Thank you donation from the German people

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The donation of thanks by the German people was a donation initiated by the then Federal President Theodor Heuss as a thank you for foreign aid in the post-war years.

Foreign aid for the starving Germans

After the Second World War , starving and homeless Germans experienced a wave of willingness to help from abroad. Private individuals and organizations on all continents donated in an unprecedented way for food, to which many people in Germany owed their survival in the famine years after 1945, especially in the famine winter of 1946/47 .

The particular need of malnourished children at this time was z. B. Occasion of the Swedish Red Cross relief operation . Although food in Sweden was rationed after the war, the Swedish citizens donated millions to Germany and Austria with the one-crown collection . The “ Sweden feed ” was one of the largest mass feeds financed from abroad after the end of the war, especially for western post-war Germany and Vienna. For almost four years - from the beginning of 1946 to April 1949 - children between the ages of three and six, 120,000 of them within the British occupation zone of Germany and in Berlin, were provided with soups in their kindergartens and schools.

Federal President Heuss (Photo: 1953)

Federal President Heuss and the donation

On November 27, 1951, the then Federal President Theodor Heuss called on the Germans to fundraise in a radio address. The donated money was intended to be used to purchase works by living German artists, which would then be sent as a gesture of thanks to the foreign donors.

As could be read in the report on the thank-you donation campaign published in 1955, the Federal President's appeal met with “willing hands and hearts everywhere”.

Furthermore, one learns that the communities saw it as their task to make their citizens aware of the goals of the thank you donation. The city administration of Oberhausen z. B. wrote in her appeal in April 1952: "Who will ever forget that school meals through foreign aid saved our children from the worst hunger and from illness."

Initially, an extremely large number of donations of DM 2 or DM 5 were received (DM 1 = EUR 0.51). The donors noted on their transfers a. that they had never received foreign aid themselves, but that as Germans they felt obliged to support a good cause, even if they personally lived in the poorest of circumstances. An old woman from Münster wrote: “We don't want to forget our benefactors and pray for them. What would have become of us without your help? "

Numerous school classes also expressed their thanks for the many years of school meals. A class representative wrote to the Federal President after transferring DM 20:

“The result is big by our standards, because most families are not doing well. Our school district includes a camp in which refugees are housed makeshift. In many families the fathers are unemployed. But you shouldn't always take it thoughtlessly, you want to give something back once in a while. "

- Bulletin of the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government

But there were also various events in favor of the donation, such as B. the concert of the men's choir Gemüthlichkeit from 1862 in Königswinter , which brought in DM 223.60. Or the first international football match of the German Football Association on German soil after the Second World War against Ireland , which took place in Cologne in 1952 and the donation brought in DM 14,000. By the spring of 1953, a considerable DM 1.5 million was collected in this way.

Works of art as thanks for the help provided

2000 associations in 28 states were to be given gifts for their generous aid. A jury made up of museum directors and state representatives selected over 2000 works by well-known and unknown artists for the donation. a. by Gerhard Marcks , Edwin Scharff , Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Georg Meistermann . The aim was regional balance, but due to the great influence of the Cologne representatives on the jury, there was a predominance of Rhenish artists.

Abstract art was not bought. The works of those artists who worked with Christian-Occidental motifs and with valuable materials such as B. Ewald Mataré , who also represented one of the most important artists in the reconstruction of the city of Cologne (redesign of the doors of Cologne Cathedral ).

For the thank you donation, Ewald Mataré created the thank you plaque that would later adorn the title page of the thank you donation report. The precious badge has a diameter of 1.55 meters and weighs 300 kilograms. It consists of a gilded copper sky with amber stars inserted in rays . At the starting point of the rays there is a small ivory medallion with interlocked hands. Below this is the Latin proverb In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas  (“In what is necessary, there is unanimity, in doubtful freedom, but in all things neighborly love”). Bottom left then the main focus - another medallion with the confluent silhouettes of a man and a woman out of ivory - today's logo to each other of the Municipal Mataré-school Meerbusch in Meerbusch-Büderich .

In a solemn ceremony in Stockholm in the presence of the Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander , the representative of the German ambassador presented Mataré's thank you plaque as a gift from the German people in January 1954 to thank the Swedish people for their caritas , their unselfish charity after 1945. Since that year it has been hanging in the office building of the members of the Swedish Parliament , the Ledamotshus , in the meantime cleaned and restored .

Other recipients were e.g. For example, the German Protestant community in Buenos Aires , the Salvation Army in Sydney , the Force Ouvrière in Paris , the Societé du Lion et Soleil Rouge de l'Iran , the American nation or the British-Jewish publisher and peace activist Victor Gollancz .

literature

  • Bulletin of the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government. 1952, No. 53. Deutscher Bundes-Verlag, pp. 569-571.
  • Sabine Maja Schilling: Ewald Mataré - The plastic work. Catalog raisonné. 2., completely revised. Edition. Wienand, Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-87909-167-6 , p. 237.
  • Ewald Mataré: Diaries 1915–1965. Wienand Verlag, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-87909-543-4 .
  • Guido Müller: German works of art for foreign countries: Theodor Heuss and the donation of thanks from the German people 1951–1956. In: Johannes Paulmann (ed.): Foreign representations. German cultural diplomacy after 1945. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-412-12005-7 .
  • Wilfried Saliger: Symbol of Appreciation. March 1952 ( PDF; 1.2 MB [accessed January 3, 2019]).
  • Werner Stephan and Heinrich Tintner (eds.): Sender Germany; the report on the donation of thanks by the German people. Gebrüder Mann Verlag, Berlin 1955, OCLC 4844670 .
  • Martin Warnke : On the objectivity and the spread of the abstract. In: Dieter Bänsch (ed.): The fifties. Contributions to politics and culture (= German Text Library. Volume 5). Narr, Tübingen 1985, ISBN 3-87808-725-X , pp. 209-222, here: pp. 210 f. ( Scan in google book search).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ office thanks donation of the German people, Cologne:  Call the Federal President Prof. Dr. Theodor Heuss on the 'Thank You Donation of the German People' for the support of the population in the post-war period by foreign states [1951] , accessed on January 2, 2019.
  2. ↑ Quotes from the donation report.
  3. ↑ Bulletin of the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government. May 10, 1952, p. 570.
  4. ↑ All information on artists, sums of money, number of works purchased and recipients from the thank-you donation report.
  5. ^ Sabine Maja Schilling: Ewald Mataré - The plastic work. Catalog raisonné. 2., completely revised. Edition. Wienand, Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-87909-167-6 , p. 237.