The story
DGUF – the name and origin of the society
The widespread student unrest in 1968 and the attendant demands for change also affected prehistory studies. Students organised the ‘Schleswiger Kreis’ (Schleswig Circle) in order to improve communication between the various institutes, strengthen interdisciplinary cooperation between archaeology and related fields of study and thus initiate new approaches to the subject. Their main objective was also evident in the title of the journal published by the Schleswig Circle between 1970 and 1976, ‘Information papers on research in fields related to prehistory studies’ (Informationsblätter zu Nachbarwissenschaften der Ur- und Frühgeschichte).
The event that led to the founding of DGUF lay elsewhere, however. In early 1969, Bolko Freiherr von Richthofen called upon all the universities in the Federal Republic to revive the "Gesellschaft für Deutsche Vorgeschichte" (the Society for German Prehistory) and create a successor to Gustaf Kossinna's "Mannusgesellschaft", which had played a leading role in the nationalist and racist orientation of German prehistory research in the Nazi period. Startled by this announcement, the members of the Schleswig Circle immediately called a meeting to determine how they could pre-empt the use of the name by third parties. As a result, 17 students and young academics from the prehistory institutes in Cologne, Marburg and Freiburg-im-Breisgau founded the "Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte e.V. (DGUF)" and had the name recorded in the Register of Associations with the Bonn District Court on 27 October 1969. The Mannusgesellschaft, re-founded by Bolko von Richthofen, then switched to the name Gesellschaft für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Bonn), in 1994, the revived journal Mannus was discontinued, after just 24 issues.
Further information
Winrich Schwellnus: Bemerkungen zur Entstehung und zum Standort der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte. Archäologische Informationen 13, 1990, pp. 6–9. ISSN 0341-2873, ISBN 3-7749-2897-5
Jörg Eckert: Die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, der Schleswiger Kreis und der Unkeler Kreis. In: Archäologische Informationen 25, 2002, pp. 15–21. ISSN 0341-2873, ISBN 3-7749-2897-5
From Wikipedia’s article on Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4