Werner envelope (historian)

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Werner Matthias envelope (born November 7, 1903 in Reutlingen , † August 3, 1974 in Stuttgart ) was a German researcher in prehistory.

Life

Werner envelope attended secondary school in Reutlingen and, after graduating from high school in 1922, studied at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . He then went to the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in 1924 , where he received his doctorate in July 1926 under Ernst Wahle . His dissertation dealt (so the title) with “the pre-Roman settlement of Bavaria r [real] d [es] Rh [one] in its dependence on the natural and cultural conditions of the past” and appeared in print in 1932. In May 1926 he took up a position as assistant to Robert Rudolf Schmidt at the University of Tübingen, which was converted to the post of extraordinary assistant after his doctorate. In addition to administrative and teaching tasks, he was also active in museum and excavation work. In 1928 he married Else Peters, with whom he had at least two children.

Between 1928 and 1935 he worked for Hans Hahne at the State Institute for Prehistory in Halle an der Saale , where, in addition to various other prehistoric and scientific investigations, he primarily researched the Ilsen cave near Ranis in Thuringia as excavation director from 1932 to 1937. In 1935 he went as a university assistant at the University of Berlin , where he in 1938 for his work "West spread and fortifications of the Slavs in Central Germany" habilitation was. Shell had belonged to the specialist group for German prehistory in the Combat League for German Culture since 1932 and was considered one of the most loyal vassals of Hans Reinerth . On May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP , and since May 2, 1933, he was also a member of the SA . In 1936 he became a member of the advisory board and secretary of the Reich Association for German Prehistory under Reinerth, who sent him to numerous conferences as a reporter. From this, envelope developed a broad-based publication and lecture activity. Shortly before his Habilitation he was in January 1938 as an employee of the national leadership of the Nazi Party into office Rosenberg changed, where he was given the function of a scientific officers and starting in 1939, the one main branch manager (main application guide) in the Reich Office of Prehistory, which was also led by Reinerth .

Shell was also active in the "Antichrist Movement" and was one of the spokespersons for the League of Kings in the Association for the German Faith Movement , which was decided in July 1933 .

After the German conquest of France, Shell was commissioned to pick up the Carnac stones in Brittany . In 1942 he wrote a monograph on this topic, which in 1945 was followed by a popular scientific work entitled “Stone Marks of Bretagne”. Shell, who had a teaching position as a lecturer at the German University of Politics , was in talks in 1941 to fill the prehistory professorship at the Reich University of Strasbourg , to which Joachim Werner was then appointed. After the attack on the Soviet Union , Mantel was deployed to the task force of Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in the "seizure of cultural goods" in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine , where he and W. Modrijan directed "robbery excavations" in the Dnepropetrovsk region . In October 1943, on Reinerth's instructions, envelope set up a branch office of the ERR in Krakow , which was supposed to accommodate “nine wagons loaded with prehistoric and prehistoric museum and library items as well as excavation objects from Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk and Poltava”. From 1944 to 1945, Mantel was officially employed as a consultant at the “Institute Pre- and Early History of the East” headed by Reinerth, but in fact he was busy in Höchstadt with the unloading, securing and archiving of the 550,000 looted objects from the Kersch and Simferopol museums, among others . Some of the looted property was still in Reinerth's legacy in 1995 in the Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen . On May 1, 1942, envelope was awarded the War Merit Cross II. Class by Hitler's staff chief Gerhard Utikal .

Shell took over the widespread theory of the Germanic-Slavic cultural gap, but also wrote that the Slavs, since they had already been influenced by Gothic culture in their original homeland , had to be considered culturally advanced. In doing so, he deviated from the line of Adolf Hitler , who in Mein Kampf emphasized the inferiority of the non-Aryan races and feared the bastardization of the Teutons through the influence of the Slavs. Hülle's habilitation thesis Western expansion and defense systems of the Slavs in Central Germany was published in 1940 together with a contribution by Werner Radig on the Sorbian castles of Western Saxony and Eastern Thuringia. However, the book was confiscated in 1941 because, in the opinion of Johannes Papritz , employee of the Dahlem (PuSte) Publication Office , there were major political reservations about publishing the map enclosed by Shell-Radig, as it provided the opponents of the Reich with propaganda material to prove the Slavic claims on the land up to the Elbe and Saale. As a result, the remaining edition of the book was delivered with an overprinted card, on which the Germanic settlement on the Saale was now highlighted in red .

