Rudolf Schumann

August Eberhard Rudolf Schumann (born September 6, 1895 in Dresden ; † March 4, 1966 in Friedberg (Hesse) ) was an elementary school teacher , naturalist and local history researcher .

Live and act

Schumann was born as the son of the upholsterer and later foreman August Richard Schumann (1866–1947) and his wife Marie, b. Born Baldauf (1865–1947). He spent his childhood in the inner Neustadt of Dresden . He had no siblings. Schumann showed an early interest in nature and the natural sciences, so that his parents sent him to the Freiherrlich von Fletcher seminar in Dresden. From 1910 he was trained as a primary school teacher here, which he successfully completed in 1915. Schumann's schoolmates also included Erich Kästner , who attended the seminar from 1913 to 1917.

During the First World War , Schumann served in a pioneer battalion . After his return from the war, he devoted himself intensively to botanical research in Saxon nature. In 1919 he got a job as an assistant teacher at the Moritzburg elementary school . In December 1919 Schumann successfully passed the second teacher examination. A year later he got a job as a teacher at the 38th elementary school in Dresden-Naußlitz , and in June 1934 he became a deputy school teacher there.

In 1921 Schumann married Gabriele von Schönberg and moved with his wife to Dresden-Plauen . The marriage had three children (Gudrun and Sigrid * November 22, 1926, Rotraut * February 25, 1929).

In 1924 Schumann became a volunteer in the Saxon Homeland Security Association . Here he initially continued to do botanical studies. From 1928, however, he devoted himself intensively to the history of ore mining in the Eastern Ore Mountains. Since 1930 he published several mining articles in the publications of the Saxon Homeland Security Association. He was particularly interested in the Altenberg mining area and the tin mining in Altenberg itself.

In the late autumn of 1940 he was called up again for military service as an officer in an air force construction team. In 1941 his wife died after a long illness. On New Year's Eve 1943 he married Gertrud Ulbricht who worked for the Red Cross . On May 1, 1945 he was taken prisoner in Lower Bavaria, from which he was released on September 1, 1946, ill and weak.

Due to his membership in the NSDAP , Schumann could no longer work as a teacher after the end of the war. Until 1948 he earned his living as a construction worker, gardening and warehouse worker. His mining knowledge finally moved him to volunteer in uranium mining in Wismut in Freiberg on April 1, 1948 .

Schumann began his activity in the training group for geological technicians. From August 1948 he drove as a geologist and later as a district geologist on the "Davidschacht" and the "Reiche Zeche Schacht" . In September 1950 he moved to "Schacht 209" in Bärenhecke, but in 1951 he went back to the "Himmelfahrt Fundgrube" in Freiberg as an exploration geologist.

His second marriage ended in divorce that same year.

His professional career was abruptly interrupted on October 20, 1953 when he was arrested for allegedly acting as an agent . On January 13, 1954, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Chemnitz District Court on charges of industrial espionage . This sentence was apparently intended to be a political example. Until October 1960 he served his prison sentence in Waldheim . On March 26, 1993, his daughter Gudrun had the sentence reversed and her father rehabilitated .

After the end of the prison sentence, Schumann moved to the Federal Republic of Germany shortly before the inner-German border was finally closed by the building of the Wall . He took up his new residence in Altweilnau .

Schumann could never really let go of his old Saxon homeland and mining in the Ore Mountains. At the end of 1963 he wrote in a letter to an old confidante from his time in the mining industry:

At Christmas in particular, I think back a lot to our mining landscape in the Ore Mountains. 13 years ago I drove to the mine in Bärenhecke in the Müglitztal . Often I would climb up from my area, which was close underground, to the dump and then find myself in the middle of the snowy Christmas forest, and the snowflakes extinguish my mine light. There were very strong, deep inner impressions that I cannot and will not forget, especially since I had worked on the history of this small pit since 1472 in earlier years.

In his new home, Schumann fulfilled his long-cherished wish to travel to Spain . From 1963 to 1965 he spent his holidays in Andalusia , Tenerife and Mallorca .

Rudolf Schumann died on March 4, 1966 after illness in Friedberg . The burial took place in Altweilnau.

Works

Articles (newspapers, magazines, books)

• Why and how do we cultivate a love for nature among our school children? (1920)
• The Saxon School and the Homeland Security Thought (1926)
• A Setting Plant World (1927)
• A year on mountain meadows (1929)
• The Plauensche Grund in idyllic and romantic literature (1929)
• The mining area of ​​Niederpöpel , communications from the Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz 19 (1930) 1, pp. 41–69 ( LINK )
• From Altenberg tin mining (1930)
• A constitutional speech in primary school (1931)
• The economic organization of the former Saxon ore mining (1933)
• Poetry and Truth about the Mining Between Tharandt and Dippoldiswalde (1933)
• From the "Austrian Nature Conservation Association" (1935)
• Silver mining on Old Hope God's Erbstolln in Kleinvoigtsberg ( 1936)
• The Rabenauer Grund near Dresden, its landscape, its plants (1936)
• Complete - table of contents of the messages of the State Association of Saxon Homeland Security 1908-1937 (1938)
• On the old Silberstrasse from Scharfenberg and Munzig to Freiberg (1939)
• The Plauensche Grund near Dresden as an example of the change in landscape evaluation (1939)
• Course on Landscape Management and Nature Conservation in the State of Saxony (1939)
• The iron hammer in Dorfchemnitz and the oil mill in Friedebach (1940)

Typewritten manuscripts

• The Plauensche Grund near Dresden in literature, collected 1925–1931
• Copies from files of the Oberbergamtsarchives zu Freiberg Lit. A.Sect. I - List of all accessible and non-accessible mountain and hut buildings of the unified Altenberger Bergamtsrevieres (1934)
• History of silver mining in Frauenstein and the surrounding area (1937)
• Directory of the Upper Mountains deposit registers (1939)
• The German Cottage Garden (1940)
• Registrande of the archive of the Zwitterstocks - A.-G. Altenberg (1940)
• History of ore mining in the area of ​​the former Glashütte mining authority up to the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War with special consideration of the vassal mining authorities Naundorf, Schmiedeberg and Bärenstein
• Altenberg and its tin mining (around 1947)

Miscellaneous

Schumann also published numerous newspaper articles (focus on botany), gave lectures on local history and wrote reports for the Saxon Heritage Protection Association.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ SCHUMANN 2003, p. 18

literature

• Rudolf Schumann: Manuscripts on the mining history of the Osterzgebirge , Jens-Kugler Verlag Kleinvoigtsberg 2003 (contains a curriculum vitae with bibliography on pages 5–26).