Hans Joachim Apffelstaedt

Hanns Joachim Apffelstaedt , modernized: Hans , (born July 10, 1902 in Münster ; since October 1944 missing in Lithuania ) was an art historian and National Socialist head of the cultural department of the Rhenish provincial administration .

Life

Apffelstaedt, son of the art-loving founding director of the University Dental Clinic in Münster, Max Apffelstaedt (1863–1950), studied at the Universities of Münster , Munich , Vienna and Marburg , where on June 29, 1933 he wrote a thesis on “The sculptures of the Überwasserkirche in Münster i . W. ”with Richard Hamann .

Apffelstaedt had been a member of the NSDAP since 1927. From September 1, 1933, he worked as a scientific assistant in the cultural department of the Rhenish provincial administration, which he took over on December 4, 1934. On April 1, 1934, he became a state administrator, and on August 10, 1935, a state councilor.

Apffelstaedt pursued ambitious cultural and scientific-political plans, especially in the field of archeology , whose transformation in the National Socialist, "Germanic" spirit compared to the traditionally in the foreground Roman provincial archeology he tried to prevent against the intentions pursued by the Rosenberg office . Also in other areas, v. a. In the spectrum of the Rhenish museum landscape, he tried to enforce appropriate ideological principles. Although a radical National Socialist with excellent connections to the top of the SS or to the "SS-Ahnenerbe" , he cultivated the style of an intellectual National Socialist who wanted to distinguish himself from the planlessness and clumsiness of other cultural-political initiatives of the National Socialists. The incumbent governor at the head of the Rhenish provincial administration, Heinrich Haake , who had no cultural qualifications, was therefore considered to be a suitable man for the Nazification of the Rhenish cultural policy.

In April 1943 Apffelstaedt was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He first came to Norway , from August 1944 to the front in Lithuania. He fell there at the end of July in the vicinity of Olita , allegedly when he stayed with a wounded comrade while his company was withdrawing .

Publications

• The sculptures of the Überwasserkirche and their masters. In: Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft , 8/9, 1936, pp. 391-470.
• Speech by the department head of the cultural department of the Rhineland provincial administration on the ceremonial reopening of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn on April 26, 1936. In: Rheinischer Verein für Denkmalpflege und Heimatschutz. 28, 1936, pp. 7-40.

Honors

• On January 30, 1941, Karl F. Chudoba , as SA Oberführer and Regional Councilor, granted him honorary academic citizenship at the University of Bonn .

literature

• Bettina Bouresh: The reorganization of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn 1930-1939. On the National Socialist cultural policy of the Rhine Province. Pulheim 1996, ISBN 3-7927-1604-6 , p. 191. (= Art and Antiquity on the Rhine, Vol. 141)
• Karl Peter Wiemer: An association through the ages. The Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Heritage Protection from 1906 to 1970. Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-88094-883-6 . (= Contributions to home care in the Rhineland, vol. 5)
• Reinhard Bollmus : The Rosenberg Office and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system. 2nd Edition. Munich 2006, ISBN 3-486-54501-9 , pp. 189-198.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Joachim Apffelstaedt in the catalog of the German National Library