In his racist and Pro-Germanic research, Shell had applied a little less heavily than his colleagues Werner Radig and Ernst Petersen and also conceded gaps in the archaeological sources. Nonetheless, he was also able to criticize other staunch National Socialists if, like Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen , they underestimated or did not recognize the “racial conditions”.

After the end of the war, Shell was briefly captured by the Americans and French, but was able to return to his native Reutlingen in 1945. During his denazification he asserted, among other things, that he had been denied the academic teaching post and that his habilitation thesis was not allowed to be printed directly because of deviations from National Socialist ideology. Professionally, he initially worked in his brother's home textiles business and was then hired in 1949 as the full-time manager of the Swabian Symphony Orchestra Reutlingen and head of the municipal concert office. In 1953 he moved to the post of curator in the Reutlingen local history museum , and he became the excavation manager of the Hallstadt graves in Ohmenhausen . He was also a teacher at the Reutlingen Business School . In 1954 he became chairman of the association for art and antiquity as well as the city history association in Reutlingen, and from 1959 he published the "Reutlinger Geschichtsblätter".

From 1959 he worked in various adult education institutions in Baden-Wuerttemberg , for example from 1968 as head of the “Pedagogical Office for Adult Education” in Stuttgart, where he had previously worked. In 1966 he received a teaching assignment for pedagogy of adult education at the Reutlingen University of Education, and from 1967 a second for prehistory. In the last years of his life he worked on a monograph that dealt with the Ilsen cave, in which he had excavated in the 1930s, and the archaeological finds made there, and which was finally published posthumously in 1977 after his sudden death in 1974.

Fonts (selection)

  • West Germanic. Verl. For holistic. Research and Culture, Struckum / North Frisia 1987.
  • The Ilsenhöhle under Ranis Castle, Thuringia. A paleolithic hunting station. Edited by J. Hahn and H. Müller-Beck. Fischer, Stuttgart / New York 1977, ISBN 3-437-30254-X (posthumous).
  • Reutlingen. Oertel and Spörer, Reutlingen 1972.
  • Stone markings of Brittany. Verl. Die Karawane, Ludwigsburg 1967.
  • The churches and ecclesiastical buildings in the history of the free imperial city of Reutlingen. Libertas, Erolzheim (Württemberg) 1954.
  • Primitive men on the cave bear hunt. Imagery. te Neues, Kempen (Niederrhein) 1953.
  • Carnac stones. JA Barth, Leipzig 1942.
  • Indo-Europeans and Teutons in the eastern region. Rather, Munich 1942.
  • Gustaf Kossinna : The German prehistory, an outstanding national science. Reviewed and supplemented by comments by Werner envelope. JA Barth, Leipzig 1941.
  • West Germanic. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1940.
  • with Hans Reinerth: The German people: its essence - its classes. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1940.
  • with Ernst Petersen and Hans Reinerth: Prehistory of the German tribes. Germanic deed and culture on German soil. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1940.
  • Expansion to the west and defensive systems of the Slavs in central Germany . With a contribution by W. Radig. Barth, Leipzig 1940 (habilitation thesis from 1936) (Mannus-Bücherei; 68).
  • The oldest ore extraction in the Nordic-Germanic area. Volume 1: The exploitation of central German ore deposits in the early metal age. 1938.
  • Basic features of the pre-Roman settlement of Bavaria around Rh. In their dependence on the natural and cultural conditions of prehistoric times. Filser, Augsburg 1932 (also: dissertation, University of Heidelberg 1926).

