Walter Sölter

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Walter Waldemar Sölter (born March 15, 1930 in Delbrück ; † November 7, 1988 ) was a German art and building historian , archaeologist , aerial photo archaeologist and director of the Ruhrland Museum in Essen and the Rheinisches Industriemuseum in Oberhausen.

Life

Sölter was born as the son of the manager of the Oberhausen milk supply, Walter Sölter and his wife Helene, née Hirsch. He started school in 1936 in Oberhausen , where he attended the municipal high school from 1940 and was at the grammar school in Helmstedt from 1944 until the end of the war . He then switched to the natural science grammar school in Oberhausen. In 1949 he retrained at the Max-Planck-Gymnasium in Duisburg-Meiderich . There he passed the final examination in 1951 . In the same year he first went to the Philosophical-Theological University of Regensburg and continued his studies at the universities of Zurich , Marburg , Cologne and Berlin . His teachers in the main subject of art history were Hans Kauffmann (Berlin) and Richard Hamann-Mac Lean (Marburg). In addition, he took the minor subjects ethnology and sociology .

With his dissertation on the former collegiate church of St. Suitbertus in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth , which he began in 1959 and completed in 1962 at Kauffmann , Sölter received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin . The first independent excavation management led him from 1963 to 1964 to the former collegiate church of St. Chrysanthus and Daria in Bad Münstereifel . The building history should be clarified here. On April 1, 1966 he was appointed city archaeologist in Aachen as the successor to Walter Sage and carried out two smaller rescue excavations at the Schwertbad in Burtscheid in 1966 and 1967 . The excavation of the Roman lime kiln in Iversheim was a major project from 1966 to 1968 . In 1970, Sölter conducted successful firing tests using the Roman method for the first time in Iversheim. After the Rheinisches Landesmuseum gave up the Aachen, Bergheim and Bonn district offices in 1968, Sölter had to reorient itself. During his subsequent archaeological and building history investigations as an employee of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn , Landschaftsverband Rheinland , he continued to work in the Roman and medieval area.

Together with Hans-Eckart Joachim , Sölter was promoted to the State Upper Museum Council at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn on July 1, 1975 and, in 1976, director of the Ruhrland Museum , which had been temporarily housed in a villa in Essen since 1954. In order to get out of this tightness, he developed a concept in cooperation with the Rhenish Industrial Monument Preservation to relocate the museum to the former coal mine "Carl Funke" , but the city of Essen and the co- financing Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation did not approve the project. A central point of his new conception in 1984 was the connection of geology with the social history of the industrialization of the Ruhr area. The historical permanent exhibition brought the research results of the modern Ruhr area history to the fore in the Medium Museum for the first time. The innovative form of presentation with object ensembles and staged picture spaces (dioramas) caused a stir in the museological discussion. In 1988/1990 the photo archive was added as an independent department of the Ruhrland Museum and since 1995 the archaeological collection, which was housed in the Museum Altenessen from 1985 to 1994, was presented in a new permanent exhibition. In 1997 the socio-historical exhibition was revised and from May 2001 the new permanent geological exhibition "terra cognita" could be seen. On November 20, 2006, the City Council of Essen decided to establish the new Ruhr Museum in the coal washing plant of the Zollverein Coal Mine World Heritage Site .

Sölter's strong technical and scientific interest determined his main research interests: as one of the pioneers of aerial archeology in Germany, he discovered many previously unknown ground monuments from the 1960s. His work on the Roman lime burning is still groundbreaking today and as museum director he broke new ground in order to show the mutual connections between earth, industrial and social history with his integrative approach of natural and cultural history. In doing so, he also saved valuable historical industrial machines from being scrapped.

With his popular scientific aerial photo book Das Roman Germanien aus dem Luft , of which a total of 55,000 copies were printed by 1988, he became known to a wider audience.

Fonts (selection)

  • Roman lime burners in the Rhineland. (=  Rheinische Kunststätten . Issue 490), Rheinischer Verein für Denkmalpflege und Landschaftsschutz, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-88094-885-2 .
  • The Essen Cathedral . (=  Rheinische Kunststätten . Issue 265), Society for Book Printing, Neuss printing and publishing house Neuss 1984, ISBN 3-88094-487-3 .
  • The former Essen-Werden abbey church . (=  Rheinische Kunststätten. Issue 254), Society for Book Printing, Neuss 1981, ISBN 3-88094-379-6 .
  • Sankt St. Luzius and the branch churches of the Essen-Werden Abbey . (=  Rheinische Kunststätten. Issue 256), Society for Book Printing, Neuss 1981, ISBN 3-88094-380-X .
  • The Essen water hammers. (=  Guide of the Ruhrland Museum 1), Rheinland-Verlag / Habelt, Cologne / Bonn 1978.
  • The St. Suitbertus church in Kaiserswerth. Contribution to building history. Dissertation from July 31, 1962, Berlin 1962.

Essays

  • The end of an excavation. The excavations in the Roman legion camp in Bonn , In: Rheinische Ausgrabungen '76 , 116, 1977.
  • Roman sites in Aachen-Burtscheid . In: Aqvae Granni. Contributions to the archeology of Aachen (=  Rheinische Ausgrabungen 22), Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1982, pp. 205–213.
  • Archaeological studies on ancient economy and technology in the North Eifel . In: Guide to prehistoric and early historical monuments 25, 1974, pp. 50–68.
  • Hard coal in a Roman mine in Neuss . In: Contributions to the archeology of the Roman Rhineland 2 (=  Rheinische Ausgrabungen 10), Rheinland-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1971, pp. 370–372.

Editorships

  • as a photographer: Roman Germania from the air. Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1981, 2nd edition 1983, ISBN 3-7857-0298-1 .

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Christoph Keller, Renate Gerlach: Archaeological research in Aachen. Catalog of the sites in the city center and in Burtscheid. Von Zabern, Mainz 2004, ISBN 3-8053-3407-9 , p. 25.
  2. ↑ Bürger Gustav - and / or: Management by Walking , Interview with Gustav Lübbe : Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel 2 (1988), p. 136 ff ,; here: p. 137.
personal data
SURNAME Sölter, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sölter, Walter Waldemar (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art and building historian, archaeologist, aerial photo archaeologist and director of the Ruhrland Museum in Essen
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Delbruck
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1988