Kurt Cibis

Kurt Cibis (born September 29, 1922 in Simsdorf near Beuthen ; † October 2, 2005 in Trier ) was a German numismatist who researched in particular the Trier coinage.

Life

Kurt Cibis attended secondary school in Beuthen and graduated from secondary school . He then joined the military , where he was trained as a paratrooper . He was wounded several times during war missions in Russia and Africa.

In the last months of 1945 Cibis Lätitia married Ruth Pawlik. Son Rainer was born in 1945. From 1945 to 1951, Cibis and his family sought refuge in various parts of Germany, like millions of other displaced persons. Cibis tried to support the family through Russian lessons and as an underground miner. In 1951 the family came to Trier. Here, at the age of 29, Cibis studied architecture at the State Engineering School for Civil Engineering until 1954.

The Episcopal Cathedral and Diocesan Museum in Trier employed him as an engineer until 1961, before he found employment with housing construction companies in Trier and Münster as a planner and site manager for the next six years. In Münster, Cibis discovered his interest in philately and numismatics. Cibis was a member of the Münsteraner Münzfreunde Association, which was founded and headed by Peter Berghaus at the time, and was particularly interested in Roman coins from Trier.

The then director of the Trier Cathedral and Diocesan Museum, Theodor Konrad Kempf , hired him in 1967 as a draftsman for the museum, where Cibis worked until his retirement in 1985, particularly in the documentation of the excavations. During these 18 years his main task was to assess the findings of the archaeological excavations in the churches of Trier and to document the drawings. The focus here was on the Trier Cathedral, damaged by the effects of the war . In order to cope with these tasks, exact knowledge of the political and ecclesiastical history of Trier of the past 1700 years was essential, as well as in-depth knowledge of the coinage of this period, because found coins helped with the dating of excavated objects and layers of earth.

Soon Cibis combined work and private life and became a passionate coin collector and connoisseur of Trier's money and coin history. In 1967, Cibis became a member of the Trierer Münzfreunde eV association founded three years earlier. V., of which he was chairman from 1970 to 1972, whereupon he founded the Numismatic Society Trier e. V. (NGT), which he led and shaped until 1999.

He presented his collected coins in important exhibitions, not only in Trier. He maintained close contacts with the National Museum of History and Art in Luxembourg ( Raymond Weiller ) and with Maria Radnoti-Alföldi from the Institute for Ancillary Studies in Classical Studies at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Kurt Cibis also had his Trier coins found from Roman times scientifically processed by her and included in the catalog Die Fundmünzen der Romanzeit in Deutschland (FMRD). In the case of the Trier coins, it was the early small coins and the weever males that aroused his particular interest. He was known for his very precise and detailed, large-scale drawings.

He has presented his findings in many specialist articles, in 1977 the Trier Notgeld 1918/1923 catalog was published , which became the standard work for collectors of the unique Trier emergency money. With his excellent photos (slides) of his collections, Cibis became a sought-after lecturer at numismatic associations and at the Trier adult education center.

The end of Cibis' life began with the death of his wife in 2002, when his health problems increased and he had to part with his collections. One month before his death, Cibis received a special honor when the Rheinisches Landesmuseum dedicated the book to him: The Petermännchen - Kurtrier's Landscheidemünzen in the 17th and 18th centuries , edited by the numismatist Konrad Schneider . This book also contains ten of the drawings of weever and three-pint males made by Cibis with artistic care.

Fonts

• with Dieter Ahrens: Generations History Money. 2000 years of monetary history in Trier. Manual and catalog. City Museum Simeonstift, Trier 1986.
• with Konrad Schneider, Gerd Martin Forneck: Sayner coins. Numismatischer Verlag Forneck, Koblenz 1984, ISBN 3-923708-02-5 .
• The coins of the archbishops and electors of Trier (= the window in the hall of the Kreissparkasse Cologne. 93, ZDB -ID 521236-4 ). Kreissparkasse Köln, Cologne 1975.
• Trier emergency money. 1918-1923. Cibis, Trier 1977.

Web links

• Obituary by friend and colleague Karl-Heinz Zimmer on his private website (PDF; 118 kB)

Remarks

1. ↑ The exact place of birth is not known (to the author).