Dießen's eleventh honorary ring bearer

Created: 01/21/2022, 12:56 p.m

By: Dieter Roettig

Prof. Dr.

Thomas Raff with a certificate and a golden ring of honor after being presented by Mayor Sandra Perzul.

Some of Raff's books were on display in the town hall's meeting room.

© Roettig

Dießen - If you are looking for a person in Dießen who knows the most about culture, art history and local history, there is only one: Prof. Dr.

Thomas Raff. Mayor Sandra Perzul paid this compliment to the 75-year-old art and cultural historian on the occasion of the awarding of the town's golden ring of honor.

In the past few decades, no one else has campaigned for Dießen with so much passion and love and created memories for posterity.

Among other things, he managed the fortunes of the home club for 35 years and thus left his indelible stamp on Dießen. We owe him, for example, the preservation and renovation of the Taubenturm, the Blaues Haus and Traidtcasten. He also had the idea of ​​providing Dießen's street signs with additional signs about the history of the street. The annual award as "House of the Year" for particularly successful renovations goes back to him.

thanks dr Raff's extensive knowledge of Dießen's culture and art scene was recently published in the representative illustrated book "Art in the Town Hall", which documents the work of 107 well-known artists and craftsmen from the region with its texts. Other local books by Dr. Raff: "Walks through Dießen", "The Taubenturm zu Dießen", "Diessen in old views" or "Diessen in old representations and descriptions". Former mayor Herbert Kirsch, a guest at the ceremony, read this book first when he came to Dießen in the early 1980s. With Kirsch, Prof. Dr. Raff worked well together, usually via the short official channels. In 1998, at Raff's suggestion, an archive office was set up at the market town.

Prof. Dr. Raff written. In one he explains why the Dießen coat of arms is called "Fischermartl". This goes back to a Dießen fisherman named Martin, who had distinguished himself in 1322 in the Battle of Mühldorf with particular bravery. As recognition, Emperor Ludwig appointed Dießen a banned market and awarded the coat of arms with St. George and the fish, which has since been called "Fischermartl". An example of how a question can become a research paper with a lot of research, as Raff added.

Laudator Sandra Perzul quoted companions of Prof. Dr. Raff, who describe him as a stroller through Dießen's cultural history: "He digs, digs, chats, brings things together, sets things and people in motion and inspires with his open, amiable and generous manner". He proved this again when he donated his private library “of twenty running meters of shelves” to the community for the archive.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Raff was born in Munich in 1947 and attended boarding school in Schondorfer Landheim Ammersee from 1958 because his parents owned a holiday home in Bierdorf. After graduating from high school, he first studied law, then art history, classical archeology and European ethnology. In 1979 he began his professional career as an art historian in the editorial office of "Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte". Later he was a scientific assistant at the chair for art history at the University of Augsburg and after his habilitation professor.

Municipal councilor Michael Lutzeier thanked Prof. Dr.

Raff on behalf of the three culture officers for his tireless and voluntary work for Dießen.

The honoree emphasized that he never viewed his work as work, but as fun.

In addition to Lutzeier (The Party), there was also a lot of applause from the local councillors, Roland Scratches (CSU), Antoinette Bagusat (Dießener Bürger), Michael Hofmann (Bavarian Party), Marc Schlüpmann (The Greens) and Johann Rieß (Free Voters)

Before Prof. Dr.

Raff, only ten outstanding personalities have received the “Golden Ring of Honor” from the market town of Dießen since it was introduced in 1965.

This testifies to the value of this award for handpicked citizens who have dedicated their strength and energy to the public, cultural and social interests of the community.

The first ring of honor of the Dießen community was awarded to Sister Johanna Kreuzer, who had worked as a teacher in Dießen for 47 years.

Other honorary ring bearers included Monsignor Heinrich Winterholler for his services to the renovation of Marienmünster with the tower and the winter church, ceramist and local historian Ernst Loesche or Liselotte Orff, who secured the inheritance of her husband Carl Orff for Dießen.