Helmut Kruse (archaeologist)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Helmut Kruse (born January 20, 1908 in Breslau , province of Silesia , † April 28, 1999 in Stuttgart ) was a German archaeologist and lawyer and one of the founders of the Real Lexicon for Antiquity and Christianity .

Life

Helmut Kruse spent ten formative years of his childhood with a brother of his father's in Iowa ( USA ); In 1924 he returned to Breslau, where he passed his Abitur in 1927 at the St. Matthias Gymnasium . His keen interest in late antiquity led him to the lectures of the church historian Franz Joseph Dölger , whom he followed in 1930 to the University of Bonn , where he enrolled in the philosophy and law faculties. He obtained his doctorate in philosophy in 1933 with Richard Delbrueck on a topic suggested by Dölger ; the first state examination in law followed in the autumn of the same year.

Since Kruse did not join the NSDAP or one of its sub-organizations, the path to a habilitation or a legal clerkship was closed to him. He was therefore trained as a scientific librarian at the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig . There he met the antiquarian and publisher Anton Hiersemann , to whom he presented the plan for a real dictionary for antiquity and Christianity and which he began to work out with Dölger. Through Dölger, Kruse came into contact with Theodor Klauser and Jan Hendrik Waszink ; Kruse, Klauser and Waszink should take over the publication of the work. As a result, Kruse mainly took over the organization of the preparatory work. He could not take up an assistant professorship at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC because of the Gestapo veto .

In 1939 he had to accept a position at Verlag Kohlhammer to secure the livelihood of his family , so that he was canceled for further work on the Reallexikon . In 1940 he was called up for military service and served as an intelligence officer in the High Command of the Navy . From 1949 to 1978 he worked as a business lawyer in the management of the Hertie Group .

Fonts

  • Studies on the official validity of the imperial image in the Roman Empire. (= Studies on the history and culture of antiquity, Vol. 19, 3) Schöningh, Paderborn 1934 (reprinted by the Johnson Reprint Company, New York / London 1968).

literature

personal data
SURNAME Kruse, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, co-founder of the real dictionary for antiquity and Christianity
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw , Province of Silesia
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1999
Place of death Stuttgart