Alexander Rosenbrock

This is an archive of photos, letters, notes, and other materials for my grandfather
Alexander Rosenbrock (1880-1955).

He is best known for his role in excavating and preserving a wooden Neanderthal lance
found in 1948, stuck between the ribs in a skeleton of a 120,000 year old forest elephant
in Lehringen, Germany. The excavation also unearthed stone tools used in the butchering
of the elephant. This work has been described in several books and is still
considered to be one of the more significant archaeological finds from that time
period. The lance is on display in the Domherrenhaus Museum in Verden-Aller, Germany.

Alexander also worked intensively his entire life in cataloguing and describing the
natural world around him, both in South Africa and Germany, and he was a strong advocate
for the importance of preservation, both of nature and local history & culture.

He helped to collect materials for and start several museums and libraries (both in Demmin
and Verden-Aller), taught middle school students his whole life long in South Africa and
Germany, led youth hiking groups, served in World War I, collected historical place names
in order to produce detailed "Flurnamen" maps (some are now in the collections of the
Kreis Verden-Aller archives), rehabilitated birds and other wildlife, taxidermied the
injured wildlife that did not survive (for display at school and in the museum in Verden),
studied the Epsdorfer Welkarte (an early map of the world that was destroyed in World War
II), and researched Rosenbrock family history in great detail.

Alexander Rosenbrock's life of service has been memorialized through the naming of a
street in Verden-Aller (Rosenbrockstraße) and a planned park (Alexander Rosenbrock Platz)
in Neddenaverbergen, near where the Lehringer lance was found. The park will include
an information panel describing his life work.

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