Vera Leisner

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Vera Leisner (born February 4, 1885 in New York as Amanda Vera de la Camp, † May 31, 1972 in Hamburg ) was a German prehistoric expert specializing in megalithic sites on the Iberian Peninsula .

Life

Childhood and youth

Vera Leisner's life was characterized by great mobility. Her father Hugo Otto de la Camp (1846–1919) worked as a businessman in the import-export business, after years in China (1868) and Japan (1873), since 1876 in New York, and later alternately in Japan and New York. He died in his native city of Hamburg . Her mother Estella Magdalena Lange-de la Camp (1862-1887) came from Cap Haïtien in Haiti, but died at the age of 25 with the birth of her third child, a son, on April 30, 1887 in New York as Vera was two years old. She then lived with her brother for about eight years in her grandmother's house in Hamburg (from 1887 to 1895) until her father married Clara Maria Nissle there on January 31, 1895. Vera then went back to New York for a year with her parents. From 1898 the family lived again in Hamburg, where Vera attended a lyceum, then a boarding school in Eisenach . As was customary at the time for the upbringing of a "higher daughter", one focus of her training was the promotion of music and painting. On September 2, 1909 , at the age of 24, she married Georg Leisner , who was then serving as a captain in the 1st Bavarian Infantry Regiment , and lived with him in Munich. During the First World War - from around 1914 to 1917 - she worked as a nurse in Munich. After the end of the war, Georg retired, and in 1918 the two bought a small farm in the village of Höhenberg in Bavaria, although they had no experience in farming. In 1926 they sold the farm and went on a trip to Italy. Then Georg Leisner went on a research trip to Africa with Leo Frobenius .

academic education

Back in Bavaria, they made the acquaintance of Hugo Obermaier , who suggested that Georg Leisner study prehistory . He enrolled at the Chair of Prehistory and Protohistory at the University of Marburg . Vera also planned such a degree, but had to catch up on the Abitur, which she - now 42 years old - passed in 1927. Then she began - like her husband - to study prehistory and early history. During this time Georg Leisner was already busy with megalithic tombs, and the plan arose to create a megalithic tomb corpus for the Iberian Peninsula. Vera used her drawing skills to record such graves and also learned to take photos. In 1928 both went to Marburg, where Georg Leisner did his doctorate on megalithic tombs in the Spanish region of Galicia with Gero von Merhart . Since Vera had not yet completed her studies, this meant for the Megalithic Tombs Corpus Plan either to obtain a university degree first or to start working in the fields with her husband immediately in Spain. She chose the second solution. From Edward Sangmeister it is narrated that Gero von Merhart said comfortingly: "A doctoral hat is enough for the" Leisnerianum ""

The megalithic complexes of the Iberian Peninsula

Hermanfrid Schubart wrote about the large undertaking to compose a corpus of the megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula : »Georg and Vera Leisner had initially started the investigation of the megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula as a completely private undertaking, without any financial support from any official source. They certainly received scientific stimulation and moral support from Hugo Obermaier at that time in Madrid and Gero von Merhart in Marburg, but only later trips were made possible by the German Research Foundation «.

They first set out for southern Spain, where they began to systematically record the megalithic tombs of Andalusia , in field work and in museums. They met the Belgian mining engineer and archaeologist Louis Siret . In the Seville area they visited the seriously ill George Bonsor , whose widow later gave them access to his work, and in Portugal they met José Leite de Vasconcellos and Manuel Heleno . When the Spanish civil war broke out , they were forced to return to Germany, where they worked out the first volume, "The South", of the planned corpus "The Megalithic Tombs of the Iberian Peninsula" and published it - in the middle of World War II . The war made it difficult to get an exit visa, which only succeeded in 1943. With this they continued their work in Portugal. Perhaps there was a connection with the establishment of the Madrid Department of the German Archaeological Institute in the same year. Shortly before they left, their Munich apartment was the victim of a bomb attack, so they decided to stay in Lisbon permanently. But the early end of the war brought new, mainly economic, difficulties. Thanks to the support of Portuguese colleagues, above all G. Cordeiro Ramos, who, as President of the Instituto de Alta Cultura , Ministério de Educação Nacional, placed work assignments for them, they could barely survive. At times they also had a grant from Siemens .

