League of Danzig
.jpg)
The Bund der Danziger eV (BdDA) is an organization of displaced residents of the Free City of Danzig and their descendants as well as friends of the city, which is primarily dedicated to the German-Polish encounter in the area of the former Free City of Danzig. The long-term membership in the Association of Expellees (BdV) is currently suspended.
prehistory
Among the expellees, the Danzigers were among the first to organize.
In June 1945, joined in Luebeck the Oberkonsistorialrats led (formerly pastor of St. Mary's Church in Gdansk ) Gerhard M. Gülzow together a series of Danzig to Gdansk Support Committee. At over 7,000, Lübeck housed the largest number of Gdańsk refugees of all cities in Germany and was particularly suitable as a center for the collection of around 70,000 Gdańsk citizens in Schleswig-Holstein. This relief committee set itself the task of reuniting the scattered and torn families by creating the Danzig homeland index and providing support to compatriots in need. In 1956, the Danzig homeland index already had around 220,000 entries. The field of work expanded and more employees came. Similar auxiliary facilities were created in other places.
Emergence
The BdDA was founded on March 15, 1946 in Hamburg and Lübeck at the same time - with headquarters in Lübeck with the approval of the local, British and German authorities (cf. - Gornig p. 117, cf. Böttcher, p. 68) and ins Registered association register. Accession declarations from citizens of Danzig arrived in large numbers from all German occupation zones . After a short existence, the work of the BdDA was interrupted by the regulation of the British military authority; any further activity was forbidden because, in the opinion of the authority, its existence violated a regulation of the Allied Control Council . The activity was nevertheless continued (illegally) by the senior consistorial councilor Gülzow. At the end of July 1948, the BdDA received the final approval from the military government with the statutes presented.
The following were elected as the first board members and confirmed after the restart in the supervisory board meeting on August 21, 1948: Senior student councilor Könnemann, Lübeck; Chairman: Managing Director Burde, Flensburg; Member of the Landtag Josef Cierocki , Eutin; Trader Hintz, Lübeck; Pastor Mahlau, Hamburg; Auditor Pfeiffer, Lübeck; Commercial clerk Zocher, Bremen. As a delegate of the general agency: Kaufmann Ziehm, Hamburg. The first board of directors consisted of:
- the district commissioner: Chief Inspector Chall, Oldenburg i. O.; Businessman Domanski, Hamburg; Mrs. Anni Kalähne , Bremen; Aenne Kurowski-Schmitz , attorney at law , St. Tönis; Engineer quantity, Braunschweig; Pastor Kurt Walter , Stuttgart (permanent representative for Pastor Walter: Kaufmannisdier employee Krzoska, Gießen / Lahn)
- the overall commissioner: lawyer Sternfeld, Lübeck; Chairman: Publishing Director Gspann, Heidelberg; Langguth, Hamburg; Marx attorney, Bad Kissingen; Merchant Ziehm, Hamburg
tasks and goals
According to § 2 of the statutes, the task of the BdDA was: to represent the common interests of the people of Danzig, in particular in all social and economic, labor law and civil service issues, to look after the interests of the people of Danzig in authorities, corporations, associations, etc. and to provide social and charitable aid to those in need of Danzig afford to. The BdDA made it possible for the Danzigers to come together around the world to protect their rights and to preserve the idea of home.
Structure and organization
Local offices of the BdDA were established under the chairmanship of active Danzig residents in places where large numbers of Danzig residents were located. The BdDA currently consists of 11 regional associations: Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. In addition to members from the regional associations, the BdDA also knows individual memberships of Danzigers living abroad or Danzigers who are not members of any Danzig regional association. The individual regional associations (such as Hamburg) have as e. V. own legal capacity.
Both the members of the BdDA and the electorate of the Council of Danzigers (RdDA) are displaced and fled Danzigers. In this respect - despite different tasks - there are personal overlaps between the BdDA and the RdDA. So was z. B. the incumbent federal secretary of the RdDA since 2011 at the same time President of the RdDA.
Federal chairwoman of the Bund der Danziger e. V. were:
- Rudolf Könnemann (Lübeck), March 25, 1946 to October 30, 1978
- Senior Student Councilor Helmut Roick (Kiel), October 30, 1978 to March 31, 2003
- Werner Hewelt (Göttingen), March 31, 2003 to June 27, 2009 (HR entry September 10, 2009)
- Dieter Teubler (Bad Säckingen), June 27, 2009 to September 3, 2011 (HR entry December 21, 2011)
- Heiko Körnich (Lübeck-Travemünde), September 3, 2011 to October 18, 2015
Roswitha Möller (Münster / Westphalia) has been federal chairwoman since October 18, 2015. She is the first female CEO in the history of the League of Danzig since 1946.
