Paul Grimm

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Paul Grimm (born August 18, 1907 in Torgau ; † November 19, 1993 in Berlin ) was a German prehistorian who was also the pioneer of medieval archeology , especially desert and castle research . Above all, Grimm worked in Central Germany over different periods, so he gave the terms Baalberger Kultur and Salzmünder Kultur for two important groups of finds from the Neolithic . His extensive excavations in Hohenrode and Tilleda were trend-setting in the history of German archeology.

Life

Career advancement

Grimm, son of a paymaster , studied after graduating from high school in Aschersleben from 1925 at the University of Halle , where he studied prehistory , history, classical archeology , German studies, geography and geology until 1929 . In 1927 he took part in excavations under Hans Hahne for the first time . From 1929 he was a research assistant at the State Institute for Prehistory. In 1929 he was with a dissertation on the prehistoric and early settlement of the Lower Harz and its foreland due to the archaeological finds to the Dr. phil. PhD. In addition to Hahne, Georg Karo was the appraiser .

Grimm initially belonged to the youth movement , was from 1926 in the völkisch youth association Adler and Falke and already before the time of National Socialism a member of the Mannus Society for “Aryan Prehistory” and the specialist group for Prehistory in the Kampfbund for German Culture . On February 1, 1933, Grimm joined the NSDAP , received membership number 1,447,316 and was block leader from 1933 to 1934 . In 1935 Grimm became curator and deputy director of the State Institute for Ethnology in Halle / Saale . From 1935 he was together with the head of the folklore department, Heinz-Julius Niehoff , editor of the journal Mitteldeutsche Volkheit - booklets for prehistory, racial studies and folklore . After his habilitation on the Salzmünder culture, he worked from 1939 to 1945 as a lecturer and director of the national institute for folklore in Halle (Saale) .

During the Second World War

On October 22, 1940, Paul Grimm was called up for military service. From January 1942 to November 1942 Grimm was an employee of the “Special Staff Prehistory” of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg . The task force Reichsleiter Rosenberg was a sub-organization of the NSDAP and had the task of confiscating art and cultural assets in all occupied areas of Europe and using them in the interests of the NSDAP. Grimm, who is also head of the in Kiev was created State Agency for Pre- and Early History should, first of all the different prehistoric collections of Ukraine sure to highlight the Germanic share of Ukrainian history and on the basis of the Nazi ideology of history in Kiev an exhibition for the Wehrmacht design . He organized the transfer of the collections of the Kiev Institute of Archeology from the destroyed “Lavra” to a new museum. In later years his great personal commitment, his scientifically sound work and his human behavior towards the Ukrainian museum employees were repeatedly emphasized by the Ukrainian and German side.

From November 1942 to December 1944 Grimm was drafted back into the Wehrmacht. After his discharge from the army due to illness, Grimm worked for the "Institute for Eastern Research" in Höchstädt Castle near Dillingen . Grimm and several employees managed the most important depot with looted cultural goods from prehistory and early history as well as folklore objects from the occupied Soviet territories. Immediately before the arrival of the US Army, Grimm was appointed head of the “Höchstädt Recovery Site” . Grimm handed the collections over to the Americans and went from Höchstädt unmolested to the Soviet zone of occupation in Halle in June 1945 .

Ernst Klee , Gunter Schöbel and Thomas Widera accuse Grimm of having at least been an accomplice to the cultural robbery. There is evidence that Grimm was not involved in the movement of Ukrainian cultural assets from Kiev to Höchstädt. The accusation is therefore controversial. Joachim Herrmann estimates that Grimm did not become the perpetrator, but refused to act. In view of Grimm's activities in Kiev and Höchstädt, one cannot speak of being uninvolved.

Time after 1945

In December 1945 Grimm was dismissed from the public service because of membership in the NSDAP. On February 26, 1946, the Soviet secret police NKVD arrested Grimm in order to intern him in the special camp in Torgau . From there he was taken to the Buchenwald special camp in December 1946 , from which he was released on February 3, 1950 when it was closed, without having been charged or convicted. Later, Grimm received repeated invitations to archaeological conferences in the USSR and Ukraine. In 1951 Grimm became a research assistant at the German Academy of Sciences in East Berlin and worked on the commission for prehistory. After various teaching assignments, he became professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1955 and, within the Academy of Sciences, from 1957 deputy director of the Institute for Prehistory. In 1955 he also became a member of the German Archaeological Institute .

From 1956 to 1972 he was the editor in charge of the magazine “ Excavations and Finds , News Journal for Pre- and Early History”. He was a member of the editorial board of the magazines: “ Natur und Heimat ” from 1953 to 1962 and “ Zeitschrift für Archäologie ” since vol. 1, 1967–1973. Paul Grimm was effective in popular science through articles, brochures and tours of his excavation sites as well as through his work in the Kulturbund der DDR , which he u. a. used to give numerous lectures on the excavation in Tilleda. In 1975 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

Grimm was responsible for milestones in the history of German archeology, particularly through the excavations in the medieval desert Hohenrode and the Palatinate Tilleda, the first completely excavated royal palace . The names Baalberger Kultur and Salzmünder Kultur for two important groups of finds from the Neolithic originate from him . These investigations, as well as more theoretical considerations, made Grimm a pioneer of medieval archeology. Although he emphasized the equivalence of archaeological and written sources in principle , he nevertheless saw a close connection between archeology and historical data.

