Hermann Stoll

Hermann Stoll (born June 13, 1904 in Eschenau ; † December 10, 1944 ) was a German geologist and prehistorian .

Stoll, who came from a Swabian pastor's family and grew up in Kayh near Herrenberg since the age of 13 , studied geology in Tübingen and Stuttgart and received his doctorate in Tübingen in 1927 with the "attempt at a stratigraphic structure of the parlor sandstone in western Württemberg". From 1929 Stoll was assistant to Robert Rudolf Schmidt at the Prehistory Research Institute in Tübingen. During this time he devoted himself intensively to the history of the settlement of the Upper Gau, where, in addition to field inspections, he also carried out some excavations. The work “Prehistory of the Upper Gäus” published in 1932 is considered to be groundbreaking for modern settlement archeology , as Stoll was particularly interested in the connections between settlement and the natural framework. During his time in Tübingen he continued the research that Hans Reinerth had started on the prehistoric hilltop settlement on the Kirchberg near Reusten and excavated the Alemannic burial ground of Hailfingen , which he published in 1939 as an example. In 1934 Stoll came to the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn . He worked out the so-called Franconian catalog and carried out excavations in the Colonia Ulpia Traiana near Xanten and in the Franconian settlement of Gladbach near Neuwied . From the beginning of 1938, Stoll was assistant to the Baden heritage preservation for prehistory and early history in Freiburg im Breisgau under Georg Kraft through the University of Freiburg . From here he carries out various excavations, especially again in Merovingian burial fields (Lienheim, Grimmelshofen, Freiburg-St. Georgen). In 1939 Stoll began digging in the Alemannic grave field of Grimmelshofen, which Ruprecht Gießler continued in August after he was called up.

During the Second World War, Stoll was employed by the air intelligence service in Silesia, where he carried out further archaeological research. He last served in Romania and died in a Soviet prisoner of war in December 1944 after being injured in the war.

Stoll's archaeological work was groundbreaking , especially in the area of early history . Based on his interests in settlement archeology, he formulated questions that have been considered innovative in the early Middle Ages research, which was for a long time very antiquarian. Concessions to nationalist ideas and a corresponding terminology - which had prevailed in the Tübingen Institute at that time since the 1920s - are strikingly rare in Stoll's work. Stoll asked about the relation between the cemetery and the settlement, about the Merovingian settlement forms and the population figures. Stoll tried hard to find an interdisciplinary approach and a discussion with the country's history.

Publications (selection)

• Prehistory of the Upper Gau . Publ. Württ. Landesamt Denkmalpfl. 7. Öhringen 1933
• Medieval clay field bottles from Swabia , Germania 17, 1933, 210–213
• (with KH Wagner): Franconian settlement with cemetery near Gladbach , Neuwied district. Newsl. German Vorzeit 13, 1937, 119–121
• The Alemanni graves of Hailfingen in Württemberg , Germ. Think Migration period 4. Berlin 1939
• The Franconian settlement of the Neuwied Basin , Rhine. Prehistory in words and pictures 1939, 120 ff.
• New work on the early history of the Alemanni , Bad. Fundber. 16, 1940, 119-128
• Three extraordinary Alemannic burial grounds and their interpretation , Zeitschr. Württ. Landesgesch. 5, 1941, 1-18.
• Population figures from prehistoric times , Welt als Geschichte 8, 1942, 69–74
• The Alemanni graves of Freiburg , St. Georgen district. A contribution to the dating of the Alemannic -hausen places. Bath. Fundber. 18, 1948/50, 107-126

obituary

• Journal for Württemberg. Landesgeschichte 8, 1947/48, 414–444 (Peter Goessler)
  With list of publications

Web links

• Literature by and about Hermann Stoll in the catalog of the German National Library