Crisis and a new beginning
The board of directors of the BdDA, which was in office until June 27, 2009, submitted three motions for resolution to the delegates (which are considered to be the general assembly under association law) to the federal delegates' assembly on September 20, 2008 - without prior notice of content:
- Discontinuation of the newsletter Unser Danzig and transfer of its parts to the newsletter Der Westpreusse - Unser Danzig
- Fusion of the BdDA with the Landsmannschaft Westpreußen e. V., in future “Landsmannschaft Danzig-Westpreußen e. V. “should be called
- Dissolution of the BdDA
The BdDA federal board justified these requests with the dwindling number of members and the financial situation of the association. In the absence of any deadlines to prepare for amendments of this magnitude, the majority of the delegates nevertheless approved these motions, subject to the following ancillary conditions:
- The applications are fundamental decisions that need to be coordinated with alternative concepts still to be submitted by the regional associations in order to be effective.
- The regional associations are therefore given the opportunity to work out alternative concepts for reorganizing the BdDA. A delegate assembly will select the best concept from these.
The dissolution failed due to the resistance of the Landsmannschaft der Danziger Hamburg e. V. and other supporters of the receipt of the BdDA. An assembly of delegates followed on June 27, 2009 with new elections. The new board was mainly formed by the representatives of those regional associations that had campaigned for the preservation of the BdDA during the 2008/2009 crisis.
museum
On the initiative of the Federation of Danzigers, the opening of a Danzig museum in Lübeck has been promoted since 1977. All local offices, regional associations and the federal association as well as numerous Gdansk residents and friends of the city donated to this project in a one-time effort, thus making it possible to purchase the property, convert it into a "Gdansk hall house" and set up the museum. On March 15, 1983, the Museum Haus Hansestadt Danzig was opened in the Engelsgrube .
The Danziger Förderkreis e.V. was appointed as the sponsoring association for the property and the museum . V. was founded, which as a special purpose association was essentially the same person as the members of the board of directors of the Federation of Danzigers. The then deputy chairman of the federal government, Werner Hewelt, was also chairman of the Danziger Förderkreis eV. The successor association of the Danziger Förderkreis has been the Haus Hansestadt Danzig Foundation since 2011 .
Seat of the federal government
The seat of the BdDA has been relocated several times within Lübeck. Since the foundation of the federal government, the office was at Mühlenstrasse 1. From the opening of the museum to the end of the cooperation between the Bund der Danziger and the Danziger Förderverein eV on May 15, 2009, the headquarters of the federal government was in the museum building, Engelsgrube 66. As a result of the failed liquidation plans (see above), the office was relocated from there to the Media Docks (Willy-Brandt-Allee 31, Lübeck). Since September 1, 2009, the office of the Bund der Danziger has been located at Fleischhauerstraße 37. In the spring of 2018, an initiative by the board of directors to return the federal headquarters to the former location in the museum failed. The federal executive board is sticking to its wish to pacify the relationship with the Museum Haus Hansestadt Danzig and to relocate the office to the Museum Haus Hansestadt Danzig.
Members magazine
Beginning with the first edition in November 1948, the federal government published its own newsletter for association members, which usually presented current and historical topics relating to the city of Danzig and the Free City of Danzig once a month . The first edition (No. 1 of November 1948) appeared under the name Circular for the Members of the Bund der Danziger e. V., Lübeck , followed by the number 2 of January 1949 under the name Mitteilungsblatt für die Bund der Danziger e. V., Lübeck , which name this publication kept until the 10th issue in December 1949 (Christmas edition). From the next issue, ie the January 1950 issue to the present day, the sheet is continuously called Our Danzig . Starting with the contents of the year 1957, tables of contents with titles and subject indexes of all editions of the previous year are published annually in a January edition.
The publication of Unser Danzig has been suspended since January 1st, 2008 . It will be continued quarterly from October 2013 under the name Danzig - Mitteilungsblatt des Bundes der Danziger eV . The magazine Der Westpreuße , which was published separately until then, has been using the name “Unser Danzig” in its subtitle since January 2009 and has since appeared under the title Der Westpreuße - Unser Danzig .
Day of Gdańsk
Danziger Day has been held almost annually since 1950, in 1984 in Kiel and 1991 in Koblenz. In recent years, the Lübeck Chamber of Crafts has been chosen as the venue. In 2014, the 50-year sponsorship with the city was celebrated in Düsseldorf. The following Gdansk Day was celebrated in Gdansk in 2015. Seventy years after the flight and displacement, the first meeting with city officials took place in the European Solidarność Center. The next day of Gdańsk is planned for the weekend of June 19-21, 2020 in the Lübeck Chamber of Crafts.
literature
- Heinz Lingenberg : Lübeck and Danzig - for the opening of the Hanseatic City of Danzig in Lübeck. in: Der Wagen 1984, pp. 69–80.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Minutes of the Council of Danzig from October 30, 2011 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Hist. Reprint of Lübeck VR 360 register of associations ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Chron. Reprint of Lübeck VR 1227 register of associations ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ "DANZIG - Bulletin of the Federation of Danzigers", No. 7 from December 2015 ( Memento from January 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Danzig-online.de
- ↑ Report on the establishment of the foundation and the transfer of assets from the Danziger Förderkreis to the foundation , accessed on November 3, 2018.
- ^ The West Prussian - Our Danzig ( Memento from November 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
