Günther Steeg

Günther Steeg (born March 9, 1930 in Oberdollendorf ; † August 29, 2018 in Königswinter -Oberdollendorf) was a German journalist with Jewish roots.

Life

Günther Steeg was born in Oberdollendorf, today part of Königswinter, as the son of Friedrich Steeg and Martha Levy. The maternal grandparents, Bernhard and Karoline, were members of the Jewish religious community and ran a butcher's shop in Oberdollendorf. Her daughter Martha was baptized a Catholic when she married in 1926.

Steeg started school in 1936. Because of his mother's Jewish origins, his schooling was marked by references from the Beethoven grammar school in Bonn in 1941 and from the middle school in Königswinter in 1944. These measures were part of the educational restrictions for so-called Jewish mixed race .

While grandfather Bernhard Levy had died in 1937, grandmother Karoline Levy was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and murdered there. A stumbling stone in front of the Levy's house in Oberdollendorf reminds of them .

Since Friedrich Steeg did not divorce his Jewish wife, she lived in a “privileged marriage” and was protected from deportation. Martha Steeg and her son Günther were arrested by the Gestapo on September 11, 1944 , despite a warning from a police officer , and initially transported to a collection camp in Cologne - Müngersdorf for forced labor . At the end of September 1944, the mother and other prisoners were transported by truck to Kassel , where she had to work in the Henschel works there. Because her son was not yet 16 years old and therefore too young for work, he was sent home to his paternal grandmother.

His father managed to get his mother out of the labor camp in Hessisch Lichtenau near Kassel and to bring her to her friend Wilma Groyen in Niederdollendorf . She hid Martha and Günther Steeg until they were liberated by American soldiers on March 18, 1945. Wilma Groyen was posthumously honored in 2008 by the Israeli Yad Vashem Memorial as Righteous Among the Nations .

After the war, Steeg finished school and then started working as a payroll clerk at Didier-Werke , where his father was already employed, and stayed there until his retirement in 1989.

Activity as a journalist

In addition to this professional activity, Steeg worked as a freelance reporter (text and photo journalist) for many newspapers and for radio from 1949 to 1989, after his retirement from 1989 onwards full-time and increasingly also nationally.

He began working as a reporter in 1949 after the publisher of the Oberkasseler / Dollendorfer newspaper, Johannes Düppen from Oberkassel, had asked him to initially help out for his newspaper. Steeg's activity there lasted until the municipal reorganization in 1969.

Further stations of his journalistic activity: in the 1950s / 1960s he reported for the “Katholische Kirchenzeitung”, but also for the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR Cologne) with the two programs “Between Rhine and Weser” and “Nachrichten aus NRW”. From 1971 he was also a reporter for the Bonner Rundschau until December 1997.

In September 1964 he started the first edition of the “Siebengebirgs-Zeitung” (Echo des Siebengebirge). There he worked with regular reports and many photos about the events in the city of Königswinter up to the last newspaper edition in December 2004.

Steeg's work as a journalist was by no means limited to his region, but with his text and picture reports he also supplied national press organs and the national radio. For decades of restless journalistic work, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on August 12, 1991 .

Contemporary witness to Jewish history

Martha and Günter Steeg were among the people who survived the National Socialist persecution of Jews in Germany and thus important contemporary witnesses of Jewish history in the Königswinter area. Both were available for the historical study of the history of the Jews in Königswinter by the historian Manfred van Rey and for the resulting documentary by Ralph Giordano , Günther Steeg later also for the study of National Socialism in the Siebengebirge.

Memberships (selection)

Steeg was effective in several clubs for many years:

• In 1950 he was a co-founder of the Küzengarde Oberdollendorf carnival society, where he was secretary and member of the Elfer Council until 1991. He was a senator since 1991. At the end of the 1970s he received the Order of Thanks from the Siebengebirge Festival Committee. He was made an honorary member of the association and received in 2016 - at the age of 86 - the Order of Merit of the BdK in gold with diamonds.
• In 1962 he was co-founder of the Heimatverein Oberdollendorf and Römlinghoven and until 1982 also secretary. Because of his services, he received the medal “Against the tormenting thirst” in 1979 (today: Ritter vom Siebengebirge) and in 1997, for the 25th anniversary of the Longenburg School Niederdollendorf, the certificate “Eme dobei!” (Always with you!).

Awards

• 1979 Ritter vom Siebengebirge (formerly: Against the tormenting thirst)
• 1991 Federal Cross of Merit
• 1997 Ring of Honor of the City of Königswinter

Fonts

• Odyssey from Central Germany to Longenburg - The persecution during the Nazi era and the rescue by the Americans. In: Memories of a confused time - Nieder- and Oberdollendorfer citizens look back on the war and post-war years. Volume 1, published by the Heimatverein Oberdollendorf und Römlinghoven e. V., Königswinter 1996.

literature

• Manfred van Rey: Life and death of our Jewish fellow citizens in Königswinter (= City of Königswinter, The City Director: Königswinter in Past and Present , Book 1) Königswinter 1985.
• Oberdollendorf and Römlinghoven. A festival book. , ed. v. Heimatverein Oberdollendorf and Römlinghoven eV: Königswinter 1986.
• Memories of a confused time - Nieder- and Oberdollendorf citizens look back on the war and post-war years. Volume 1, published by the Heimatverein Oberdollendorf und Römlinghoven e. V., Königswinter 1996.
• Ansgar Sebastian Klein : Rise and Rule of National Socialism in the Siebengebirge . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-915-8 (also dissertation University of Bonn, 2007).

Web links

• Lothar Vreden: Günther Steeg - the "flying reporter".
• Ansgar Sebastian Klein: The Siebengebirge in the Nazi era

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heike Hamann: Königswinterer Urgestein - Günther Steeg died at the age of 88 years . In: General-Anzeiger Bonn . August 31, 2018 ( general-anzeiger-bonn.de [accessed September 1, 2018]).
2. ^ Online memorial book of the Federal Archives
3. ↑ Roswitha Oschmann: Yad Vashem memorial posthumously honors Dollendorfer . In: general-anzeiger-bonn.de , October 30, 2008. Retrieved February 12, 2019.
4. ↑ Manfred van Rey: The Jews of Königswinter. For the television adaptation of a scientific publication. [1]