Walter Hall

Walter Saal (born January 29, 1913 , † November 30, 1996 ) was a German homeland researcher and monument conservator.

Life

Saal's father was the mayor of Graefendorf , where Saal temporarily lived. Professionally, Saal worked as a builder and surveyor . He came to local research at the age of 16. His father gave him a letter from the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft , addressed to him as mayor , with which surveys were made into an atlas of German folklore . Over a period of three years, Saal worked out answers to around 240 questions.

A special focus of his later local history work was research on stone crosses and cross stones. He documented and described over 300 such small monuments over the decades . During the Second World War he was a soldier and was taken prisoner of war. On his return he was particularly involved in the preservation of monuments . From 1949 he completed an excavation training in Wahlitz at the State Museum for Prehistory in Halle . In 1952 he was appointed to the district floor conservationist for the Merseburg district . Saal carried out a large number of excavations in the district area, with his wife Erna Saal supporting him. He also dealt with heraldry and amassed an extensive coin collection.

In 1955, Saal moved to Merseburg . He lived here at Ulmenweg 10 until his death . In 1960 he became a shop steward for monument preservation in the district. He was involved in the reconstruction of the east wing of the Merseburg Palace . An essential task was the documentation of monuments that were threatened or disappeared in the course of lignite mining .

In his work he did not avoid disputes with government agencies but also with cultural officials and other committed people. In the course of disputes, he did not participate in the re-establishment of the Heimatverein in Merseburg, but instead joined the Heimatverein in Querfurt , where he was a respected member of the association until his death.

Awards

In 1974 he was awarded the Leibniz Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR . His estate is in the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle. On November 28, 1994 he received the German Prize for Monument Protection , the silver hemisphere, from the German National Committee for Monument Protection in the Old Synagogue in Essen .

Works

• The aboveground soil antiquities of the Merseburg district , 1957
• Prehistory and history of the Merseburg district , 1965
• Legends of the Merseburg district , 1973
• Architectural monuments and historical memorials in the Merseburg district , 1980
• Johann Christian Buxbaum - A Merseburg native as the first botanist at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg , 1981
• The Merseburg Castle , 1986
• Stone crosses and cross stones in the Magdeburg district , 1987
• Stone crosses and cross stones in the Halle district , 1989
• Stone cross legends from Saxony-Anhalt , 1992
• The customs between Querfurt and Merseburg , 1992

He has also published over 200 articles in scientific journals and a large number of popular science articles.

literature

• Gustav Eiserbeck, Walter Saal - a Merseburg homeland researcher in Merseburg then and now , issue 28/2011, publisher: Mehrgenerationenhaus Merseburg, page 24 ff.