Martin Heinrich Gustav Schwantes

Martin Heinrich Gustav Schwantes ( born September 18, 1881 in Bleckede, † November 17, 1960 in Hamburg ) was a German botanist and prehistorians. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Schwantes ".

Life and work

Gustav Schwantes was actually a teacher, he also practiced this profession from 1903 to 1923 from, he taught last in Hamburg. Early age of 16 he dug first urn graves from the area around Uelzen; age of 18 he was in frequent correspondence with the director of the Museum of Archaeology in Kiel, Johanna Mestorf, 1901 the post of curator offered him in ignorance of his teacher training at the museum, but he refused. Through his contact with Carl Schuchardt Schwantes published the first article on the urn of the pre-Roman Iron Age and on questions of chronology in the Prehistoric magazine. He was a pure autodidact in archeology.

He studied ethnology, geology and botany in Hamburg he joined in 1923 with a dissertation on the stone-age civilization from Lyngby. He wrote several popular books on the prehistory of northern Germany.

As a botanist he dealt among other things with the steppe flora of South Africa. For the work Pareys Blumengärtnerei ( 1958), he worked on the plant family Aizoaceae, from as early as the 1920s, together with Hermann Jacobsen docked a comprehensive collection in the Botanical Garden of Kiel. According to him, the plant genus Schwantesia Dint. named. Furthermore, several plant species have been named after him.

In 1924 he was a regular contributor, from 1926 curator of the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology and Prehistory. In 1928 he completed his habilitation and became the first professor of history at the University of Hamburg. In 1929 he became director of the Kiel Museum of Antiquities Fatherland. In 1931 he became an adjunct professor in Kiel. After the " seizure of power" by the National Socialists in 1933, he was a member of the Section for German history in the League of Struggle for German Culture and the NS- Teachers' Association. After recording lock he entered in 1937 the NSDAP. In 1937 he was also Professor of Prehistory and Early History in Kiel. He is considered the founder of the " Kiel School ". Through his scientific studies, he represented also in archeology an interdisciplinary approach, especially with the inclusion of botany and anthropology to reconstruct ancient worlds. In 1946 he became Professor Emeritus, but remained head of the State Office of Pre-and Early History. He himself led by the excavations of the Mesolithic place in Duvenseer Moor. This being established, the court Duvensee group was named. Schwantes also took over the excavations in Hedeby on again. His students included, among others, Herbert Jankuhn, which in 1931 he transferred the excavation line in Hedeby, and Alfred Rust.

Since 1910, Schwantes member of the Imperial German for German history, since 1930, corresponding, decent since 1934 Member of the German Archaeological Institute.

Selected Works

• From Germany's prehistory. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1908 ( digitized ).
• The tombs of the ancient Iron Age in the Eastern Hanover. Prehistoric Magazine Vol.1, 1909, 140 - 162
• The importance of Lyngby - civilization for the layout of the Stone Age Hamburg 1923.
• Guide to Hedeby 1932.
• History of the Nordic civilization (Hamburg: Evert, 1938).
• The history of Schleswig-Holstein. 1 history of Schleswig - Holstein 1939.
• History of Schleswig-Holstein. The prehistory. Volume 1, Part 1 Neumünster 1958.
• The Cultivation of the Mesembryanthemaceae, 1953
• Flowering Stones and Mid-Day Flowers, 1957