Hermann Sokeland

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Hermann Sökeland (born March 22, 1848 in Haßlinghausen ; † August 11, 1917 in Berlin ) was a Berlin manufacturer and secretary of the Museum Association, which housed the museum for German folk costumes and household goods and, from 1904, the collection for German folklore in the prehistoric department of the museum for ethnology promoted. In 1894, after Ulrich Jahns' resignation, Sökeland took over the management of the museum until he was accepted into the Association of Royal Museums and the associated appointment of Karl Brunner .

Life

Hermann Sökeland was born on March 22, 1848 in Haßlinghausen near Hagen . His father, Engelbert Sökeland (1806-1884) was the son of a teacher from Darfeld and had learned the bakery trade. At the age of 26 he took over the position of an economics inspector at the Düsseldorf institute for the rescue of neglected children, and in this position he carried out teaching activities, for which he had to take the teacher examination at the request of a Berlin investigative commission. After eleven years of apprenticeship, Engelbert Sökeland founded a bakery in Haßlinghausen and later in Barmen in 1843 . He invented a special mill, kneading machine and press for the pumpernickel . He also constructed a constant heat oven and replaced the fermentation theories popular at the time with three practical fermentation methods. Due to his scientific research, Engelbert Sökeland went bankrupt. On the recommendation of Justus von Liebig , he was appointed to a managerial position in the newly built Berlin bread factory in 1856 and after two years went into business there with a pumpernickel bakery. Hermann Sökeland and his three brothers had to help out in the company and deliver the Pumpernickel. Hermann Sökeland left school at the age of 13 and started an apprenticeship with his father. In 1868 the first steam engine was installed in the bakery and the company began to expand: the sons went on business trips, the shipping of Pumpernickel began and branches were set up in Wandsbek and Vienna . In 1870 the company was able to acquire its own plot of land for the factory in Berlin-Moabit , and the sons were involved in the construction and assembly of the machines.

The rapid development of the company made it possible for Hermann Sökeland to do voluntary work at the municipal level. At the age of 24 he became secretary of the Orphan Council in Moabit and shortly afterwards its chairman. He held this position for 18 years. The contact with his neighbor Gustav Oesten , who was the chief engineer of the Berlin waterworks and who had a pronounced prehistoric interest, was important for Sökeland's commitment . This recruited Sökeland in 1887 as a member of the Berlin anthropological society . He received suggestions for his own scientific work from members such as Otto Olshausen , Max Bartels and Max Weigel . Based on his interest in the so-called Gem of Alsen from the holdings of the Museum of German Folk Costumes and Household Crafts, he toured church treasures in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France until 1897 and described the so-called rye grain gems. In 1891 Rudolf Virchow published an article by Sökeland about these in the negotiations of the Anthropological Society, and in January 1898 he gave a lecture to the Society about them.

After Ulrich Jahn left, Virchow entrusted Sökeland in 1894 with the honorary management of the museum for German folk costumes and household goods. In this role he was supported by the honorary curator Ferdinand Höft . Sökeland integrated the German ethnographic exhibition from the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 as a loan into the museum collection and supervised the establishment of the museum association at the turn of 1894/95. Under his leadership, the museum also increasingly presented you to the outside world, for example by participating in the Berlin trade exhibition in 1896. The arrangement of the collection in rows as it was popularized by other museums at that time was hardly possible in Berlin due to the spatial situation. Sökeland was also unable to divide up the holdings from Chicago in order to integrate them into the landscape sequence, as it was initially only a loan and the difficult negotiations about the donation did not come to an end until 1898. A complete new presentation of the collection was therefore only possible from 1906 onwards by Sökeland's successor Karl Brunner . Even if the model of the Austrian Museum of Folklore in Vienna could not be adapted as a whole, Sökeland followed the factual-ergological principle using a few examples: In 1897, for example, in his Westphalian homeland, he collected tools and implements that were used, among other things, for flax processing and as first comparative groups were shown in the exhibition of the museum. Also from 1897 he published the museum's communications. In the first edition of October 1897 he described the devices he had collected. The most important acquisition by Sökeland during his time as director was the Hindeloopener room . The folklorist Wilhelm Joest left the museum a legacy of 10,000 marks, which could only be paid out with the permission of the emperor. The payment was tied to the fact that the museum association granted the rights of a legal entity. Since this had already been rejected once and a longer delay had to be expected, Alexander Meyer-Cohn advanced the amount so that Sökeland was able to acquire it at the auction of the Hindeloopener Museum in Amsterdam at the end of March 1898 . Sökeland also popularized objects from the museum collection in lectures at the Society for Folklore .

Exhibition view of the Royal Collection for German Folklore in the Palais Creutz , ca.1910.

As director, Sökeland also recruited new members for the museum association. The most important of these was probably Marie Eysn from Salzburg, from whom the museum received large donations in the following years, although the Vienna Museum also tried to collect her. After resigning as director of the museum in 1904, Sökeland devoted himself entirely to his role as secretary of the association and in this function pursued an active purchasing policy. Marie Eysn's husband, Richard Andree , drew attention to the collection of the painter Hugo von Preen with objects from the Innviertel, which Sökeland was able to acquire for the museum in 1906. When the collection was re-presented in 1908, the donations by the members of the association outweighed the museum's own acquisitions, which was largely thanks to Sökeland.

In addition to his work for the museum and museum association, Sökeland was a board member of a higher private school and from 1900 to 1920 a member of the municipal school deputation. From 1905 to 1919 he was a city ​​councilor in Berlin . From 1902 he was also treasurer of the Berlin anthropological society and from 1903 a member of the expert commission of the prehistoric collection of the Völkerkundemuseum.

