Raff's farewell gift: a research assignment

Created: 01/23/2022, 20:02

Thomas Raff has written a whole series of publications about Dießen and the region, for which Mayor Sandra Perzul has now presented him with the golden ring of honor of the market town.

© Ursula Nagl

The presentation of the Golden Ring of Honor took place in Dießen in a small, very personal and appreciative setting.

The art historian Thomas Raff received the high award of the market community for his services to culture and research into local history.

Dießen

- "If you are looking for a person who has the most cultural, art historical and local history knowledge, also in relation to our market town, the name Professor Dr. Thomas Raff,” Mayor Sandra Perzul emphasized at the award ceremony in the town hall’s meeting room. Hardly anyone else has put so much passion and love into the market community over the past decades and created something lasting. It was an honor for her to be able to present the community's eleventh ring of honor to the long-standing chairman of the local history association, said Perzul in front of the invited guests, who included the leaders of the municipal council, members of the cultural advisory board and Perzul's predecessor, Herbert Kirsch.

Raff was born in Munich in 1947.

During his childhood he spent vacations with his family in Diessen and visited the country home in Schondorf.

After almost completing his law degree, he followed his passion and switched to humanities.

He studied art history, classical archeology and European ethnology.

From 1985 he worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Art History in Augsburg.

After his habilitation in 1991, he took over the deputy chair and from 1996 an adjunct professorship.

"And they've been connected to our home club in Dießen longer than I've been in the world," namely more than 40 years, Sandra Perzul summed it up.

First he was a consultant for local history, then second chairman and from 1991 to 2021 chairman of the local history association.

At Raff's suggestion, the Heimatverein has been awarding the "House of the Year" award since 1983. With his support, an archive was set up in the town hall. He also came up with the idea of ​​explaining historical street names on small additional signs on the street signs. A memorial in the park of the Dießen Augustinum commemorates the caricaturist and Simplicissimus draftsman Thomas Theodor Heine, who once lived in the market town and had to flee from the Nazis. Heine researcher Raff brought him back to the memory of the people of Diessen. Over the years, the new wearer of the Ring of Honor has collected a wealth of cultural and art-historical knowledge about Diessen and the region. He set projects and people in motion.

In 1982, after moving to the Ammersee, he also devoured Raff's book "Dießen in alten representations and views" and thus found a better understanding of the place, according to ex-mayor Kirsch. He likes to think of the good cooperation, "I could always trust them". That's how Raff saw it: "For her predecessor, Mayor Schad, we were left-leaning crackpots," he recalled. "But he let us do it. We then grew up together with Mayor Kirsch.”

The joy of volunteer work has always been his motivation. "I just notice things that I can't explain, and then I look for a solution." For example, the Dießen coat of arms, also known as "Fischermartl". Even as a young man he wondered why the people of Diessen called their coat of arms, which clearly shows Saint George, Fischermartl. Decades later, he found the solution with the local historian Herwig Stuckenberger: The unusual name goes back to a play that was performed in Dießen in the 19th century and tells the story of the brave Dießen fisherman Martin, who appeared on the stage as a hero with the coat of arms . The fisherman's market.

Currently, according to Raff, he is concerned with the question of who will devote himself to local history when he and his companions are no longer there.

Then you can't say any more, ask Dr.

Raff in Munich.

He therefore very much hopes that the community will continue to make efforts to upgrade and digitize the community archive and to create a contact point for local history for schoolchildren, students and other interested parties.

The 75-year-old, who has already bequeathed "20 meters" of his local history library to the community, brought a small research assignment as a gift: a gold-framed, historical etching, under which is written in curved writing "View near Dießen over the Ammersee".

"Perhaps someone can find out where this passage immortalized on this sheet is."

As the wearer of the Ring of Honor, Raff is now in a row with Monsignor Heinrich Winterholler, with the ceramist and local researcher Ernst Loesche and with Liselotte Orff.  

Ursula Nagl