In memoriam Hans Georg Thümmel

from Stefan Heid

Hans Georg Thümmel: a wonderful man, curious, bubbly, always in a good mood, indestructible, a poet, at the same time like a rock in the surf during the GDR regime, for whose dumb officials he was far too intelligent. Because of the communists he could not become anything, but undaunted he held fast to his Lutheran confession. In preparation for my "Personenlexikon zur Christlichen Archäologie", I also came to Greifswald around 2010, and he offered me hospitality and advice. We even hiked to the windy Baltic Sea, where some nasty industrial plant was to be built, which of course he was against.

The University of Greifswald dedicated a nice little booklet to him: "In memoriam Hans Georg Thümmel" (Greifswalder Universitätsreden, Neue Folge 155), with an obituary penned by Irmfried Garbe, a bibliography of Thümmel and smaller writings from his estate.

I did not know that Thümmel had died on 13 July when I received a letter from Irmfried Garbe from Wackerow, from which I take the liberty of quoting:

.... Thümmel, "who was able to celebrate his 90th birthday on 5 March in good health and good spirits with numerous well-wishers, but shortly afterwards felt the end of his life approaching with rapid steps and passed away peacefully on 13 July. There were still some touching conversations at his bedside and very last wishes, which we were happy to fulfil".

Then Garbe adds a handwritten PS: "H. G. Thümmel admired your great encyclopaedia and said: for this reason he must regret not having died earlier".

That is Thümmel in the original! That was exactly his humour, and I still remember that he asked me even then why only dead people came to the lexicon. We feared a wave of suicides among the Christian archaeologists ...

Thümmel was still someone who knew Latin and Greek from the FF. In contrast to a Christian archaeological specialism, he pleaded for a broad view of the entire history of art. This is what his last opus magnum stands for: the multivolume

Ikonologie der christlichen Kunst

PS: Good news for Christian archaeology in Greifswald: the early Christian and medieval art objects that came into Thümmel's possession from the Victor Schultze estate will be transferred to the Victor Schultze Institute, so that the collection there is now almost complete and well positioned in the Lohmeyer House. It is currently being catalogued by Michael Altripp.  

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