Publications (selection)

  • Hohenrode, a medieval settlement in the southern Harz. Halle 1939 (= publications of the State Institute for Folklore Halle , 11)
  • The prehistoric and early historical castle walls of the districts of Halle and Magdeburg. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1958 (= manual of prehistoric ramparts and weir systems , edited by Wilhelm Unverzagt , part 1 = German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Writings of the Section for Prehistory and Early History , Volume 6)
  • The contribution of archeology to the study of the Middle Ages. (In: Heinz A. Knorr (Hrsg.): Problems of the early Middle Ages from an archaeological and historical perspective , Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1966, pp. 39–74)
  • Tilleda; a royal palace at Kyffhäuser part 1. The main castle. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1968 (= German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Writings of the Section for Prehistory and Early History , Volume 24)
  • Tilleda; a royal palace at Kyffhäuser part 2. The outer bailey and summary. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1990 (= German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Writings of the Section for Prehistory and Early History , Volume 40)

literature

  • Karl-Heinz Otto , Joachim Herrmann (ed.): Settlement, castle and city. Studies at the beginning. Academy, Berlin 1969 ( Writings of the Section for Prehistory and Early History of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Vol. 25, ZDB -ID 517961-0 ) [Festschrift for Paul Grimm].
  • Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X , pp. 247-248.
  • Henrik Eberle: The Martin Luther University in the time of National Socialism. Mdv, Halle 2002, ISBN 3-89812-150-X , p. 372f.
  • Hans-Joachim Böttcher : Grimm, Hugo Paul, in: Important historical personalities of the Düben Heath, AMF - No. 237, 2012, pp. 32–33.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d http://www.catalogus-professorum-halensis.de/grimmpaul.html .
  2. ^ A b Ernst Klee: The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 198.
  3. ↑ Heinz-Julius Niehoff (PDF; 88 kB) worked from 1912 to 1945 as an ethnologist and photographer at the state institute in Halle. He died in 1947 in the Soviet special camp No. 1 Mühlberg .
  4. ↑ a b c Report (PDF; 10.7 MB) of the “Special Staff Prehistory and Early History” of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg on its activities in 1942, accessed on August 5, 2013
  5. ↑ a b L. Silina, E. Pokrowska, E. Machno: A document of the museum's history . Information for the museums of the GDR, No. 2, 1989, Institute for Museums, pp. 62–66, ISSN  0138-1989 , accessed on August 5, 2013
  6. ↑ a b Eike Gringmuth-Dallmer: Obituary: Paul Grimm 1907 - 1993 . Journal of Archeology, Issue 28, 1994, pp. 145-147, ISSN  0044-233X
  7. ↑ Illustration of the Grimms ID card in Höchstädt (PDF; 174 kB), accessed on August 5, 2013
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Eichwede, Ulrike Hartung: Betr., Seizure: Nazi art theft in the Soviet Union . Edition Temmen, 1998, p. 64, 3861083264
  9. ^ Heinz Grünert: Gustaf Kossinna (1858-1931): From Germanists to Prehistorians: A Scientist in the Empire and in the Weimar Republic , Leidorf, 2002, p. 357, ISBN 389646504X
  10. ↑ Reinhardt Seitz: The princely renaissance castle in Höchstädt on the Danube - its building history and its (Eastern) European references. Weißenhorn, Konrad Verlag 2009, ISBN 9783874375375
  11. ^ Appointment of Grimm as head of the "salvage facility" Höchstädt from April 23, 1945 , signed by Rudolf Stampfuß , accessed on August 7, 2013
  12. ↑ NARA M1947: Restitution Claim Records: Records Concerning the Central Collecting Points ( "Ardelia Hall Collection") . Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point, 1945-1952, Roll 0048, p.41 , accessed on August 5, 2013. The document is printed in: Ulrike Hartung: Verschleppt und Verschollen . Edition Temmen, 2000, p. 290, ISBN 3861083361
  13. ↑ Gunter Schöbel: The Ostinitiativen Hans Reinerths . In: Judith Schachtmann / Michael Strobel / Thomas Widera (eds): Politics and science in prehistoric archeology , Göttingen, 2009, pp. 267 to 283. ISBN 3899717414
  14. ^ A b Thomas Widera: Werner Coblenz and prehistoric archeology. In: Judith Schachtmann / Michael Strobel / Thomas Widera (eds): Politics and science in prehistoric archeology , Göttingen, 2009, p. 21, ISBN 3899717414
  15. ↑ Joachim Herrmann : Review of Prehistory and National Socialism, ed. by Achim Leube in collaboration with Morten Hegewisch . In: Bulletin for Fascism and World War Research , 21, 2003, pp. 89 ff. ISSN  1434-5781
  16. ^ Notice of discharge (PDF; 206 kB) dated December 18, 1945, accessed on August 7, 2013
  17. ^ Annual journal for Central German Prehistory, Volume 62, 1978, p. 25
  18. ↑ Ethnographisch-Archäologische Zeitschrift , Issue 14, 1973, pp. 154–156
  19. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 97.
personal data
SURNAME Grimm, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German prehistorian
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Torgau
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1993
Place of death Berlin