Otto Kunkel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Kunkel (born July 14, 1895 in Grünberg , Gießen district , † February 18, 1984 in Munich ) was a German prehistoric scientist . Until 1945 he was director of the Pomeranian State Museum in Szczecin . After the war he was head of the Prehistoric State Collection in Munich from 1953 to 1960 .

Life and accomplishments

Otto Kunkel attended high school in Giessen . His studies at the University of Giessen were interrupted by military service in the First World War. In 1922 he was in Giessen with a dissertation on the meander in the prehistoric and early historic cultures of Europe doctorate . He then worked as an assistant at the Upper Hessian Museum in Gießen.

In 1924, Kunkel became the curator of the Szczecin Antiquities Collection. At that time, this collection belonged to the Society for Pomeranian History and Archeology and was initially unattractive in the Szczecin City Museum . The society soon transferred the collection to the Pomeranian Provincial Association , and in 1928 Kunkel was able to transfer it to a new museum building, the previous state house. This is how the Provincial Museum of Pomeranian Antiquities was created; Kunkel became the first and only director. In 1934 the museum was renamed the Pomeranian State Museum . The prehistorian Hans Jürgen Eggers had been Kunkel's assistant since 1933 . Kunkel joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1937 (No. 5,739,357).

From 1924 Kunkel was the state shop steward for the soil antiquities of the Pomerania province . As such, he looked after the voluntary district curators for soil antiquities , and managed to fill all 29 districts with district curators. There were also two full-time branch offices in Köslin and Greifswald . Furthermore, Kunkel supports the Pomeranian district home museums. From 1934 to 1940, excavations in and around Wollin took place under his direction .

In the Second World War , Kunkel secured the holdings of the State Museum through timely relocations and cellar deposits. After the Second World War, Szczecin came to Poland ; the Polish state also appropriated the Pomeranian State Museum and its holdings.

Having escaped military service so far, Kunkel was drafted into the Stettiner Volkssturm in mid-April 1945 , with which he left the city for the west on April 24, 1945. In 1947 he was offered a position at the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments with its official seat in Würzburg, where he worked as chief curator. From 1953 to 1960 he headed the Prehistoric State Collection in Munich. From 1951 to 1954 he carried out sensational excavations at the Jungfernhöhle . In 1960 he became an honorary professor at the University of Munich .

He was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit (1962) and the Pomeranian Culture Prize for Science (1980) for his research and activities . The Society for Pomeranian History, Archeology and Art made Kunkel an honorary member.

Otto Kunkel married Ilse Hahne in 1925, a daughter of August Hahne, then the Szczecin City School Councilor . The marriage resulted in two sons and three daughters.

Fonts

  • Upper Hesse's prehistoric antiquities . Marburg 1926.
  • From Pomerania's prehistory. Emil Hartmann, Berlin 1926.
  • with Karl August Wilde: Jumne, Vineta, Jomsburg, Julin, Wollin. 5 years of excavations on the floor of the large settlement from the Viking Age on the Dievenowstrom 1934–1939. Szczecin 1941.
  • The Jungfernhöhle near Tiefenellern. A Neolithic place of worship on the Franconian Jura near Bamberg (= Munich Contributions to Prehistory and Early History , Volume 5). CH Beck, Munich 1955.
  • with Hans Bernhard Reichow : Stettin as it was. Droste, Düsseldorf 1975.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Federal Institute for Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe (BKGE) provides information on the history of the Pomeranian State Museum : [1]
  2. ^ Achim Leube : Memories of Pomerania's prehistory and early history research in the 19th and 20th centuries . in: Felix Biermann, Ulrich Müller and Thomas Terberger (eds.): "Observing things ...". Archaeological and historical research on the early history of Central and Northern Europe. Festschrift for Günter Mangelsdorf for his 60th birthday. Archeology and History in the Baltic Sea Region. Archeology and history of the Baltic, Rahden, Westf., Leidorf, 2008 ISBN 978-3-89646-462-0 , p. 31
personal data
SURNAME Kunkel, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German prehistorian
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Grünberg , district of Giessen
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1984
Place of death Munich