Hans Gummel (prehistoric)

Hans Gummel (born on May 3, 1891 in Kassel ; died on August 26, 1962 in Bernau in the Black Forest ) was a German prehistorian and museum director. The focus of his scientific work was on the history of antiquity.

life and work

Gummel's father was a Prussian garrison building supervisor who, after the retirement of Rudolf Baier in 1907, ran the Stralsund Cultural History Museum on a voluntary basis for twelve years , which aroused his son's interest in museum work. After finishing school in Stralsund, Gummel studied Classical Studies from 1909 at the University of Berlin under Gustav Kossina ; In 1913/1914 he was a research assistant at Carl Schuchhardt in the prehistoric collections of the Völkerkundemuseum . Participation in the First World War interrupted his studies. Gummel was on the MarneWounded in northern France and taken prisoner of war by the French, from which he was released through an exchange of officers. He was interned in Switzerland, where he was able to continue his studies. In 1918 he married his childhood friend Charlotte Elgeti. In 1919 he moved to Hanover to the Provincial Museum , where he initially worked as a research assistant. From Hanover, he completed his doctorate in 1920 under the prehistoric Otto Tschumi (1878-1960) in Bern on the stilt house Moosseedorf near Bern . In 1922 he became assistant director, in 1925 curator and finally deputy state curator . Under Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen - they were the only full-time prehistorians in the province of Hanover until 1926 - he was involved in extensive excavation, order and research work. He published in the news from Lower Saxony's prehistory and contributed to Max Ebert's Reallexikon der Prehistory . As Jacob-Friesen's employee, who had built up the prehistoric collection in Hanover according to new museum-technical and educational principles into an exemplary teaching collection, Gummel was brought to the museums in Stralsund and Rostock to organize and exhibit their collections.

In January 1929 Gummel became the first full-time director of the 1888/1889 according to plans of the city architect Wilhelm Emil Hackländer (1830-1902) in the style of neoclassicism and opened in 1890 the cultural history museum Osnabrück . His contract was initially limited to one year on a trial basis after the sponsorship of the museum had passed from the museum association to the city. The city had requested a prehistoric for the position. The main reason for Gummel against other proposals had been his recognized museum work in Hanover, Stralsund and Rostock, as well as the close cooperation with Jacob-Friesen, who had already submitted proposals for the modernization of the Osnabrück Museum in 1927. The department head for museum affairs, Senator Hans Preuss, had also planned a museum administered by the city, which a city director should manage. The museum was closed for renovation work from October to December 1929. Gummel continued the already initiated transformation from the universal museum to a local museum, which went hand in hand with the pedagogy of the collections. In the years that followed, his main fields of work were revising the collections and updating the library. In order to open the museum to larger sections of the population, guided tours were offered regularly from 1929. His archaeological activities in 1930 included the investigation of the destroyed grave 1 of the megalithic stone graves near Wulften . Gummel often went public with lectures or appeared in front of closed circles, such as with slide shows in January / February 1936 in front of local NSDAP groups on the subject of "Germanic Life in 3 Millennia". Osnabrück Castle , where Gummel opened the picture gallery in May 1931, was included in the redesign of the museum system. In the art historian Hans Vogeler, who worked as a volunteer in the museum from 1930 to 1932 , he had a suitable employee who arranged solo exhibitions with works by contemporary artists such as Karl Schmidt-Rottluff , Lionel Feininger , Christian Rohlfs and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart from Osnabrück . In 1933 the Dürerbund had to reorganize in accordance with the Reich Chamber of Culture Act . Gummel became chairman of the Osnabrück Dürerbund, which gradually stopped exhibiting and left NS organizations. When Hermann Poppe-Marquard was employed in the museum in 1937 at the instigation of the Mayor of Osnabrück, Erich Gaertner , initially as a scientist, Gummel gradually took a back seat. In 1938 his main work appeared, the history of research in Germany , which Hans Seger praised as a standard work in the specialist journal Germania . There was no habilitation after he had received a call to Potsdam . In 1938 the first volume of the series of publications of the Museum der Stadt Osnabrück appeared on the coins of Osnabrück by Karl Kennepohl , the second series of publications after the communications of the Museum der Stadt Osnabrück , which had been published since 1933.

On February 1, 1939, Gummel took over the management of the Brandenburg State Office for Prehistory and Protohistory in Potsdam, which had recently been founded. Different motives were given as the reason for his change. In his obituary for Gummel in the Osnabrücker Mitteilungen of the Association for History and Regional Studies of Osnabrück , Alfred Bauer wrote in 1963 about falling out with the NSDAP. The biographer Rainer Hehemann stated growing disabilities from the NSDAP, which is why Gummel concentrated on his research work. Hanns-Gerd Rabe stated in an interview in 1983 that, as a Catholic, Gummel was close to the Center Party and did not want to join the NSDAP. His successor in Osnabrück as museum director, Hermann Poppe-Marquard, on the other hand, claimed in an interview in 1984 that Gummel had switched to civil servant status because of the advantages of taking over the position in Potsdam. In 2002 Katharina Hoffmann described him as an “introverted scholar” who had not found a suitable contact person in the local government and withdrew from his research work, as well as from “quarrels with the National Socialists”. Thorsten Heese, who investigated the history of the Osnabrück museums in the time of National Socialism, concluded from the statements and actions of Gummel as museum director since 1933 that there was “more than just an ingratiation to the new regime”. As an archaeologist and prehistoric historian, he belonged to a group of scientists “who benefited extraordinarily from the ideological orientation of National Socialism”.

