Wilhelm Unverzagt (21 May 1892 – 17 March 1971) was a German prehistorian and archaeologist.
Education and First World War
Born in Wiesbaden, Rhenish Hesse, Unverzagt studied classical philology, archaeology, and geography at the universities of Bonn, Munich, and Berlin between 1911 and 1914. As a student, he became a member of the Christian student associations Bonner Wingolf and Munich Wingolf.
From 1914 to 1916 he served as a soldier during the First World War in Flanders, Łódź, and in the "Winter War" in the Carpathians where he was severely wounded. He then worked for a short time as a research assistant at the Museum of Nassau Antiquities in Wiesbaden and from December 1916 to Summer 1917 in the Römisch-Germanische Kommission of the German Archaeological Institute in Frankfurt am Main. He was then employed by the military in Brussels as an assistant consultant on the staff of the Flemish Occupation Administration, where he recorded Roman and late antique monuments in Belgium and northern France.
After the war in November 1918 he worked again in the Wiesbaden Museum. From 1919 to the autumn of 1924 he served in the diplomatic service. Due to his efforts to rescue Belgian and northern French artworks, he was first appointed to the German Armistice Commission in Spa, Belgium, became a consultant from January 1920, and then worked in the Reich Commissariat for Reparations in Berlin. In Spa, he met the French prehistorian Raymond Lantier and in Berlin he made contacts with German archaeologist Carl Schuchhardt, at that time the director of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, whose prehistoric department contained the largest collection of artifacts in Germany. In 1924 he became a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI).
Following these years of wartime interruptions Unverzagt resumed his studies and received his doctorate on 3 March 1925 from the University of Tübingen with the classical archaeologist Carl Watzinger. During his studies he also gained excavation experience: in 1911 in the late Roman fort at Alzey, and on the limes near Sayn; during his time in Munich in Cambodunum (Kempten) under the direction of Paul Reinecke; and finally during his assignment in Belgium in 1918 together with Gerhard Bersu in the late Roman fort of Famars in Valenciennes.
Work as a prehistorian until the end of World War II
In 1925 Unverzagt became a research assistant, and in 1926 director of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Berlin) ("Museum for prehistory and early history") in Berlin, then the largest German Museum of Prehistoric Archeology. In October 1926 he took on the position as a young, largely unknown archaeologist. After 1925 Carl Schuchhardt and 1926 Gustaf Kossinna retired, and the time came for Unverzagt. He first became a full member of the German Archaeological Institute in 1927, and then in 1929 the Römisch-Germanischen Kommission. From 1928 he received a teaching position at the University of Berlin, and in 1932 he became honorary professor there. In 1937, following the end of the freeze on new memberships, Unverzagt joined the NSDAP and received membership number 3,917,672. His election as a full member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences took place in 1939, but the election was not confirmed by the Amt Rosenberg. He also participated in courses of the SS and the Reich Labor Service.
In Germany Wilhelm Unverzagt conducted numerous excavations of Hillforts, as for example in Lossow near Frankfurt an der Oder from 1926 to 1926, at the Reitweiner Wallberge at Reitwein in the Oderbruch 1930, in Macedonia from 1931 to 1932, in Zantoch at the river Warthe (Warta) from 1932 to 1934, in Kliestow near Frankfurt from 1936 to 1938, and finally in Lebus from 1939 to 1944. From 1942 to 1944 Unverzagt was chairman and from 1951 to 1954 vice chairman of the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. Only comparatively late, in 1942, did he became a member of the Reich Federation for German Prehistory (Reichsbundes für Deutsche Vorgeschichte).