Niels Frederik Bernhard Sehested

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Frederik Sehested
Frederik Sehested after Julius Magnus Petersen

Niels Frederik Bernhard Sehested (born February 20, 1813 on Gut Broholm near Gudme ; † January 14, 1882 ibid) was a Danish landowner and archaeologist from the Sehested family .

Life

Frederik Sehested was the only son of the officer Anders Sehested and Edel Marie , born (of) Kjaer. He lost his father at the age of six. His mother raised him alone, taught him and managed the family's real estate. At the age of 20, von Sehested took over the management of the family property, where he was to operate very successfully in agricultural and forestry terms and published some pioneering writings regarding the modernization of the same. In this context he became a member of various agricultural associations and was involved in the establishment of, in particular agricultural, banks and insurance companies.

An event in 1833 should ensure that he would become one of the better known Danish archaeologists of the 19th century. A farm worker had come across six gold rings while plowing, which was reported to the noble Sehested. When Frederik Sehested found out about this, he initiated a search, in which another 20 objects were found. In addition, other objects were found in the pockets of some farm workers. Mother and son made sure that the bundle, consisting of 49 objects and weighing four kilograms, ended up in the Christiansborg Museum (Copenhagen). These objects became known as Broholm's gold treasure and became one of the most sensational exhibits there. Even today, these are considered to be important pieces of the puzzle in Gudme's mosaic .

Later he was to do his own archaeological research. In the 1850s, for example, he discovered pits with black contents in the fields around Broholm, which he presented to a meeting of Scandinavian scientists in 1860. However, the archaeologists of that time could not do much with these pits and paid little attention to them.

In 1848 he took part as a Danish volunteer in the Schleswig-Holstein War , in which he served, among other things, as an orderly officer.

Around 1855 he began to breed what would later become known as Broholmer .

From 1875 he organized some of the first expert archaeological excavations around Broholm, carried out by Henry Petersen . Von Sehested had hired him as his private archaeologist. Together they dug Bronze Age barrows, dolmens and Iron Age burial grounds, including the extraordinary groups at Maaltidspladser, Langå and Møllegårdsmarken .

For these extensive excavations, von Sehested engaged the farm workers of the Broholm estate and their families. After two summers, so many Stone Age artifacts were found that the investigation had to be stopped. Because so much had been collected that a special museum had to be built, which opened in 1878.

In addition, in 1878 von Sehested was able to present a list of no less than 29 gold discoveries - most of which were individual finds. Later these were mostly assigned to the Iron Age.

During this time, von Sehested also became the founder of experimental archeology . Using stone axes and chisels, he had a small log house built to research how the artifacts he found were used. He also tried to find out how the Stone Age people managed to drill holes in stone tools by trying on them himself. He dealt with this in the last years of his life.

After a short illness he died on January 14, 1882 at the place where he worked on Broholm. With his wife Charlotte Christine, nee (von) Linde , he had 14 children, including the pianist Hilda Sehested and the politician Hannibal Sehehested .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Henrik Thrane: Gudme - a Focus of Archaeological Research since 1833 . (English)
personal data
SURNAME Sehested, Niels Frederik Bernhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sehested, Frederik
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish landowner and archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Well Broholm at Gudme's
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1882
Place of death Well Broholm at Gudme's