During the Second World War he was drafted as an officer in 1941 and headed a POW camp in Luckenwalde until he withdrew . British troops captured him in Mecklenburg in early May 1945, and he was released from captivity in 1946. His family had meanwhile settled in Blexen , a district of Nordenham. Gummel was temporarily a laborer in a spinning wheel workshop until his health collapsed. It took him years to recover from a lung disease. At the suggestion of Johann Jacob Cordes , the chairman of the local history association Men from Morgenstern , he took part in the reconstruction of the Morgenstern Museum in Bremerhaven . In 1952 he took up residence in Einswarden . From 1954 to 1959 he ran the museum on a voluntary basis, his successor Gert Schlechtriem became full-time director. He rebuilt the museum library and the prehistory department and published, among other things, on Hermann Allmers , Christian Hostmann and Friedrich Plettke, on the gold bracteates of Sievern and the megalithic structures near Westerwanna ; there were more than 170 publications.

During a trip to the Black Forest in 1962, Gummel suffered a stroke which resulted in his death.

Awards

Gummel was an honorary member of the Lower Saxony Association for Prehistory and the Bremen Society for Prehistory. In 1962 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

Publications (selection)

• The Moosseedorf stilt house near Bern . Th. Schulte, Hanover 1923 (also dissertation.)
• The prehistoric teaching collection in the museum of the Rostock Antiquities Association. Association for Rostock Antiquities. Rostock 1928.
• Finds from Silesia and the former province of Posen in the Museum of the City of Osnabrück. (= Messages from the Museum of the City of Osnabrück, No. 4.) Museum of the City, Osnabrück 1934.
• Research history in Germany. (= Research on prehistory and its historical development in the civilized states of the earth, vol. 1). de Gruyter, Berlin 1938.
• Justus Möser and the German past. With an introduction to research history. (= Messages from the Museum of the City of Osnabrück, No. 6.) Museum of the City, Osnabrück 1938.
• Hermann Allmers and antiquity research. Festschrift for the reopening of the Morgenstern Museum . Magistrate of the City of Bremerhaven (publisher), Bremerhaven 1961.

literature

• Katharina Hoffmann: Gummel, Hans. In: Hartmut Bickelmann (ed.): Bremerhaven personalities from four centuries. A biographical lexicon . (= Publications of the Bremerhaven City Archives, Vol. 16), Bremerhaven 2002, ISBN 3-923851-24-3 , pp. 113-114.
• Thorsten Heese: Between home and racial madness. The museum as a parallel multiplier of Nazi ideology . In the S. (Ed.): Topographies of Terror. National Socialism in Osnabrück (= Kulturgeschichtliches Museum Osnabrück [Hrsg.]: Osnabrücker Kulturdenkmäler. Contributions to the art and cultural history of the city of Osnabrück ). 2nd corrected edition. tape 16 . Rasch, Bramsche 2015, ISBN 978-3-89946-240-1 , pp. 132-149 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Katharina Hoffmann: Gummel, Hans. In: Hartmut Bickelmann (ed.): Bremerhaven personalities from four centuries. A biographical lexicon. Bremerhaven 2002, pp. 113-114.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} G. Körner: Hans Gummel. May 3, 1891-26. August 1962. In: News from Lower Saxony's prehistory . 31 (1962), pp. 2-8.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Alfred Bauer: Hans Gummel †. In: Association for history and regional studies of Osnabrück (Ed.): Osnabrücker Mitteilungen. Vol. 71. Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld 1963, pp. 139–140.
4. ↑ Thorsten Heese: "... an own local for art and antiquity". The institutionalization of collecting using the example of Osnabrück museum history. (= Kulturgeschichtliches Museum Osnabrück, Museum und Kunstverein Osnabrück eV [Ed.]: Osnabrücker Kulturdenkmäler ) Vol. 12. Rasch, Bramsche 2004, ISBN 978-3-89946-016-2 , pp. 107–155.
5. ↑ Thorsten Heese: Between home and racial madness. The museum as a parallel multiplier of Nazi ideology. In the S. (Ed.): Topographies of Terror. National Socialism in Osnabrück. Rasch, Bramsche 2015, p. 137.
6. ↑ Thorsten Heese: "... an own local for art and antiquity". The institutionalization of collecting using the example of Osnabrück museum history. (= Kulturgeschichtliches Museum Osnabrück, Museum und Kunstverein Osnabrück eV [Ed.]: Osnabrücker Kulturdenkmäler ) Vol. 12. Rasch, Bramsche 2004, 107–156, p. 702.
7. ^ Thorsten Heese: Art in the National Socialist Osnabrück. In: Ders .: Topographies of Terror. National Socialism in Osnabrück. Rasch, Bramsche 2015, pp. 150–161.
8. ↑ Thorsten Heese: Between home and racial madness. The museum as a parallel multiplier of Nazi ideology. In the S. (Ed.): Topographies of Terror. National Socialism in Osnabrück. Rasch, Bramsche 2015, pp. 140–141.
9. ↑ Thorsten Heese: "... an own local for art and antiquity". The institutionalization of collecting using the example of Osnabrück museum history. (= Kulturgeschichtliches Museum Osnabrück, Museum und Kunstverein Osnabrück eV [Ed.]: Osnabrücker Kulturdenkmäler ) Vol. 12. Rasch, Bramsche 2004, pp. 156–188.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Thorsten Heese: Between home and racial madness. The museum as a parallel multiplier of Nazi ideology. In the S. (Ed.): Topographies of Terror. National Socialism in Osnabrück. Rasch, Bramsche 2015, p. 139.