Peter Anton Tholen

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Peter Anton Tholen (born October 10, 1882 in Broichhoven in the former Geilenkirchen district , † January 12, 1950 in Waldniel ) was a German archaeologist and head of major excavations in and around Cologne . Through his studies of many Romanesque churches , he was able to gain new insights into their architectural history.

Life

Origin and training

Peter Anton Tholen was the youngest of the eight children who had emerged from the marriage of farmer Peter Josef Tholen and Maria Josefa Tholen, born Jansen from Broichhoven. Even as a young man he was interested in archeology , inspired by the remains of an early medieval fortification, a ditch-enclosed round hill near his parents' farm. In later years he researched this moth and other ground monuments in his homeland. He first studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and worked as a church painter . With his savings he financed a trip to Italy and visited Florence , Rome and Naples . He was so impressed by the ruins and the buildings of the Roman Empire , some of which were still almost intact , that he decided to research the archaeological monuments of his homeland after his return.

He decided to move to Cologne because he hoped there would be professional opportunities to carry out archaeological research. In self-study of prehistory and early history , he acquired a great deal of knowledge in the determination of artifacts . His investigations and the publications of his discoveries were recognized by experts. The self-taught received in 1927 a job as excavation technicians in newly Roman (later Roman-Germanic) department of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum .

research

Excavations in Cologne

On behalf of the Walraff-Richartz Museum, Tholen was involved in several Cologne excavation projects. These included the excavations carried out in the St. Severin area under the direction of Fritz Fremersdorf (1930, 1938–1945). The extensive investigations of this southern necropolis of the city produced findings that showed a clear continuity of the burials that took place from the late Roman period to the 8th century. It was also possible to determine the various pre-Carolingian burial churches and their expansion from the 5th to the 8th centuries. Further excavations in later times dealt with the following buildings up to the 12th century.

Tholen was also involved in the recovery of the Dionysus mosaic in 1941 and in the excavations on the site of the former Deutz fort .

The most important excavations in St. Ursula Church were carried out in 1942 by Otto Doppelfeld and Tholen. The floor of the nave , which was exposed after a bombing, made it possible to carry out investigations in which the remains of the previous building were found in the lower layers. The detailed find report prepared by Tholen with drawings was evaluated by Doppelfeld in 1948.

Excavations in the Rhineland

As in Cologne, Tholen had already carried out archaeological research in the rest of the Rhineland in the period before the Second World War , with the focus of his work in his home region, the Heinsberg area, and in the Cologne area.

Tholen, who was convinced that in the Romanesque church buildings there should have been considerably more wall remains from older hall churches than had previously been assumed, found his thesis confirmed in many cases. In his investigations into the architectural history of numerous early to high medieval church buildings, he succeeded in finding a pre-Romanesque hall church in around 50 churches in the Rhineland.

Tholen gained new knowledge of building history, for example, from the predecessor of the old St. Lambertus Church in Bliesheim, where the material could be dated to the Carolingian period based on an analysis of the processing of preserved stones.

Tholen's finding of the Roman cult site on Swister Berg in 1933 and the drawings he made illustrate the size and importance of this complex. The investigation took place in connection with a church that was lost there. Tholen succeeded in redefining the location, age and individual buildings of the former parish and pilgrimage church . Tholen found an 8 m long and 10 m wide nave with an exposed choir. The mortar of the foundation walls referred to a building from Carolingian times, which differed from the mortar of the tower that still exists today. He assumed that the predominantly wooden building would be replaced by a stone building, which, like the tower, was built in the 11th / 12th centuries. Century was built.

During the 1935 investigation of the Church of St. Kosmas and Damian in Pulheim , Tholen discovered the long sides of a hall church and the associated windows that had been preserved under the later building. A tower was added to the church, dated around the year 1000, in the 12th century.

After the Second World War, he continued his investigations in further excavations. In 1947/48 he succeeded in determining an early Christian church on a burial ground and a subsequent pre-Romanesque hall church in the church of St. Maternus in Breberen .

The Lambertus Church in Erkelenz is one of the objects examined in his homeland . When the reconstruction of the parish church, which had been destroyed in World War II, began there in 1947, Tholen was responsible for supervising the excavation work. In the remains of the Gothic building, he found an older hall building 15.6 m long and 7.6 m wide, followed by a rectangular choir 4.3 m long and 4.9 m wide.

In addition to research into the architectural history of the early Rhenish churches, which dominated his work, the archaeologist with a wide range of interests also turned to other research areas.

In 1924, for example, he published his study of a Franconian Fliehburg ( Motte ), the Düwelsburg / Teufelsburg on the Villenhöhe near Knapsack , which unfortunately had to give way to the Knapsack Chemical Park (Hürth part of the plant) in 1971 in the Brühler Heimatblätter . In 1929 he examined the branch line of the Roman aqueduct on the foothills , which ran on the western slope of the Ville and supplied the farms there with water.

Investigations into barrows between Hermülheim , Liblar , Weilerswist and Walberberg were also carried out under his direction . They show a previously unknown settlement of the landscape on both sides of the Ville .

