Martin Stahn

Martin Stahn (born March 25, 1873 in Sorau , † January 17, 1953 in Lübben ) was a German archivist .

Live and act

Martin Stahn was born the son of a master baker in Sorau. After attending high school in his hometown, he completed an apprenticeship as a baker. His years of travel took him to Dresden , Berlin and Geneva . From 1893 to 1895 he trained as a deacon in Neinstedt . He then worked as such in Cracau near Magdeburg , Genoa and Geneva until 1898 . In 1899 he was an auxiliary nurse in Sorau and Berlin. From 1900 to 1902 he worked as a secretary at the Pfeiffer establishments in Cracau near Magdeburg and in 1902 as a secretary in the Sorau district office. From 1903 he was an office assistant and from 1907 state secretary of the Lower Lusatian municipal authorities in Lübben.

After the First World War , in which he took part from 1914 to 1918, he became archivist of the Niederlausitz estates in 1919 - initially in a part-time position and from 1924 on as a full-time employee. From 1930 he also headed the Lübben City Archives . During his time as director, the estate archive took over many smaller archives, such as the Vetschau Castle Archive (1919), the older church records of the Paul Gerhardt Church in Lübben (1922), the archive of the Lübbener Schützengilde (1925), the archive of the country church in Lübben (1926), the Lübben church bills (1926), the estate archives Gosda, Proschim , Welzow , Stradow and Wolkenberg in the Spremberg district (1926), Pretschen in the Lübben district (1927 and 1932) and Bornsdorf in the Luckau district (1933), the archives of the Bornsdorf and Waltersdorf districts in the Luckau district (1933), the Lübben guild files (1934ff.) And the old registry of the city of Lübben (1930ff.). From 1925 to 1928 he organized and inventoried the holdings, and since 1929 also the deposits , thus making them usable for research purposes. After he retired in 1938, he was employed until June 30, 1950. In April 1945, when 80 to 90 percent of the Lübben city center was on fire, the archive was spared. It is thanks to Stahn that it survived the time afterwards: He regained security in the windowless building, began to clear up the mess and tackled the reorganization of the archives . After his departure, Rudolf Lehmann continued this work.

In 1904 he married Margarete Seltmann († 1944), with whom he had three children: Katharina, Irmgard and Johannes († 1943).

Works

• with Robert Daenicke : One hundred years of the Niederlausitz main savings bank . Memorandum to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Niederlausitzer Provinzialsparkasse on October 1st, 1924 . [Otto Enke], [Cottbus] [1924]
• with Robert Daenicke: On the history of the shooting guild in Lübben in the Lausitz. Festschrift for their 500th anniversary from 5th to 12th July 1925 . [Otto Enke], [Cottbus] 1925
• The Landesarchiv Lübben us its holdings . In: Niederlausitzer Mitteilungen . Volume 22, 1934, pp. 313-338
• The Lower Lusatian State Archives in Lübben . Brandenburger Provinzialdruckerei, Strausberg [1939] (digitized)

His estate is kept in the Potsdam State Archives (Pr. Br. Rep. 16).

literature

• Wolfgang Leesch : The German archivists 1500–1945 . Volume 2: Biographical Lexicon . Saur, Munich [ua] 1992, ISBN 3-598-10605-X , p. 585
• [Rudolf Lehmann]: Obituary. In: Archive messages . Volume 3, 1953, p. 76
• Brigitte Haß: Memories of Martin Stahn. In: Lübbener Heimatkalender 2000. Lübben 1999, pp. 54–57 (with picture)

For more on Stahn's work in the archive, see:

• Rudolf Lehmann: The State Archives Lübben . In: Archive messages . Volume 3, 1953, pp. 4-6
• Rudolf Lehmann: Overview of the holdings of the Landesarchiv Lübben / NL. Böhlau, Weimar 1958, especially the preface by Friedrich Beck and pages 3, 14, 15 and 128

Web links

• Literature by and about Martin Stahn in the catalog of the German National Library