Mühlhausen's oldest historian

Mühlhausen is by no means neglecting its history. For years it has been diligently researching its past. The City Museum and the Historical Association publish a regular journal, the Mühlhäuser Beiträge, with articles on every possible aspect of the city's history and ancient monuments: the history of music in the city; the language used by Thomas Müntzer who led the Peasants' Revolt from Mühlhausen in 1525; the 1972 decision to expropriate privately-owned businesses; the great fires that periodically destroyed whole sections of the city; the ancient cellars still found beneath most of the houses within the walls which reveal so much about the original mediaeval city.

The city's oldest historian, Rolf Aulepp (1913-2008) spent a lifetime exploring and recording his home town and, in particular, its cellars. He was, in fact, the only local historian to have seen the interior of every single building within and many without the walls. Between 1962 and 1969 he managed to explore and record the structural details of over 1800 cellars, of which more than 1200 were mediaeval. Since they had survived the many fires in the city they proved a source of immense archaeological and historical information. Rolf Aulepp was able to date their construction by their depth below the present street level, the proportions of their rooms, the type of stone used and the manner in which the vaults had been constructed. He found six distinct historical periods, of which Late Romanesque (1200-1250) was the earliest, although pieces of pottery dating from as early as the ninth century were also found. Many of these cellars have a very different layout from that of the buildings now standing on them and point to an earlier, feudal system of large properties, while later mediaeval cellars indicate areas where artisans and labourers settled. The position of the entrance to a cellar in relation to a street can, he found, also show what sort of trade its owner was engaged in, perhaps using his cellar as a workshop, or requiring a side entrance for farm produce to be carted in, or from which he could sell his goods.

Rolf Aulepp was a dominant figure in Mühlhausen's historical research, publishing innumerable articles on topics ranging from pre-history to the present day, and at the age of seventy-eight in 1991 he was made an honorary citizen of the city in recognition of this work. He was born in Mühlhausen in 1913, the son of a clothing manufacturer, worked for a time in his father's firm, before being called up to serve in the Wehrmacht in 1938. He was seriously wounded during the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and withdrawn from front-line service. In 1943 he returned to Mühlhausen where he experienced the final years of the war and recorded in his diary, among other events, the American advance on the city in April 1945. He helped his father take up production again under the Russian occupation, only to have the entire business taken away in 1950 as a result of a spurious campaign against his father instigated by those in East Germany who wished to see all private firms dispossessed. He even took upon himself the prison sentence passed on his aging and infirm father. From then on this unusual and remarkable man devoted his energies to preserving the history of his birth-place.