Tholen has been described as "a pioneer of medieval archeology and an excellent expert on church buildings in the Rhineland".

Retired

In old age he moved back to his homeland and lived in Elmpt in the last years of his life . He did not live to see the publication of a work on the researched church buildings that was in preparation. He died after a long illness in Waldniel and was buried in the cemetery of his home parish Breberen .

This article or section needs to be revised. More details should be found on the discussion page, under “ Honorary doctor? “Must be specified. Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

He should be honored several times for his research with an honorary doctorate. This probably failed for political reasons.

Commemoration

In his home town of Gangelt , a street from Broichhoven to Breberen, the Peter-Anton-Tholen-Weg, was named after him in 2003.

documentation

The surviving documentation from his academic legacy on the early churches in the Rhineland, which is in the family's private archive, was published at the University of Munich from 2007 to 2009 by Bernd Päffgen as project manager and Kay-P. Lippmann worked up as an employee.

literature

  • Wilhelm Piepers: Peter Anton Tholen in memory , in: Home calendar of the Selfkantkreis Geilenkirchen-Heinsberg, born in 1953, pp. 79–80
  • Bernd Päffgen: The excavations in St. Severin zu Cologne , von Zabern, Mainz 1992, ISBN 3-8053-1251-2 , part 1, pp. 48-52 (curriculum vitae with details of all excavations in which Tholen was involved)
  • Ulrich S. Soenius, Jürgen Wilhelm (Ed.): Kölner Personen-Lexikon . Greven, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 . P. 541
  • Josef Wißkirchen: St. Kosmas and Damian in Pulheim . Pulheim 2010. ISBN 978-3-927765-49-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Registry office Schümm, now Gangelt G 29/1882
  2. ↑ registry office Waldniel S 4/1950
  3. ↑ a b Ulrich S. Soenius, Jürgen Wilhelm: Kölner Personen-Lexikon. P. 541
  4. ↑ Peter Josef Tholen: A boy from the Selfkant . To the home country. Supplement to the Heinsberger Volkszeitung. No. 2, 1950.
  5. ^ Wilhelm Piepers: Peter Anton Tholen to the memory , in: Heimatkalender des Selfkantkreis Geilenkirchen-Heinsberg, born 1953, pp. 79–80
  6. ↑ a b death note Peter Anton Tholen.
  7. ↑ Bernd Päffgen: The excavations in St. Severin in Cologne, von Zabern, Mainz 1992, ISBN 3-8053-1251-2 , part 1, pp. 48–52
  8. ^ Gernot Nürnberger: The excavations in St. Ursula in Cologne. Diss. Bonn 2002 online (last accessed October 4, 2012)
  9. ^ A b Peter Josef Tholen: The Saalkirchen im Selfkant , in: Early church building in the Heinsberg district , Museum publications of the Heinsberg district, Volume 8, Heinsberg 1987, pp. 224–236
  10. ^ A b Peter Simons: Bliesheim. History of the Cologne monastery rule Mariengraden , pp. 5 and 77
  11. ↑ Peter Kraut: The story of Swist - Swister Berg . In: Weilerswist: 700 years 1310-2010 . Weilerswist 2010. pp. 33-35
  12. ^ Horst Bursch: The former parish and pilgrimage church on the Swisterberg . Weilerswister Heimatblätter Issue 27. Weilerswist 2002. P. 17–31 with reference to PA Tholen: A place of worship of our ancestors on the foothills , in: Westdeutscher Beobachter of November 12, 1933.
  13. ^ Josef Wißkirchen: St. Kosmas and Damian in Pulheim . Association for history and local history. Pulheim 2010. P. 21–23 with reference to PA Tholen: The Pulheim parish church put through its paces . In: Der Neue Tag , daily newspaper for Cologne city and country, from February 24, 1935, reprinted in Pulheimer Geschichtsblätter 29/2005 pp. 44–49
  14. ^ PA Tholen: The excavations in the parish church of St. Lambertus zu Erkelenz , in: Early church building in the district of Heinsberg , Museum publications of the district of Heinsberg, Volume 8, Heinsberg 1987, pp. 206-210.
  15. ↑ Reprinted and annotated by Günter Frentzel in color Post , factory newspaper of Hoechst, March 23, 1969 and in Hürther home 28/29, 1971 p 22-28 and photo p.49
  16. ^ PA Tholen: The Roman aqueduct across the foothills . In: Weilerswister Heimatblätter , Heft 30, Weilerswist 2003. Reprint of an article from the Kölner Stadtanzeiger No. 618 of December 6, 1929
  17. ↑ Bernd Päffgen: The excavations in St. Severin in Cologne, von Zabern, Mainz 1992, ISBN 3-8053-1251-2 , part 1, p. 48
  18. ↑ Project description: Dr. hc Peter Tholen (1882-1950), Early Churches in the Rhineland - Documentation of the academic legacy . (last accessed November 17, 2011)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Tholen, Peter Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Broichhoven , Geilenkirchen district
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1950
Place of death Waldniel