Waldtraut Bohm

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Waldtraut Bohm (1961)

Waldtraut Bohm (born July 8, 1890 in Menz , † April 12, 1969 in Berlin ) was a German prehistoric scientist .

Youth and education

Waldtraut Bohm was the eldest of four children of the royal forest overseer, most recently the royal guardian, Emil Bohm (1862–1932) in Rehbrücke near Potsdam and Finkenkrug near Spandau, a brother of the composer Carl Bohm, and Minna Margarethe geb. Fritze (1868-1904). Due to her father's changing places of work, she attended various schools in Berlin and Brandenburg. Shortly before finishing secondary school for girls in Spandau, the mother died and the father became seriously ill. Probably for this reason, a study of the prehistory was initially not possible. Since 1908 she has been preparing for the teacher examination, in 1911 she passed her examination in Berlin as a teacher for middle and high school for girls and a year later as a gymnastics teacher. In 1917 she joined the Brandenburgia Society . From 1920 at the latest she showed a keen interest in the prehistory. She joined the German Society for Prehistory, founded by Gustaf Kossinna in 1909, and from 1920 onwards began attending various lectures at the University of Berlin in addition to her job, specifically in prehistory, history, geology, languages ​​and philosophy. In 1926 she took a leave of absence in order to devote herself entirely to studying, where she had been enrolled as a student in history since 1925, but only from 1929 on with the subject of prehistory. After initially studying with Max Ebert , who died in 1929, she became a Dr. in 1930 with a thesis on " The older Bronze Age in the Mark Brandenburg " with Hubert Schmidt and Wilhelm Unverzagt. phil. PhD.

Archaeological work

After completing her doctorate, she got her first job in 1930 at the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin, which was limited to one year due to austerity measures. Here the antiquities from Silesia should be worked up.

On April 1, 1931, Waldtraut Bohm began to record the Westprignitz . The starting point and scientific anchor point on site was the Perleberg Museum and, above all, the deputy museum director Ferdinand Meyer in his role as carer for the cultural and historical soil antiquities of the district. In the summer of 1931, under a work contract, she carried out excavations on the Bronze Age burial ground in Bresch (today in Pirow ), and so did the next year, when the Bronze Age settlement in Viesecke (today in Plattenburg ) and probably also work on the small ramparts in Havelberg were added. Excavations in Viesecke followed in 1932 and in Bresch in 1933. After she was called to Berlin in May 1933, the work in Viesecke was continued.

Just three years later, with the support of the museum, the archaeologist had largely completed her work. With the recording of all prehistoric and early historical finds from literature, museum, private and school collections, the uncovering and recording of a large number of sites as well as various excavations, she had comprehensively worked on the prehistory of Westprignitz. Most of the discoveries came into the Perleberg collection. In doing so, she proceeded very methodically: All the finds from the Prignitz were recorded and mapped, historical documents and maps were studied, questionnaires were sent to the communities, residents in the village pubs were interviewed, the slightest evidence of "urn finds" followed, extensive field inspections and excavations carried out. For this purpose, she had her own vehicle, a Hanomag , which was unusual at the time . In the end, 1200 sites were known (previously only 188), and seven new sites were added to the castle ramparts. She created a lot of photos, which was not yet common in this form at the time. The museum in Perleberg owes a quarter of its finds to her.

But it was also her interest to sensitize the population to the legacies of their ancestors. In 1933 she founded a working group for the German prehistory of Westprignitz . The group's goals were purely technical at first: The archaeological monuments in the district were to be protected, the population informed about the significance of the prehistory, but according to its own information it was also intended to “incorporate German prehistory and racial studies into the will and goals of our new one To incorporate the state ”.

From 1934 she undertook further excavations. In 1934 she and helpers uncovered a Bronze Age settlement in Lenzersilge (today in Karstädt (Prignitz) ), and in 1936 the Bronze Age settlement of Perleberg followed as an emergency excavation.

Work at the "Rosenberg Office"

The excavations were financed by the Perleberg Museum, but also partly by the Prehistory and Early History Department of the Reich Association of German Folk Research . The department was headed by Hans Reinerth , head of the Office for Prehistory in the " Office Rosenberg ", who assigned her to various activities in the following years. In 1934 she was appointed state director for the province of Brandenburg in Reinerth's Reichsbund for German prehistory . In 1936 she took part in specialist lectures within the "National Socialist Education". From 1938 Bohm was among other things in the Office for the Maintenance of Literature of the NSDAP and in the Reich Office for the Promotion of German Literature , which belonged to the "Amt Rosenberg", as a pre-lecturer for the subject Prehistory and early history, checked for worldview and scientificity. Since 1939, she organized the establishment of the Gau working group for the prehistory of Brandenburg and, in addition to matters relating to monument preservation, also took care of the "essential foundations for ideological training". She contributed to the creation of school books and teaching materials and revised the hand dictionary of German prehistory .

In the power struggle between "Amt Rosenberg" with Hans Reinerth on the one hand and Reinerth's opponents, who found increasing support from the SS and their institution " Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe ", on the other, she sided with Reinerth and provided information At the end of 1936 Rosenberg talked about the efforts of quite different opponents of Reinerth to form a "united front" against Reinerth, which was also approved by Werner Buttler from the Reich Ministry of Education . Rosenberg then tried in vain to overthrow Butler.

