Wolfgang Kimmig

Wolfgang Kimmig (* 28. August 1910 in Konstanz , † 24. May 2001 in Ludwigsburg ) was a German prehistorians and professor at the University of Tuebingen .

Life

Wolfgang Kimmig studied prehistory in Marburg with Gero von Merhart and in Freiburg with Georg Kraft , where he completed his dissertation on urnfield culture in Baden in 1935. Shortly before the Second World War, he received a travel grant from the German Archaeological Institute , which took him mainly to the eastern Mediterranean. In 1942 he completed his habilitation in Freiburg under Georg Kraft with research on the Bronze and Iron Ages of the Trier region.

Drafted for military service, he was wounded in Russia. As a young officer he was seconded to Count Metternich's staff and tasked with protecting and securing the archaeological holdings of French museums. In 1946 Kimmig succeeded his teacher Georg Kraft at the University of Freiburg and at the same time took over the management of the prehistoric and early historical monument preservation of South Baden. Very early on after the Second World War, Kimmig made sure that the prehistoric discipline in Germany regained access to European prehistoric research through his contacts to France and Switzerland. When Kurt Bittel took on a visiting professorship in Istanbul in 1951, Wolfgang Kimmig took his place. In 1955, Kimmig was appointed director of the Institute for Prehistory at the University of Tübingen as successor to Bittel .

Kimmig earned services above all for research into the Hallstatt and Latène periods , but he also worked on the Middle and Young Neolithic and the early Bronze Age. For decades, Kimmig was responsible for the large excavation project on the Heuneburg near Hundersingen . On the basis of his results, he formulated the model of the late Hallstatt prince's seat, which dominated research over the following decades. It was only in recent years that the settlement finds in Hochdorf an der Enz and Ipf showed that his conception of the prince's seat as a castle and lower town was only one variant of the central locations of the late Hallstatt period. His last book was the publication of finds from the Buchau moated castle , which Hans Reinerth had excavated. In 1980 he was awarded the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany . Since 1985 he has been a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

Fonts (selection)

• The urn field culture in Baden. Investigated on the basis of the grave finds (= Roman-Germanic research. Vol. 14, ISSN  0176-5337 ). de Gruyter, Berlin 1940 (also: Freiburg (Breisgau), university, dissertation, 1935).
• as editor with Kurt Bittel and Siegwalt Schiek: The Celts in Baden-Württemberg. Theiss, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-8062-0211-7 .
• The Heuneburg on the upper Danube (= guide to prehistoric and early historical monuments in Baden-Württemberg. Issue 1, ZDB -ID 527337-7 ). Society for Prehistory and Early History in Württemberg and Hohenzollern, Stuttgart 1968.
• The Kleinaspergle. Studies on a princely grave mound from the early Latène period near Stuttgart (= research and reports on prehistory and early history in Baden-Württemberg. Vol. 30). Theiss, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-8062-0789-5 .
• The "Wasserburg Buchau" - a late Bronze Age settlement. Research history - small finds (= material booklets on prehistory and early history in Baden-Württemberg. Vol. 16). Theiss, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-8062-1061-6 .

literature

• Dieter Planck : Obituary. In: Find reports from Baden-Württemberg. Vol. 24, 2001, ISSN  0071-9897 , pp. 737-749.
• Laurent Olivier: Wolfgang Kimmig et l'archéologie allemande en France occupée. In: Antiquités Nationales. Vol. 36, 2004, ISSN  0997-0576 , pp. 261-279.
• Frank Unruh: Wolfgang Kimmig and the military art protection in France. In: Hans-Peter Kuhnen (ed.): Propaganda, power, history. Archeology on the Rhine and Moselle in the service of National Socialism (= series of publications by the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier. No. 24). Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Trier 2002, ISBN 3-923319-51-7 , pp. 162-175.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Kimmig in the catalog of the German National Library