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The State Office for Monument Preservation in Hesse says goodbye to its first deputy director and former state archaeologist of Hesse, Dr. Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann.
As the excavator of the "Celtic prince of the Glauberg", Herrmann achieved a high degree of fame in the mid-1990s far beyond the borders of Hesse and the specialised scientific community. The Iron Age necropolis at the foot of the Glauberg, with the sensational artefacts of Celtic craftsmanship it contains and the unique life-size sandstone statue of the "Celtic prince", is now known worldwide. It is thanks to Herrmann's professional foresight that he made the decision to excavate the tomb with the surrounding soil in one block in order to have it uncovered under laboratory conditions in Wiesbaden in the archaeological restoration workshop of the museum. At the time, he was breaking new ground in the preservation of archaeological monuments in the Federal Republic of Germany and thus created the basis for the second archaeological state museum in Hesse, the "Keltenwelt am Glauberg", which opened in May 2011 at the original site in Glauburg-Glauberg.
Herrmann was born on 21 September 1936 in Bad Nauheim in the Wetterau region. After leaving school, he studied pre- and early historical archaeology and was awarded his doctorate in 1962 by Günter Smolla at the Goethe University Frankfurt a.M. with a dissertation on the finds of the Urnfield Culture in central and southern Hesse. As part of a travel grant from the Romano-Germanic Commission (RGK) of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), he spent 1963/64 in the Balkans, Greece, Turkey and the British Isles. Returning to Germany in 1964, he took up a position as a consultant for provincial Roman archaeology at the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (BLfD) before being appointed head of the Nuremberg branch of the BLfD in 1966. In May 1973, he moved to Hesse, where he succeeded Helmut Schoppa as head of the newly created office of the State Archaeologist of Hesse. When the first Hessian Monument Protection Act came into force in September 1974, the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Hesse (LfDH) was founded at the same time, and Herrmann became its first deputy head. The Archaeological Monument Preservation Department, which he headed, was expanded in 1990 and from then on functioned as the Archaeological and Palaeontological Monument Preservation Department.
Although the immense upswing in the preservation of monuments in Germany in the course of the European Year of Monument Conservation in 1975 also affected Hesse, the development of archaeological monument preservation in particular lagged behind that of other federal states. Herrmann sought to compensate for this structural disadvantage, not least by linking civic commitment to the state's archaeology. In 1979, he took the lead in founding the Archaeological Society in Hesse (AGiH), which to this day has the largest membership of any interest group in the field of archaeological heritage conservation in Hesse. In this context, he also initiated the Hessian Prehistory Day, a public lecture event from which today's hessenARCHÄOLOGIE-Tag emerged.
Herrmann consistently pursued the presentation of scientific results of state archaeology, which sometimes led to years of delays in printing due to difficult financial conditions. With "Materialien zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte von Hessen", he founded an independent series of monographs, the first volume of which was published in 1976. At the same time, he also deliberately addressed a non-specialist target group. With the brochures "Archäologische Denkmäler in Hessen" (Archaeological Monuments in Hesse), which have been published in large numbers since 1977, he provided them with information on ground monuments that can be experienced above ground, limited to the most important aspects. An essential part of the series was and is a detailed route map, which is intended to invite people to visit the respective monument in the cultural landscape and thus make it tangible.
An important step towards modern state archaeology was Herrmann's establishment of the Archaeological Restoration Workshop in the east wing of Biebrich Palace in the early 1980s. This, as well as his willingness to embrace new technical prospection and documentation methods, ultimately formed the basis for the success of the investigations on the Glauberg. In addition to the Glauberg, another major archaeological project will always be associated with Herrmann's name: the excavations at the Iron Age salt works in Bad Nauheim. He devoted his attention to these until he retired from active service in 2001.
In 2008, he was awarded the Goethe Plaque of the State of Hesse, the highest award of the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Art and Culture (HMWK), for his services to the archaeological heritage of Hesse. Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann passed away on 31 March 2024 at the age of 87.
Prof. Dr. Udo Recker
Deputy Head of Office
State Archaeologist Hesse