The article presents the role of Otto Braasch, a German pilot and aerial archaeologist in the development of aerial archaeology in Poland in the last decade of the 20th century.

Otto Braasch at the age of 20 obtained a glider pilot license, and in 1958 he joined the German air force, where until 1980 he served as a supersonic fighter pilot, as a squadron commander, operational officer and deputy wing commander in fighter units, as well as a staff officer at Luftwaffe headquarters. In 1974, he began his activity as a practitioner and theoretician of aerial archaeology, which lasted almost 50 years, initially in southern Germany, and after the collapse of the Communist system in Central Europe, also in the eastern federal states of Germany, in Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia and Latvia.

His interests in archaeology developed through personal contacts with the archaeologist and engineer Irwin Scollar, who from 1960 as an employee of the Rhineland National Museum in Bonn was a pioneer of post-war aerial archaeology in Germany, and then with the archaeologist Rainer Christlein, who in 1976, as an employee and later director of the archaeological section of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection, initiated regular search for archaeological sites in Bavaria from a plane, carried out by Otto Braasch.

In 1980, Otto Braasch left the air force to devote himself entirely and exclusively to aerial archaeology. Until 1989, he served as the aerial archaeologist of the Bavarian Conservation Office, creating from scratch an archive of aerial photographs of archaeological sites in Bavaria, initially stored in Landshut and later in Munich. This archive is currently one of the world’s largest sources of aerial archaeology. Later, the area of his interest became Baden-Württemberg, and after the collapse of the Communist regime in Europe and the reunification of Germany, he began systematic exploration activities in the territory of the East German states – Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Fig. 1). This aerial survey initiated by Otto Braasch was and is being continued by his successors, who are in most cases his students. Otto Braasch disseminated his vast knowledge and shared his experiences in numerous publications (Fig. 2), at many conferences and during lectures he gave at the universities of Munich and Berlin.

From the point of view of the history of Polish modern archaeology the most important is the missionary activity of Otto Braasch in the countries of the former Soviet bloc. Otto Braasch was one of the initiators of helping archaeologists from Central and Eastern Europe to initiate the aerial prospection of archaeological heritage resources, which became possible on a larger scale after the collapse of the Communist system. He helped archaeologists, including in Poland, as an instructor during practical aerial archaeology training courses, and he also came to Poland several times in the company of Polish archaeologists to make reconnaissance flights in various parts of the country, discovering many previously unknown archaeological sites, including the first Neolithic cult circle in Bodzów in the Lubuskie Province (Fig. 3–8).