Robert Kammerzell

Robert Kammerzell (born September 2, 1884 in Vienna , † September 17, 1950 in Plank am Kamp ) was a Lower Austrian artist and local researcher.

Kammerzell emigrated to the United States in 1912 . He worked as a set painter at the Metropolitan Opera in New York . In addition to this rather manual approach to painting, he was also artistically active, as shown by numerous high-quality landscape portraits from 1914 to 1917 (around 1975 still in the possession of Mr. Franz Fischer in Langenlois , a relative of Kammerzell). As a painter, Kammerzell is largely forgotten today.

In 1922 he returned to Austria. After an initial stay in Perchtoldsdorf near Vienna, he moved to Plank am Kamp in 1923, where he lived with his wife in the Villa Kammerzell. Here he began - inspired by Josef Höbarth - with his work on the prehistory and early history of the area around his place of residence and beyond that of the Kamptal. Kammerzell discovered numerous settlement and discovery sites from the Paleolithic to the early Middle Ages and also carried out excavations. The settlement inventories of the Lengyel Culture, the Middle Bronze Age and the Late Iron Age contain typical and in some cases extraordinary evidence of these cultures and are still the only evidence of this kind for the area between the Horner Basin and the Kamptal . Kammerzell searched and dug in with success Fernitz , Maiersch , Plank am Kamp , Freischling , Zitternberg and Thunau am Kamp . Due to his artistic inclination, Kammerzell restored his finds himself and set them up in his house like a museum.

As a result of the stock market crash of 1929 on the New York Stock Exchange, Robert Kammerzell became impoverished and had to severely restrict his living conditions and his local history activities. In addition, there was a creeping illness that led to his death in 1950. The collection was sold by the widow and was not accessible for decades. The collection is now in the Natural History Museum in Vienna through purchase and is awaiting scientific processing. Although the Kammerzell Collection - due to adverse circumstances - has not yet been used satisfactorily by the subject of prehistory, it plays a certain role in research. Its importance led early on to a protection by the Federal Monuments Office in Vienna, which also carried out an inventory and photographic documentation while Kammerzell was still alive.

literature

• Hermann Maurer : Robert Kammerzell (1884–1950). In: Horner writings on prehistory and early history. 7/8, 1983-1984, p. 78.