Otto Braasch

Otto Braasch (born November 14, 1936 in Kutenholz ) is a former lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and an important German aerial archaeologist .

Life

In 1956 he acquired his pilot's license for glider pilots and in 1958 he joined the still young air force of the German armed forces . He started his career as an officer and trained as a fighter pilot. In 1961 he qualified for this profession at Perrin Air Force Base in Texas , USA. Between 1961 and 1980 he held various positions in the Air Force, such as that of an aircraft pilot, squadron commodore or aircraft operations officer. While still in service, he began to be interested in the remains of the Limes in southern Germany that can be seen on the ground from 1974 as a flight instructor on weekends. He read his way into the subject and was supported in particular by correspondence with the scientist Irwin Scollar from the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn and the provincial Roman archaeologist Dietwulf Baatz , who was then the state archaeologist of Hesse.

Braasch left the Air Force to pursue his passion as an aviator as well as his strong interest in archeology and history. As an aerial archaeologist , he first flew on behalf of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation and shortly afterwards for the State Office for Monument Preservation Baden-Württemberg . For the state office in Baden-Württemberg, he built the largest aerial photo archive in Germany until the turn of the millennium. Braasch was also active in other federal states and far beyond the borders of Germany. After the fall of the Wall in 1990, he also worked in countries of the former Eastern Bloc such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. Since July 1, 1990, the paralyzing approval procedures for aerial photographs in the Federal Republic of Germany, which originated in the Cold War and which had hindered the work of aerial photograph archeology considerably, were no longer applicable. Since the recordings made during ongoing construction work are particularly explosive, it has become increasingly important to send messages and images of the material to be evaluated quickly to the responsible offices within the preservation department. As a former soldier, Braasch was able to contribute his experience here. So it became one of the tasks of the archaeological aerial photo archive to give the archaeologists a head start in terms of time in order to save evidence of the past from being accessed by the excavator shovel. In this context, Braasch also called for important flight observations to be transmitted to the archaeological preservation offices immediately after landing.

The aerial flights and photographs of the former lieutenant colonel provided information about numerous new archaeological sites or supplemented their findings. In 1985 he found the Roman camp Marktbreit, among many other things, and in 1991 he discovered the Goseck and Kyhna district moats. In the early 1990s, Braasch photographed the remains of the mine housing estate on Petersteich and the Roman marshal Wilkenburg . In 2001 he was able to record the early Celtic grave mound on the Ipf for the first time after decades of intensive flying in this area .

Braasch sought contact with foreign colleagues at an early stage and maintained a permanent exchange, especially with French and English aerial archaeologists. His activities also include training young talents, including Klaus Leidorf . He also passes on his knowledge as a lecturer . Since 1996 he has worked in this position at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and since 1999 at the Humboldt University in Berlin .

Honors

In 1986 he was awarded the Academy Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . The Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Free University of Berlin awarded him an honorary doctorate on December 13, 1999 . On September 19, 2001, Braasch received the European Archaeological Heritage Prize from the European Association of Archaeologists at the Association's congress in Esslingen am Neckar .

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Braasch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Honorary doctorate for Otto Braasch, FU-Nachrichten 1-2-2000

Remarks

1. ↑ Aerial photo archive of the State Office for Monument Preservation Baden-Württemberg