Georg Rückert (pastor)

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Georg Rückert (born August 16, 1914 in Nuremberg , † August 31, 1988 in Munich ) was a Protestant pastor and founder of the Augustinum .

Life

Georg Rückert, the son of a master electrician in Nuremberg, was shaped by the war and post-war times. Some of his ideas originated there. After graduating from high school in 1933 at the humanistic Melanchthon grammar school in Nuremberg , he studied Protestant theology and philosophy at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg , joined the AMV Fridericiana Erlangen on June 1, 1933 and continued his studies at the University of Rostock . While he was still studying theology, he met his second wife Gertrud , a war widow, who was born in 1917 as the daughter of a pastor in Würzburg and as a qualified business teacher - even after their marriage in 1950 - she was committed to her husband's side for a lifetime . The couple had four children between 1951 and 1961, including the Erlangen professor for Christian journalism Johanna Haberer (* 1956) and the deputy editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit Sabine Rückert (* 1961).

Rückert's endeavor was: “Create houses for the unhoused.” As a 65-year-old, he described his past years of life: “It was not just about building houses, but also filling these houses with young, disabled, old and sick people to enliven, to order, to make a community and to awaken in them a brotherly spirit, which admonishes us to bear the burden of one another. "

Act

Rückert taught as a religion teacher in Munich at the Karlsgymnasium and the Max-Planck-Gymnasium . In addition, he was a theologian oriented towards diaconal work. In the post-war years, Rückert's concept of childcare was developed that was oriented towards the needs of the young people of the time as orphans and half-orphans.

The Augustinum residential monastery

On May 12, 1954, the year of the 1,600th birthday of the church father Aurelius Augustinus von Hippo , the “Evangelical Student Dormitory Association Munich-Pasing” was founded, which a little later was named “Evangelisches Studienheim Augustinum e. V. ”received. As early as September 1955, the boarding school was opened under the name "Collegium Augustinum" on Dachstrasse in Pasing. Rückert worked there as both a teacher and a home manager. His wife Gertrud Rückert worked in the administration and took care of the food for the pupils. Between 1961 and 1968 he took in boys from the GDR, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

In January 1957, Rückert developed the concept of a “residential pen” for older people; for this purpose, the support association Evangelisches Stift Augustinum e. V. founded. Today the facility operates under the name Wohnstift Augustinum . He wanted to enable people who had previously often lived in old people's homes in an impersonal environment, largely deprived of their independence, to live independently in their own apartments and ultimately to be looked after there in the familiar, personally designed environment. Grocery stores, hairdressers' shops, bank branches or medical practices and cafés should meet daily needs. This environment should also be accompanied by leisure and event rooms with a wide range of cultural, sporting or tourist events. After the first house of its kind, the Augustinum Munich-Neufriedenheim residential building , was ready to move into in January 1962, seventeen residential buildings were built in the Federal Republic of Germany by 1983 during Rückert's lifetime.

In addition, Rückert had a sense for the symbolic. In 1955, the painter and graphic artist Walter Habdank, who was friends with Rückert, designed the figure of a rhinoceros at his suggestion, which was originally intended as a club symbol for the football team of his students and whose properties of strength, speed and love of peace were supposed to be symbolic for sporting activities . To this day there is a bronze figure of the rhinoceros in front of every Augustinum residential monastery. Rückert chose the Greek letter Phi , which is supposed to stand for philadelphia (Greek for sibling love), as the symbol for the Augustinum residential monastery since the early 1970s.

Further facilities of the Augustinum

Almost all of the facilities belonging to the Augustinum Group today go back to Georg Rückert's concepts and initiatives . The clinics and sanatoriums began in the Stiftsklinik in Munich, which was built in April 1962, and in the first special facility for people with dementia in Thambach near Erding, which opened in April 1982.

Today's educational institutions include schools for learning and performance -impaired children, whose Samuel Heinicke Realschule Munich was established in September 1971 as the first secondary school for the hard of hearing in Bavaria, and to which a technical college for the hard of hearing was added in 1978, as well as facilities for the disabled with the Curative Education Center Augustinum HPCA, which was initially founded for mentally handicapped children in June 1968 in Munich-Hasenbergl and was then named after Pastor Otto Steiner in September 1972 . In October 1977 the Theodor-Heckel- Bildungswerk of the HPCA followed, the first adult education center for people with intellectual disabilities in Germany.

A wide range of diaconal work determined the entire life of the Rückert couple. "Up until the 1980s, Pastor Georg Rückert's visions resulted in an almost nationwide social network spread across the whole of Germany." After the great earthquake in El Salvador in December 1986, Rückert founded - the year before he had become honorary consul of this country - the association "International Philadelphian Institution" (IPHI) and together with his wife Gertrud Rückert provided construction and emergency aid here in the following years ; in doing so, he took care of the construction of a village with 85 houses.

Continuation of his life's work

Georg Rückert wanted to create “building” and wanted to be active in the concrete sense of the word. He needed houses for all plans. He implemented his ideas through the many activities and negotiating skills in financing issues as well as in the acquisition of land. His anchoring in Augustinian thinking helped him as well as a keen sense for the power of meaningful and community-building signs, for symbols. His wife was actively involved in all projects.

After Rückert's death, the continuation of his projects was in the hands of his wife and family. Two of his children became pastors and are closely connected to the diaconal and philanthropic work of their father. Markus Rückert, honorary professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Landshut in the field of social work since 2005, heads the tasks of the Augustinum Group and its facilities as Chairman of the Management Board. Pastor Johanna Haberer, professor of Christian journalism at the theological faculty of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg since 2001, is committed to her father's work. She has been a member of the Augustinum's supervisory board since 1999 and worked as an editor for the Augustinum's in- house magazine FORUM in 1993/94 .

Awards and honors

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Eduard Haas: The Academic-Musical Association Fridericana in the Sondershäuser Association, formerly the student choir in Erlangen . Erlangen 1982, self-published, p. 345
  2. ↑ See the entry of Georg Rückert's matriculation in the Rostock matriculation portal
  3. ^ Neuburger, p. 19.
  4. ^ Neuburger, p. 19.
personal data
SURNAME Rückert, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant pastor and founder of the Augustine
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1988
Place of death Munich