Jan Spieker

Remnants of the originally green wool jacket, some buttons and coins from Jan Spiekers in the exhibition in the moor tunnel of the NIZ Goldenstedt (loans from the State Museum for Nature and Man )

January Spieker (actually Johann Spieker * 1782 in Rahden , † August or September 1828 in Goldenstedter Moor ) was an itinerant trader who on his way through the Big Moor , died there on the spot buried , and whose remains in 1978 as a bog body again were excavated .

Life and demise

Jan Spieker was married and a traveling trader, a so-called Kiepenkerl , who supplied the rural population with all kinds of small goods, which he carried in a box on his back. On August 14, 1828, when he was last seen alive, he was on his way through the Goldenstedter Moor from Lutten to Drebber to meet his customers. On September 24th, his body was found between the villages of Lutten and Barnstorf. On September 26th, she was examined by a court on the spot. Since a transfer to a cemetery was not possible, he was buried on the spot in a pit dug in the moor. An entry in his Catholic prayer book enabled him to be reliably identified. His belongings, including the prayer book, were wrapped in a cloth and placed in his grave. His grave site was surrounded by a fence and marked with an oak cross. The district is named bi Jan Spieker in'n Moore .

Find history

In the 1950s, the mining of white peat began in the Goldenstedter Moor, only the Jan Spiekers grave was left as a free-standing peat column in the mining area. In 1978, further wet peat mining finally threatened the grave site, where the remaining peat was supposed to be mined down to the sandy bottom. In order to save the grave from final destruction, it was excavated by archaeologists working with Hajo Hayen . The grave site in the peat column, which has been exposed since the 1950s, was removed in layers from above and to the sides down to the grave pit, and finally the grave was uncovered. Due to the drying up of the grave site, only a tuft of hair remained from his body. Numerous fly pupae and remains of beetles indicated that the corpse had been destroyed by the ingress of air and insects. A green, well- preserved wool jacket, some coins, three kinds of buttons and the remains of his prayer book were found on the body. According to the historical court files and the Goldenstedt death register , this prayer book enabled reliable identification and thus Jan Spieker is one of the few bog bodies whose real name is known. His jacket was recovered in the block with the surrounding peat , exposed and examined in the textile museum in Neumünster . The hole of the grave cross was found to the west of the grave site, but the cross and fence were no longer present during the excavation.

In 2004, samples of Jan Spieker's hair and clothing were analyzed at the University of Groningen as part of a ¹⁴ C dating series on numerous European bog bodies. The result of this investigation confirmed the historical data.

The fate of Jan Spieker is shown in a small exhibition in the "Moortunnel" of the nature conservation and information center Goldenstedt . There his jacket, some buttons and coins are presented on loan from the State Museum for Nature and Humans in Oldenburg (Oldenburg) and much more information about the ecology and use of moors.

aftermath

The lonely grave site of Jan Spiekers inspired the Vechta dean Ludwig Averdam to write his poem Bei Jan Spieker im Moor , which he published in 1930. To keep alive the memory of January Spieker, operates since 2008 between the "house in the Moor" in Arkeburg (municipality Goldenstedt ) and the " Barnstorfer environmental experience center (Buez)" during the warm season a January Spieker called trackless train .

literature

• Frank Both, Mamoun Fansa (Ed.): Fascination Moor Corpses: 220 Years of Moor Archeology . Zabern, Philipp von, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-8053-4360-2 , p. 109-114 .
• Hajo Hayen : The bog bodies in the museum on the dam . In: Publications of the State Museum for Natural History and Prehistory Oldenburg . tape 6 . Isensee, Oldenburg 1987, ISBN 3-920557-73-5 , p. 69-73 .
• Hajo Hayen , Klaus Tidow: Jan Spieker's wool jacket . In: Archaeological Communications from Northwest Germany . tape 5 , 1982, ISSN  0170-5776 , pp. 69-73 .
• Hajo Hayen : Investigation of a "bog body" . In: Archaeological Communications from Northwest Germany . tape 1 , 1978, ISSN  0170-5776 , p. 14-16 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Hajo Hayen : Investigation of a "bog body" . In: Archaeological Communications from Northwest Germany . tape 1 , 1978, ISSN  0170-5776 , p. 14-16 .
2. ^ ^{A b} Hajo Hayen : The bog bodies in the museum on the dam . In: Publications of the State Museum for Natural History and Prehistory Oldenburg . tape 6 . Isensee, Oldenburg 1987, ISBN 3-920557-73-5 , p. 69-73 .
3. ^ ^{A b} Frank Both, Mamoun Fansa (ed.): Fascination Moor Corpses: 220 Years of Moor Archeology . Zabern, Philipp von, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-8053-4360-2 , p. 109-114 .
4. ↑ Johannes van der Plicht, Wijnand van der Sanden , AT Aerts, HJ Streurman: Dating bog bodies by means of ¹⁴ C-AMS . In: Journal of Archaeological Science . tape 31 , no. 4 , 2004, ISSN  0305-4403 , p. 471–491 , doi : 10.1016 / j.jas.2003.09.012 (English, ub.rug.nl [PDF; 388 kB ; accessed on June 2, 2010]).
5. ↑ Ludwig Averdam: With Jan Spieker in the moor (poem). (No longer available online.) Samtgemeinde Barnstorf, archived from the original on October 18, 2010 ; Retrieved December 1, 2011 (poem from 1930). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Kiepenkerl gave the name to Bahn. Nature Conservation and Information Center Goldenstedt, accessed on December 1, 2011 . 

Web links

• TK25 sheet 3216 Goldenstedt (1898). In: GeoGREIF Geographical Collections of the University of Greifswald . Retrieved on December 1, 2011 (location of the paths in the bog before the start of industrial peat extraction). 
• Kiepenkerl gave the name to Bahn. Nature Conservation and Information Center Goldenstedt, accessed on December 1, 2011 .