The Madrid department of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), which was temporarily taken over by the Allies at the end of the war, was able to reopen on March 3, 1954. This resulted in funding for Georg and Vera Leisner from the German Research Foundation (DFG). As early as 1956, the Madrid department of the DAI was able to continue its newly founded series, Madrid Research , as volume 1, the publication of the megalithic tomb corpus. The second delivery followed in 1959. After Georg Leisner's death in 1958, Doña Vera, as she was called on the Iberian Peninsula and among friends, continued the work very strictly on her own until old age and was able to publish the third delivery of Volume 1 of the Madrid series in 1965. Because of her extraordinary achievements - in addition to the corpus, numerous other essays and monographs were written - Vera Leisner received an honorary doctorate from the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg in 1960 . Edward Sangmeister awarded her the certificate in the same year at a ceremony in the Madrid Institute of the DAI. During the preparations for the fourth part of the series "The West" of the Megalitgräber-Corpus, she died in Hamburg in 1972. Until that year she lived in Lisbon.

Scientific legacy

Her academic legacy was taken over by the Madrid department of the DAI and later formed the basis for the establishment of a branch in Lisbon, where Philine Kalb continued to work on her unfinished work and delivered it to Madrid in 1998 as the fourth delivery of the volume "The West" Research published. Today the »Leisner Archive« is kept at the former library of the branch office of the German Archaeological Institute in Lisbon, which is now housed in the Delegação Geral do Património Cultural (DGPC) in the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda in Lisbon.

Publications by Vera Leisner

Monographs

  • Georg Leisner, Vera Leisner: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The south . Roman-Germanic research, Volume 17. Verlag von Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1943.
  • Carlos Cerdán Márquez, Georg Leisner, Vera Leisner: Los sepulcros megalíticos de Huelva. Excavaciones arqueológicas del plan nacional 1946. Informes y Memorias, Ministerio de Educación Nacional, Comisaria General de Excavaciones Arqueológicas, Madrid 1952.
  • Georg Leisner, Vera Leisner: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The west . Madrid Research, Volume 1, 1st delivery. Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1956.
  • Georg Leisner, Vera Leisner: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The west . Madrid Research, Volume 1, 2nd delivery. Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1959.
  • Vera Leisner, George Zbyszewski, Octávio da Veiga Ferreira: Les Grottes Artificielles de Casal do Pardo (Palmela) et la Culture du Vase Campaniforme . Memória (Nova Série) Volume 8. Serviços Geológicos de Portugal, Lisboa 1961.
  • Vera Leisner: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The west . Madrid Research, Volume 1, 3rd delivery. Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1965.
  • Vera Leisner, George Zbyszewski, Octávio da Veiga Ferreira: Les monuments préhistoriques de Praia das Maçãs et de Casainhos . Memória (Nova Série) Volume 16. Serviços Geológicos de Portugal, Lisboa 1969.
  • Vera Leisner, compiled by Philine Kalb from the estate: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The west . Madrid Research, Volume 1, 4th delivery. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1998. ISBN 3-11-014907-9 .

Essays

  • Vera Leisner - Octávio da Veiga Ferreira: Os monumentos megalíticos de Trigache e A-da-Beja . In: Actas e Memórias do I Congresso Nacional de Arqueologia, realizado em Lisboa de 15 a 20 de December 1958, homenagem ao Doutor José Leite de Vasconcellos. Lisboa 1959, pp. 187-195.
  • Vera Leisner, Octávio da Veiga Ferreira: Primeiras datas de rádiocarbono 14 para a cultura megalítica portuguesa . In: Revista de Guimarães. Volume 73, 1963, pp. 358-366 (Figures 1-8).

Literature about Vera Leisner

  • Edward Sangmeister: In memoriam Vera Leisner . In: Madrid Communications. Volume 14, 1973. pp. 247-250.
  • Hermanfrid Schubart: Welcome at the opening of the lecture series on problems of megalithic grave research. In: Problems of megalithic grave research. Lectures on the 100th birthday of Vera Leisner. Madrid research. Volume 16. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1990, ISBN 3-11-011966-8 , pp. 1-7.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edward Sangmeister: In memoriam Vera Leisner. In: Madrid Communications. Volume 14, 1973, pp. 247-250. The information on the family situation comes from Teresa de la Camp, Vera Leisner's sister.
  2. ↑ Edward Sangmeister: In memoriam Vera Leisner. In: Madrid Communications. Volume 14, 1973, p. 247.
  3. ↑ Hermanfrid Schubart: In: Problems of megalithic grave research. Madrid research. Volume 16, Berlin and New York 1990, p. 2
  4. ↑ Hermanfrid Schubart: In: Problems of megalithic grave research. Madrid research. Volume 16, Berlin and New York 1990, pp. 1-2, and information noted by Vera Leisner's sister, Terese de la Camp.
  5. ↑ Edward Sangmeister: In memoriam Vera Leisner. In: Madrid Communications. Volume 14, 1973, pp. 248-249.
  6. ↑ Hermanfrid Schubart: In: Problems of megalithic grave research. Madrid research. Volume 16, Berlin and New York 1990, p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Leisner, Vera
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Camp, Amanda Vera de la (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German prehistorian and archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1972
Place of death Hamburg