Wetterau fire graves

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Chains from "Wetterau fire graves" that are said to have been found in Butterstadt . Historical museums Hanau (original assembly from the beginning of the 20th century, depot stock)

The Wetterau fire graves were a forgery of prehistoric grave finds, which were mainly found in Hesse between 1907 and 1920 . They are attributed to Georg Wolff , who was the first to publish them. Wolff, for his part, probably fell for a forgery, which is attributed to one of his foremen, the well builder Georg Bausch from Windecken (municipality of Nidderau ).

Additions

The Wetterau fire graves were mainly discovered in the Rhine-Main area and viewed as a link between the linear ceramics and the Rössen culture ( Neolithic ). It was not until the 1940s that they were exposed as clever fakes. Georg Wolff was the first to describe the finds, some of which were assigned to the ceramic band and some to the Rössen culture. Characteristic additions to these cremation graves were jewelry chains or pendants with pierced stones, some of which were found later also made of potsherds or pearls.

The contents of the Wetterau cremation graves often consisted of a very small amount of corpse burn; A chronology was even determined for the typical stone or clay pendants from the graves. It ranged from early perforated pebbles to fragments of slate that were untypical in color for the area (reminiscent of the school tablets common in the early 20th century) to perforated potsherds and finally pearls. The cylindrical holes in the material (mostly less than 1 mm in diameter), made from both sides, were only examined in detail later, and it was found that they could not have come from a Silex drill , as they have no recessed grooves. The cylindrical shape of the borehole was also noticeable; a conical widening on both sides would have been expected.

Doubts as to its authenticity

Secure cremation graves from the epoch in question were only found in significant numbers towards the end of the 20th century in Elsloo (Netherlands), Niedermerz or on the Aldenhovener Platte . The authenticity of the Wetterau cremation graves was only questioned a few years after Wolff's death (1929), in particular by the prehistoric Hermann Müller-Karpe from Hanau in 1943/44. Gudrun Loewe provided complete proof against the authenticity of the Wetterau graves . The overwhelming amount of evidence against the authenticity of the cremation graves shows that Georg Wolff obviously fell for a fraud. It is noticeable that the Wetterau fire graves with their specific grave goods appeared in his field of work, with a few exceptions. The period is also limited to the years 1907 to 1920. There were no similar finds before or after. It is also noticeable that either Georg Wolff or his foreman, the well builder Georg Bausch, were involved in all the finds.

The fact that the first pebbles found were initially colored with ink does not seem to have puzzled Wolff. Regional deviations from his work area (the southern Wetterau) are rare, but, significantly, in Lich - Muschenheim and Beltershausen where Wolff excavators was, and in later years in Frankfurt , where Bausch for the Historical Museum , for example in Frankfurt's harbor , active has been. There he was praised as a “particularly lucky finder” and “a man with a remarkable instinct”. In 1910, scientists from Göttingen invited Bausch to dig a ceramic band settlement near Diemarden , where he found no cremation graves, but several of the typical pierced stone pendants in the settlement pits.

A total of about 100 such graves were "discovered", graves with a wealth of accessories being extremely frequent at the beginning of an excavation. When the first doubts about Bausch arose, Wolff instructed him to leave cremation graves in situ and have them uncovered by a scientist. He often failed to obey, and many of these grave inventories were later delivered to Wolff by him or his wife.

Finds from Wetterau fire graves were removed from most of the museum showcases soon after their publication by G. Loewe. Some of them are still in the magazine holdings, for example in the Archaeological Museum Frankfurt and the Historisches Museum Hanau , but are no longer on display.

literature

  • Gudrun Loewe : On the question of the authenticity of the Neolithic “Wetterau fire graves”. In: Germania , Volume 36, 1958 pp. 421-436.
  • Hermann Müller-Karpe : On the originality question of the Wetterau fire graves. In: Messages from the Hanauer Geschichtsverein e. V. , 1943 / February 1944.
  • Georg Wolff : Neolithic cremation graves in the area of ​​Hanau. Hanau 1912. (first publication, considered refuted)

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albrecht Jockenhövel : The Neolithic Age . In: Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann / A. Jockenhövel: The prehistory of Hesse . (Stuttgart 1990) p. 128 f.
  2. Georg Wolff: Neolithic fire graves in the area of ​​Hanau. Hanau 1912.
  3. Photos of the Wetterau fire graves as found from the Hanau holdings that are no longer preserved are published in: Ferdinand Kutsch : Hanau. Part 2 , Frankfurt a. M. 1926 (catalogs of West and South German antiquity collections 5) Annex 1, Fig. 1 - Annex 4, Fig. 2.
  4. Hermann Müller-Karpe: On the question of originality of the Wetterau fire graves. In: Messages from the Hanauer Geschichtsverein e. V. , 1943 / February 1944.
  5. Gudrun Loewe: On the question of the authenticity of the Neolithic “Wetterau fire graves”. In: Germania , Volume 36, 1958 pp. 421-436.
  6. The History Association Windecken offers a list of articles about Bausch and the finds on its homepage .
  7. The process is documented by Walter Gerteis: The unknown Frankfurt. Frankfurt am Main, 8th edition 1991, ISBN 3-920346-05-X , pp. 15-24. At the time the work was created in 1961, Gerteis made positive comments about the graves and hoped for new finds, which have not been made since then.