Ernst Sprockhoff

Ernst Sprockhoff (6 August 1892 – 1 October 1967) was a German prehistorian and inventor of the Sprockhoff numbering system for megalithic monuments in Germany.

Life

Sprockhoff was born on 6 August 1892 in Berlin. He became a teacher and also studied prehistory. He graduated in 1924 from the University of Königsberg. From 1926 to 1928 he was employed at the Provincial Museum of Hanover, from 1928 to 1935 at the Romano-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz.

Sprockhoff was a member of the Stahlhelm and joined the SA before 1933, the year of the Machtergreifung by the Nazis. In 1933 he was a member of the National Socialist Teachers League, in 1937 after the freeze on admissions also of the Nazi Party. From 1935 to 1945 he was the first director of the Romano-Germanic Commission in Frankfurt and, from 1947, professor of European Pre- and Early History at the University of Kiel.

In 1922 Sprockhoff became a member of the Reichsbund für Deutsche Vorgeschichte, in 1931 an associate member and in 1934 a full member of the German Archaeological Institute.

He died in Kiel on 1 October 1967.

Sprockhoff numbers

Sprockhoff recorded about 900 German megalith structures in a sequentially numbered catalogue. The so-called Sprockhoff number (Sprockhoff No. or Sprockhoff-Nr.) is still used to refer to these sites today.

Publications

• Atlas der Megalithgräber. Teil 1-3, Rudolf Habelt Verlag, Bonn, 1966-1975
• Die nordische Megalithkultur. Handbuch der Urgeschichte Deutschlands Band 3, Berlin und Leipzig : W. de Gruyter & Co., 1938
• Die germanischen Vollgriffschwerter der jüngeren Bronzezeit, Römisch-Germanische Forschungen 9, Berlin – Leipzig, 1934.
• Jungbronzezeitliche Hortfunde Norddeutschlands (Periode IV), Mainz, 1937.
• Jungbronzezeitliche Hortfunde der Südzone des nordischen Kreises (Periode V), Vo,. I – II, Mainz, 1956.

Literature

• Kurt Böhner: Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Sprockhoff, in: Jahrbuch des Römisch- Germanischen Zentralmuseums 14 (1967) p. IX-XXVIII.
• Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2007, p. 581.
• C. Misamer: Ernst Sprockhoff, in: Studien zum Kulturbegriff in der Vor- und Frühgeschichtforschung.' Bonn, 1987, pp. 87–99.
• Wolfgang Pape: Zehn Prähistoriker aus Deutschland. In: Heiko Steuer (ed.): Eine hervorragend nationale Wissenschaft. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Vol. 29. de Gruyter, Berlin, 2001. ISBN 3-11-017184-8. pp. 55–88.
• Friedrich Wagner: Ernst Sprockhoff, 6. August 1892-1. Oktober 1967, in: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Jahrbuch (1968) pp. 192–200.
• Karl-Heinz Willroth: Ernst Sprockhoff und die nordische Bronzezeit. In: Heiko Steuer (ed.): Eine hervorragend nationale Wissenschaft. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Vol. 29. de Gruyter, Berlin, 2001. ISBN 3-11-017184-8. pp. 109–149.

External links

• Literature by and about Ernst Sprockhoff in the German National Library catalogue