Otto Prein

Otto Prein (born November 12, 1867 in Husen near Dortmund, † April 28, 1945 in Hohenlimburg ) was a German Protestant pastor and amateur archaeologist.

In 1905, as pastor of the parish of Methler ( Margaretenkirche Methler ), Prein discovered traces of a Roman camp in Oberaden, which belongs to his community . Although Prein was not a trained archaeologist , he devoted himself intensively and expertly to the excavation of the 11 BC. The largest Roman military camp on the right bank of the Rhine. On a hill (today Römerberg located), it formed along with the two kilometers away on the lip lying shore fort in Beckinghausen , which had been discovered by Prein, fixed quarters of two to three legions in the field of Germanic Sugambri. The excavations were continued in 1937/38 by the Dortmund museum director Christoph Albrecht and continued in the 1980s under the direction of the Münster provincial archaeologist Johann-Sebastian Kühlborn .

Prein 's theory, which was enthusiastically received in Wilhelmine times , that the Roman camp in Oberaden was the Castra Aliso , which served the defeated Varus troops as a retreat after the Varus Battle , proved to be scientifically unsustainable, as the Oberaden Roman camp was already in the year 9 v. BC, well before the devastating defeat of the governor Publius Quinctilius Varus in 9 AD - after the forced relocation of the approximately 40,000 strong Germanic tribe of the Sugambri to Xanten on the left bank of the Rhine - abandoned in favor of a camp further west in Haltern has been.

Most of the Oberaden finds (vessels, weapons, barrels, also traces of a wood-earth wall), which are well preserved thanks to the special local soil structure (clay), are in the Roman museum in Haltern . The local city museum Bergkamen in Oberaden offers a good overview.

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