Karl-Heinz Otto (prehistoric)

Karl-Heinz Otto (born November 9, 1915 in Kassel ; † May 29, 1989 in Berlin ) was a German prehistorian .

Karl-Heinz Otto studied prehistory , geology and anthropology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). In December 1939 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the eastern expansion of the Teutons in the central Elbe region in the last centuries before the beginning of the era. He was then drafted and seriously wounded in World War II . In 1946 he became the acting director of the State Museum for Prehistory in Halle (Saale) . In 1950 Otto became a lecturer at the Martin Luther University before he finally switched to the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1951 . He quickly made a career there. The habilitation took place in 1953 with the work The socio-economic conditions among the tribes of the Leubingen culture . In 1954 he became a lecturer, in 1955 a full professor, and finally in 1960 a full professor. In addition, Otto was director of the Institute for Prehistory and Protohistory from 1954 to 1968 and dean of the Philosophical Faculty from 1961 to 1963. In 1980 he retired.

In addition to his university tasks, Otto also took on various other tasks. From 1952 to 1961 he was director of the Department of Prehistory and Early History in the Museum of German History in Berlin. From 1964 to 1967 he was part-time, 1968/69 full-time director of the Institute for Prehistory and Early History at the German Academy of Science , then from 1969 to 1977, after the academy's restructuring and renaming, director of the Prehistory and Early History department at the Central Institute for Ancient Studies History and archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR . From 1965 Otto was chairman of the National Committee for Prehistory and Early History of the GDR and from 1965 to 1970 President of the Union Internationale d'Archéologie Slave . He was co-founder and from 1960 to 1969 first editor of the ethnographic-archaeological journal . Here as in his chair, Heinz Grünert followed him . In 1969 and 1981 Otto received the Banner of Labor award , in 1975 the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze and in 1982 he was made an honorary member of the GDR Historian Society . Otto was a specialist in the archeology of the Teutons and Slavs as well as in settlement archeology.

Karl-Heinz Otto is buried in the central cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde .

Fonts

• Rock paintings from Sudanese Nubia (2 volumes, with Gisela Buschendorf-Otto), Akademie, Berlin 1993 (publication of the Nubia Expedition 1961-1963, Vol. 2) ISBN 3-05-001848-8
• The socio-economic conditions among the tribes of the Leubing culture in Central Germany. Contribution to the periodization of the history of primitive society in Central Europe, in particular on the question of military democracy , DVW, Berlin 1955 (ethnographic-archaeological research, vol. 3, part 1)
• Protects the soil antiquities of our homeland. Memo booklet on the protection and preservation of the prehistoric and early historical soil antiquities , DVW, Berlin 1957
• Textbook of German history. 1. Germany in the epoch of primitive society , DVW, Berlin 1960 (3rd edition: 1978)
• Settlement, castle and city. Studies on its beginnings (edited with Joachim Herrmann ), Academy, Berlin 1967 (writings of the Section for Prehistory and Early History / German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, vol. 25)
• Modern Problems of Archeology (Ed. With Hans-Jürgen Brachmann ), Academy, Berlin 1975

literature

• Joachim Herrmann : Archeology as History. Studies and Investigations. Karl-Heinz Otto on his 60th birthday. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1977 ( writings on prehistory and early history. Vol. 30, ISSN  0138-3361 ).
• Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X , pp. 470-471.

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl-Heinz Otto in the catalog of the German National Library