Helmut Plath

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Helmut Plath (born April 20, 1911 in Halle an der Saale ; † June 26, 1990 in Hanover ) was a German museum director and archaeologist who, thanks to a new methodology and new approaches, is considered one of the pioneers of post-war medieval archeology in Germany .

Career

Helmut Plath was the child of a senior teacher and spent his childhood in Wunstorf and Hanover. After attending the Humboldt School in Hanover , he studied history , literature and philosophy at the Georg-August University in Göttingen . He became a member of the Jenaische Burschenschaft Germania . He moved to the University of Vienna and the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel . With a doctoral thesis on Ernst Moritz Arndt , he was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD . As a volunteer he went to Wilhelm Peßler , Director of the Fatherland Museum in Hanover , at the time one of the most important research centers for folklore in Germany He contributed to the restructuring and reorganization of the Folklore Display Collection and wrote the first publications on folklore topics.

After being in the armed forces at the Second World War had participated, Helmut Plath 1946 was appointed acting director and in 1952 director of the company founded in 1950 the Lower Saxony local museum. He oversaw the return of the evacuated holdings to the temporary museum ruins on Prinzenstrasse . He presented the collections in long-running special exhibitions and wrote explanations about them in accompanying booklets and catalogs. Between 1947 and 1970, Helmut Plath carried out excavations and soil investigations on areas around 100–300 m² in the inner city, which was completely destroyed by the air raids on Hanover , in order to research its early history with the aid of objects. In addition, he collected documents on older observations.

From the beginning of the 1950s, Plath devoted himself to the development of a space program - which was varied several times - for the Hannover Historical Museum, which was finally realized from 1963 to 1966 by the architect Dieter Oesterlen in the old town . There, Plath presented the holdings as testimonies that speak for themselves of certain historical periods according to the division into city history, regional history and folklore already made by Wilhelm Peßler. He wrote numerous publications and organized special exhibitions and tours to popularize his research. After retirement, Plath took part in the excavation of the Michaeliskirche (Lüneburg) . He volunteered in local history, history and museum associations. His turn to the history of the city of Hanover allowed him to interpret the name of the city, for example, the so-called “clover leaf” in the coat of arms, or to justify the dating of the city's anniversary. He is buried in the Engesohder cemetery .

Publications (selection)

  • Ernst Moritz Arndt and his image of German people , doctoral thesis, 1936
  • 17 articles in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , 1952–1990
  • with Herbert Mundhenke and Ewald Brix (arrangement): Heimatchronik of the capital Hanover (= Heimatchroniken of the cities and districts of the federal territory , vol. 17), Cologne: Archive for German homeland care, 1956
  • with Bernhard Dörries (ed.): Alt-Hannover 1500–1900. The history of a city in contemporary images from 1500–1900 , fourth, improved edition 1977, Heinrich Feesche Verlag, Hanover, ISBN 3-87223-024-7
  • Hanover in the picture of the centuries . 3rd, expanded and improved edition, Hanover: Madsack, 1966
  • City history department. (= Department catalogs of the Historisches Museum am Hohen Ufer, Hanover. 1). Hanover 1970.
  • Early history of the city of Hanover. In: Hannover Chronik (1991) and History of the City of Hannover (1991), both edited by Klaus Mlynek and Waldemar R. Röhrbein (sd)

Honors

literature

  • Waldemar R. Röhrbein : 75 years of the Historical Museum on the Hohe Ufer. Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , New Series, Vol. 32 (1978)
  • Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Obituaries. Heimatland (magazine) (1990), p. 101.
  • Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 62 (1990), pp. 495-498.
  • Communications from the Museum Association for Lower Saxony and Bremen , Vol. 38 (1990), pp. 104-105
  • Walter Habel (Ed.): Who is who? 1974/75 . XVIII. Output. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISSN  0172-911X , p. 800.
  • On the problem of academic freedom in Hanover . Once and Now, yearbook of the Association for Corporate Student History Research, Vol. 37 (1992), pp. 229-237.
  • Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Plath, Helmut , in: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (Ed.): Stadtlexikon Hannover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 503.
  • Anke Matthes: The indexing of the estate of Dr. H. Plath. A gain for the city center archeology of Hanover. In: Monument Preservation. Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony , volume 38, issue 3/2018, ISSN 0720-9835, Hameln: CW Niemeyer Buchverlage GmbH, p. 118ff.

Estate and archive material

Archives by and about Helmut Plath can be found, for example

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g h Waldemar R. Röhrbein : Plath, Helmut. In: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen : Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , pp. 286f.
  2. Dissertation: Ernst Moritz Arndt and his image of German people .
  3. a b c Anke Matthes: The indexing of the estate of Dr. H. Plath. A gain for the city center archeology of Hanover. In: Monument Preservation. Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony , volume 38, issue 3/2018, ISSN 0720-9835, Hameln: CW Niemeyer Buchverlage GmbH, p. 118ff.