literature

  • Hans Joachim Bodenbach: Dr. phil. habil. Werner (Matthias) envelope - prehistoric. In: Annual publication for Central German prehistory. Volume 92, 2008 (2011), pp. 447-504.
  • Uta Halle : “Western expansion and defensive systems of the Slavs in Central Germany” - comments on a publication under National Socialism. In: Felix Biermann, Ulrich Müller, Thomas Terberger (eds.): "Observing things ...". Archaeological and historical research on the early history of Central and Northern Europe. Festschrift for Günter Mangelsdorf on his 60th birthday (= archeology and history in the Baltic Sea region. Volume 2). Marie Leidorf, Rahden (Westf.) 2008, ISBN 978-3-89646-462-0 , pp. 36-47.
  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-17153-8 .
  • Frank-Rutger Hausmann : The humanities in the “Third Reich”. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2001, pp. 513–514 and pp. 612–613 (re. Werner envelope: on excavations in Brittany, on ancient Slavs and Ostrogoths).
  • Ulrike Hartung: Deported and missing. A documentation of German, Soviet and American files on Nazi art theft in the Soviet Union (1941–1948). Temmen, Bremen 2000, ISBN 3-86108-336-1 .
  • Michael Schoder: "A very apolitical scholar". The early history researcher Werner Shell in the Third Reich and after. In: Journal of History . 66 (2018), pp. 245-264.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shell rarely used the middle name. For the stations in his life see Hans Joachim Bodenbach: Dr. phil. habil. Werner (Matthias) envelope - prehistoric. In: Annual publication for Central German prehistory. Volume 92, 2008 (2011), pp. 447-504, here pp. 448-464.
  2. ↑ A son and a daughter are named in a résumé of Hülles from 1936, cited above. with Hans Joachim Bodenbach: Dr. phil. habil. Werner (Matthias) envelope - prehistoric. In: Annual publication for Central German prehistory. Volume 92, 2008 (2011), pp 447-504, here p 451 with n. 7. The son Dieter shell (* 1934) was later head of the Cultural Office in Sindelfingen.
  3. ↑ a b c Uta Halle: “Western expansion and defensive systems of the Slavs in Central Germany” - comments on a publication in National Socialism , pp. 37–47.
  4. ^ A b Ernst Klee: The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 , p. 272.
  5. ↑ Hans Joachim Bodenbach: Dr. phil. habil. Werner (Matthias) envelope - prehistoric , p. 456.
  6. ^ Horst Junginger: The German Faith Movement as an ideological center , in: Uwe Puschner ; Clemens Vollnhals (ed.): The ethnic-religious movement in National Socialism: a history of relationships and conflicts , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012, pp. 65-102, here p. 81.
  7. ^ Ingo Haar (Ed.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften: People - Institutions - Research Programs - Foundations , Munich: Saur, 2008, p. 231 ISBN 978-3-598-11778-7
  8. ^ Hubert Fehr: Hans Zeiss, Joachim Werner and the archaeological research during the Merovingian period. In: Heiko Steuer (Ed.): An outstanding national science . Supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, Vol. 29. Berlin 2001. P. 348 ISBN 3-11-017184-8
  9. ↑ Hans Joachim Bodenbach: Dr. phil. habil. Werner (Matthias) envelope - prehistoric , p. 497.
  10. ↑ Ulrike Hartung: Abducted and lost , p. 41; P. 201f.
  11. ↑ Ulrike Hartung: Abducted and lost , p. 289ff.
  12. ↑ Ulrike Hartung: Abducted and lost , p. 41.
  13. ↑ Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg for the occupied territories: Orders and communications 1942, July 15, 1942 No. 4. From the digitized files of the Federal Archives NS 30/3 No. 1 - 6 1942, p. 52.
  14. ↑ Sebastian Brather : Wilhelm Unverzagt and the image of the Slavs , In: Heiko Steuer (editor): An outstanding national science. German prehistorians between 1900 and 1995 , de Gruyter, Berlin-New York 2001 (supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde , Volume 29), p. 490 ISBN 3-11-017184-8
  15. ↑ Ernst Petersen (1905–1944), see Andreas Kieseler: Ernst Petersen [1905–1944] - A contribution to the study of prehistoric and early historical archeology in the time of National Socialism. In: Felix Biermann, Ulrich Müller and Thomas Terberger (eds.): "Observing things ...". Archaeological and historical research on the early history of Central and Northern Europe. Festschrift for Günter Mangelsdorf for his 60th birthday. Archeology and History in the Baltic Sea Region. Archeology and history of the Baltic. Leidorf, Rahden 2008, ISBN 978-3-89646-462-0 , pp. 49-64.
  16. ↑ Gustaf Kossinna: The German prehistory, an outstanding national science , 1941. Note from envelope in the appendix, p. 272.
  17. ↑ Hans Joachim Bodenbach: Dr. phil. habil. Werner (Matthias) envelope - prehistoric , p. 461.
  18. ↑ In the first edition of the work from 2003, instead of the prehistoric writer, the lawyer of the same name Werner Shell was listed. See Hans Joachim Bodenbach: Dr. phil. habil. Werner (Matthias) envelope - prehistoric. In: Annual publication for Central German prehistory. Volume 92, 2008 (2011), pp. 447–504, here p. 447 with note 1.
personal data
SURNAME Shell, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shell, Werner Matthias (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German researcher of prehistory and early history
DATE OF BIRTH November 7, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Reutlingen
DATE OF DEATH 3rd August 1974
Place of death Stuttgart