1838–1887), the sister of his former teacher, the classical archaeologist Karl Bernhard Stark (1824–1879), with whom he had four daughters. From October 24, 1863, the Grand Ducal Saxony-Weimar State Ministry accepted its collection of prehistoric, folkloric and art-historical objects as a gift and incorporated them under the name Germanisches Museum zu Jena into the category of the Grand Ducal Institutes for Science and Art that already existed for the University of Jena . Klopfleisch was appointed honorary director with the title Conservator .

From the beginning, the museum has been involved in academic research and teaching. Klopfleisch now also offered events with “Explanation (and demonstration) of the German prehistoric. Soil antiquities in the collections of the Germanic Museum in Jena ”. Then “Archäolog. Excursions to the area around Jena, including both prehistoric and historical monuments ”, which were often connected with excavations.

On October 14, 1875, Klopfleisch was appointed associate professor for art history. It was not until 1878 that he received remuneration from the university for his work as museum director. From the winter semester of 1894/1895 he devoted himself exclusively to prehistory and early history. Because of a serious illness, he resigned as professor and museum director in 1896. In recognition of his life's work, he received the title of Hofrat . On May 30, 1898, Friedrich Klopfleisch, who was almost blind, died in Jena.

Importance as an art historian and prehistorian

The Germanic Museum in the round tower of Jena Castle (1863–1904)

In the field of art history, Klopfleisch suggested in his habilitation thesis from 1859 and increasingly from 1866 the recording of the architectural and art monuments of Thuringia, but was initially unable to establish himself with this idea. It was not until 1884 that the Thuringian government transferred the management of this company to him, but Klopfleisch could only devote himself to this task for a short time and soon afterwards had to withdraw from his official duties due to a brain problem. The corpus work was then directed and edited by Paul Lehfeldt .

Even more important are his achievements in researching prehistory and early history, to which he turned more and more exclusively in the course of his scientific work. According to the files of the Germanic Museum in Jena alone, in about 30 years - between 1856 and 1894 - he carried out over 150 excavations of various sizes at about 80 sites and significantly more sites . They were mostly around Jena and Weimar , but also extended throughout today's Thuringia and parts of Saxony-Anhalt (the then Prussian province of Saxony ), Saxony and Bavaria. Among the most important are the investigations on the Jenzig Wallburg (from 1856), the large burial mound on the Palmberg near Vippachedelhausen (1858), a burial mound in the Borscher Aue (1869) with the first known Celtic bronze beaked jug , the paleolithic site Taubach near Weimar (from 1870) and the grave mound of the Aunjetitz culture in Leubingen (1877).

Klopfleisch's greatest achievement lies in the fact that he was one of the first to recognize the fundamental importance of ceramics “as one of the leading factors” for the chronological structure of prehistory and early history, and from 1872 onwards he clearly represented this view. In several articles from 1880 on, but especially in his work Die Grabhügel von Leubingen, Sömmerda and Nienstädt published in 1883 . First: general introduction. Characteristic and chronological sequence of ceramics in Central Germany , he coined the terms " ribbon ceramics " and " cord ceramics " for the two most important Neolithic cultures in Central Europe and tried for the first time to outline their contents.

Klopfleisch's students include Ludwig Pfeiffer and the custodian of the Weimar Museum (for prehistory) Armin Möller , both of whom have made outstanding contributions to archaeological research in the Weimar area, as well as Gustav Eichhorn , who succeeded Klopfleisch in Jena. The best-known student, however, is Alfred Götze , who received his doctorate from Klopfleisch in 1890 in the main subject "Art history with special emphasis on prehistoric times" with one of the first prehistoric dissertations on the subject of vessel shapes and ornaments of Neolithic string-adorned ceramics in the Saale river basin . Götze described his academic teacher in 1932 as the "father of modern German prehistory."

“When one day [the popular] button meat and his students were expecting diluvial antiquities near Lichtenhain, they came across an old urn containing a short tobacco pipe with the dedication: Caj. Jul. Caesar sl button meat z. fr. He. Jena SS 46 a. Chr. AD Disappointed but composed he said to his listeners: “This is a bad joke; but he cannot mislead me, the true researcher has his destiny in him. "And he kept digging."

- Arthur Barth (1931)

literature

• Gotthard Neumann : Dr. Friedrich Klopfleisch, professor of art history at the University of Jena, founder of Thuringian prehistory research . In: Mannus. Journal for German Prehistory . Volume 24, 1932, pp. 134-146.
• Gotthard Neumann: Hundred Years of Prehistoric Museum of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Institute for Prehistoric Archeology. In: excavations and finds . Volume 8, 1963, pp. 223-231.
• A. Auffahrt and F. Auffahrt: Professor Dr. Friedrich Klopfleisch, a pioneering homeland researcher in Thuringia. In: Thuringian flag . Volume 2, 1933, pp. 519-523.
• Hans Gummel : History of Research in Germany. Research on prehistory and its historical development in the civilized states of the world 1 . Berlin 1938, p. 431.
• Karl Peschel : Friedrich Klopfleisch as an excavator. The “Rhön trip” of 1882. In: Ethnographic-Archaeological Journal . Volume 22, 1981, pp. 397-431.
• Dieter Ullmann: Friedrich Klopfleisch - founder of prehistoric research in Thuringia . In: Apoldaer Heimat . Volume 16, 1998, pp. 21-24.
• Werner Gall: Brief biographical data on prehistorians, collectors, volunteers and other people with significance for the archeology and local history of South Thuringia. First delivery. Messages from the community of the Steinsburg friends New series Volume 4. Issue 5, Volume 6, 2002, p. 38.
• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , pp. 400–401.

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Klopfleisch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Friedrich Klopfleisch in the catalog of the German National Library