In 1916 Sökeland was awarded the first thank you token donated by Georg Minden for services to folklore. On the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1918, he became an honorary member of the museum association. In the last years of his life, Sökeland wrote an autobiography, a few copies of which were printed in 1926. A year later he died in Berlin.

Publications

  • The rye grain gems of the early Christian church utensils , in: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie , Volume 23 (1891), pp. 606–627.
  • A scarab from the Vienna Art History Museum , in: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Volume 27 (1895), pp. 467–471.
  • A new Alsengemme from Säckingen , in: Journal of Ethnology, Volume 28 (1896), 288–291.
  • Submission of household items from Westphalia , in: Messages from the Museum for German Folk Costumes and House Crafts in Berlin, Volume 1, Issue 1 (1897), 19–32.
  • Westfälische Spinnstube , in: Messages from the Museum for German Folk Costumes and House Crafts in Berlin, Volume 1, Issue 2 (1898), 59–88.
  • New finds of rye grain gems in Germany , in: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Volume 30 (1898), 43–54.
  • Some things about "Desemer" (cradle sticks), lecture given at the Berliner Verein für Volkskunde on March 24th , 1899 , in: Messages from the Museum for German Folk Costumes and Home Crafts in Berlin, Volume 1, Issue 5 (1900), 190–199.
  • About an ancient Desemer from Chiusi and about analogous Desemer , in: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Volume 32 (1900), pp. 327–343.
  • Gniedelsteine, booze and talisman from Lenzen ad Elbe , in: Messages from the Museum for German Folk Costumes and House Crafts in Berlin, Volume 1, Issue 5 (1900), pp. 202–207.
  • The dowsing rod , in: Journal of the Association for Folklore, Volume 13 (1903), pp. 202–212.
  • Once again the Wünschelrüte , in: Journal of the Association for Folklore, Volume 16 (1906), 418-422.
  • Dark-colored pictures of the Virgin Mary , in: Journal of the Association for Folklore, Volume 18 (1908), pp. 281–295.
  • Influence of the new regulations on private schools , in: Vossische Zeitung , No. 451, September 25, 1908, p. 1f.
  • Proposals for regulating the Berlin private school system , in: Vossische Zeitung, No. 489, October 17, 1908, p. 1.
  • Development of the so-called Roman express car , in: Journal of Ethnology, Volume 42 (1910), pp. 499-513.
  • A threatening burden on the city's finances , in: Vossische Zeitung, No. 423, September 9, 1910, p. 1.
  • The higher private girls' schools , in: Vossische Zeitung, No. 484, September 28, 1911, supplement 4.
  • Two new Alsengemmen , in: Journal for Ethnology, Volume 45 (1913), pp. 207-220.
  • Two letters from heaven from 1815 and 1915 , in: Zeitschrift des Verein für Volkskunde, Volume 25 (1915), pp. 241–259.
  • From my life , Berlin 1926.

literature

  • Ulrich Steinmann , The development of the Museum of Folklore from 1889 to 1964 , in: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Ed.), 75 years of the Museum of Folklore in Berlin. 1889-1964. Festschrift , Berlin 1964, pp. 7–48.
  • Ulrich Steinmann, founder and sponsor of the Berlin Folklore Museum. Rudolf Virchow, Ulrich Jahn, Alexander Meyer Cohn, Hermann Sökeland, James Simon , in: Research and Reports , Volume 9 (1967), pp. 71–112.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ulrich Steinmann, founder and sponsor of the Berlin Folklore Museum. Rudolf Virchow, Ulrich Jahn, Alexander Meyer Cohn, Hermann Sökeland, James Simon , in: Research and Reports , Volume 9 (1967), pp. 71–112, 87.
  2. ^ Ulrich Steinmann, founder and sponsor of the Berlin Folklore Museum. Rudolf Virchow, Ulrich Jahn, Alexander Meyer Cohn, Hermann Sökeland, James Simon , in: Research and Reports , Volume 9 (1967), pp. 71–112, 88.
  3. ↑ a b Ulrich Steinmann, founder and sponsor of the Berlin Folklore Museum. Rudolf Virchow, Ulrich Jahn, Alexander Meyer Cohn, Hermann Sökeland, James Simon , in: Research and Reports , Volume 9 (1967), pp. 71–112, 89.
  4. ^ Ulrich Steinmann, founder and sponsor of the Berlin Folklore Museum. Rudolf Virchow, Ulrich Jahn, Alexander Meyer Cohn, Hermann Sökeland, James Simon , in: Research and Reports , Volume 9 (1967), pp. 71–112, 89f.
  5. ↑ a b c Ulrich Steinmann, founder and sponsor of the Berlin Folklore Museum. Rudolf Virchow, Ulrich Jahn, Alexander Meyer Cohn, Hermann Sökeland, James Simon , in: Research and Reports , Volume 9 (1967), pp. 71–112, 91.
  6. ^ Ulrich Steinmann, founder and sponsor of the Berlin Folklore Museum. Rudolf Virchow, Ulrich Jahn, Alexander Meyer Cohn, Hermann Sökeland, James Simon , in: Research and Reports , Volume 9 (1967), pp. 71–112, 90f.
personal data
SURNAME Sökeland, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German manufacturer and folklorist, director of the Museum for German Folk Costumes and Household Crafts
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Hasslinghausen
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1917
Place of death Berlin