After 1945

After 1945 she was no longer able to gain a foothold in her field, in contrast to many other prehistorians who were burdened by their work under National Socialism. A possible reason for this is seen today that she lacked the network after 1945 because she stuck to Hans Reinerth until the end, when the majority of his followers had already turned away from him. After all, she, who lived in West Berlin, was still in contact with some Prignitz museum directors such as Hilde Arndt (Perleberg) and Arthur Grüneberg ( Lenzen ) in the 1950s and 1960s .

She remained without a family all her life. She died in 1969, ignored by experts.

Appreciation and criticism

According to Achim Leube , Waldtraud Bohm is well known to today's generation of prehistorians thanks to numerous larger excavations and her dissertation on the older Bronze Age. He sees her as "one of the hardest-working scientists in Brandenburg research at the time". Their processing of the prehistory of Westprignitz is still considered a standard work today.

While her professional work is valued to this day, she also has "the stigma of ideological popularization". In the time of National Socialism, she used this popularization "not only to win people over to prehistory, but also to politically manipulate and influence a large public in the sense of the ideology of the time".

literature

  • Achim Leube , Prehistory between the Empire and the reunified Germany. 100 years of prehistory and early history at the Berlin University Unter den Linden. Habelt, Bonn 2010. ISBN 978-3-7749-3629-4 , pp. 48-49.
  • Lecture by Arne Lindemann in Perleberg 2013, reproduction by Harriet Lieven under the title “ Perleberg was her big time ” in MAZ, Prignitz edition, from April 26, 2013, online at maz-online.de
  • Arne Lindemann: "So the Prignitzer Boden belongs to the ancient homeland of the Teutons". Waldtraut Bohm and the Perleberg Museum (with picture). In: Messages from the Brandenburg Museum Association 18 (June 2011), online at www.museumsverband-brandenburg.de
  • Kerstin Beck: Standard work is 80 years old . In: MAZ, Prignitz / Perleberg from January 20, 2017 (with picture), online at maz-online.de
  • Felicitas Spring: Carl Bohm - an almost forgotten song composer. His family and ancestors. In: Genealogy. Volume 35, No. 10, 1986, pp. 317-326.

Works (selection)

  • The older Bronze Age in the Mark Brandenburg (1935, partial print 1933), also Berlin, Phil. Diss. 1929 (Prehistoric Research, 9).
  • The prehistory of the Westprignitz district. Edited by the district committee d. Westprignitz district. Leipzig: Kabitzsch 1937

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Spring, pp. 322, 324
  2. ↑ Spring, pp. 322, 324
  3. ↑ Lindemann, p. 40
  4. ↑ Leube, p. 48; Beck, 80 years
  5. ↑ Beck, 80 years
  6. ↑ Lindemann, p. 40; Leube, p. 48
  7. ↑ Leube, p. 48; Beck, 80 years
  8. ↑ Leube, p. 48; Lindemann, p. 40; Bohm (1935)
  9. ↑ Leube, p. 48
  10. ↑ Leube, pp. 48-49
  11. ↑ Lindemann, p. 40
  12. ↑ Beck, 80 years
  13. ↑ Lindemann, p. 40
  14. ↑ Beck; Lindemann, p. 41
  15. ^ Lindemann 2013
  16. ↑ Lindemann, p. 41
  17. ↑ Lindemann, p. 41
  18. ↑ Beck, 80 years
  19. ↑ Lindemann, p. 41
  20. ↑ Leube, p. 49; Lindemann, p. 41; Gunter Schöbel: Hans Reinerth. Researcher - Nazi functionary - museum director . In: Achim Leube , Morton Hegewisch (ed.): Prehistory and National Socialism. Central and Eastern European Prehistory and Early History Research in the years 1933-1945 . Studies on the history of science and universities 2. Heidelberg 2002. ISBN 3-935025-08-4 , pp. 321–396, here p. 352
  21. ↑ Schöbel, Hans Reinerth, pp. 352, 368; Georg Tappe [as a cartographer], Waldtraut Bohm, Gerhard Strodtkötter [explanations]: Germany's development in the course of its history , Bückeburg 1938; 8th improved edition Bückeburg 1941
  22. ↑ Waldemar Barthel, Carl Atzenbeck: Handlexikon der deutschen Prehistory . Reviewed and, in essential parts, revised and supplemented by Waldtraut Bohm, 2nd extended edition, Munich-Solln 1938
  23. ↑ Leube, p. 49; Reinhard Bollmus, The Office Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule , Munich 1970, 2nd edition Munich 2006, pp. 208–210, 318–319; Helmut Heiber: Walter Frank and his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany . Stuttgart 1966, p. 253. It referred, somewhat imprecisely, to Ernst Petersen , Alexander Langsdorff , Ernst Sprockhoff and Werner Buttler.
  24. ↑ Lindemann, p. 41
  25. ↑ Beck
  26. ^ Lindemann 2013
  27. ↑ Lindemann, p. 41; Leube, p. 49
  28. ↑ Leube, p. 48; Lindemann, p. 41
  29. ↑ Lindemann, p. 41; Leube, p. 49
personal data
SURNAME Bohm, Waldtraut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German prehistoric woman
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Menz
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1969
Place of death Berlin