Beispiellose Herausforderungen. Deutsche Archäologie zwischen Weltkriegsende und Kaltem Krieg

Abstract

The challenges faced by the representatives of prehistoric and Roman provincial archaeology in Germany between 1945 and 1955 can be considered unparalleled in the history of archaeology: there was no template for navigating an occupied country, replacing deceased colleagues, reintegrating emigrants, carrying on with discredited re- search projects, reinstating institutions and issuing new regulations . Although these were new and daunting challenges, “to keep on going” was the order of the day, as it had been after the First World War, and in this case it was considered best policy to continue what archaeologists had begun before 1933 . Continuity with regard to staff and researchers on the one hand, and the preservation of numerous local records and documentations as efficacious epistemic storage media on the other were the practical reasons behind the fact that, although extensive political change took place after 1945, there was no turnabout with regard to erstwhile research goals, fields of activity or scientific self-conception . This would prove successful, since much like after the end of the First World War and after the change of government in 1933, there was no uniform plan in place in 1945 for the continuation or further development of German scientific research . This vacuum with regard to the politics of science meant that previous research was hardly subjected to any scrutiny . Therefore, despite all the hardships and imponderabilities of the post-war period, there was

enough leeway to maintain scientific traditions, having redefined them as visions, and to stake out new territories . What could have been achieved by the denazification processes with regard to the reappraisal of the discipline’s recent past, was largely neutralised by active networks and bilateral exculpatory statements . As a consequence, the institutions mentioned did not lose their scientific reputation and the protagonists that were coming back effectively remained capable of acting, both scientifically and professionally .

These negotiation processes and initiatives of German post-war archaeology can be sub- sumed under the keywords centralisation, interdisciplinarity, internationalisation and the partition of Germany .

After the end of the Second World War the protagonists mentioned shared the conviction that it would be of benefit to archaeology overall if prehistoric archaeology was centralised, provided it would be possible to exclude political interference in its research methods and contents . In the Federal Republic of Germany the question of which authority the DAI and RGK should be answerable to was discussed with particular fervour, though there was no question of political indoctrination with regard to the subjects that would be examined . The reorganisation of the RGK and the inauguration of its new building in Frankfurt in 1956 was thus welcomed all the more as an appropriate meeting point and place of work for German archaeologists . The research unit of the East Berlin Academy, on the other hand, undauntedly navigated the great upheavals and ideological eruptions of the Cold War, which were much more keenly felt in Berlin than, for example, in Hamburg or Frankfurt . However, because the more antiquated ideas of centralised research and heritage management according to uniform guidelines were revealed to be compatible with the concept of science ascribed to by East German politics, various measures that had long been discussed, such as joint legislation concerning the preservation and care of archaeological heritage, were actually put into practice in the GDR .

Urban archaeology is one example of how an interdisciplinary scientific approach can be developed . Situated between archaeology and medieval studies, this field of research was established immediately after the Second World War . It had an integrative impact, both from the point of view of the discipline itself and of cultural politics, since its proponents continued to study the questions examined by the older East German researchers and to view Germany as a joint area of research even after its partition . Older questions concerning the founding of cities and the eastward expansion, as well as the issue of how German-speaking and Slavic settlers had lived side by side, ruled the debates just as much as questions regarding the evolution of cities out of castles and palaces . Excavations mount- ed in war-ravaged cities such as Hamburg and Magdeburg confirmed and reinforced this concept of research which was pursued in various pan-German working groups .

The advancements with regard to content were linked in both parts of Germany with the expansion of international contacts . In the mid-1950s, the Academy in East Berlin began to systematically contact comparable institutions in neighbouring socialist states . Reciprocal visits to each other’s congresses had already become commonplace from the early 1950s onwards . The choice of Hamburg as the venue for the fifth International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology in late August/early September 1958 was most certainly a crucial step towards the hoped-for (renewed) recognition of German archaeological re- search by the international research community . At the end of the programme of lectures in Hamburg, the approximately 90 participants were taken on an excursion through the GDR, which lasted several days and offered a comprehensive overview of the themes and possibilities of German archaeological research .

Ten years after the end of the Second World War, however, it was already becoming apparent that the interrelations with regard to content and organisation between the German archaeological institutions on both sides of the Iron Curtain would not remain as close as they had been for much longer . The proponents of the discipline who still represented a pan-German view of archaeological research now formed the generation that no longer would or could hold on to that self-conception, either for political or methodological reasons . Those who held top positions were bound to the ideologically intensified scientific and cultural politics of their respective countries, and in some cases it would take until the 1980s for joint conferences between East and West German archaeologists and for reciprocal lecture tours to be possible once again .