Hans-Georg Rausch

Hans-Georg Emil Eduard Siegfried Rausch (born October 13, 1915 ; † 1993 in Ahnatal ) was a pastor , unofficial employee of the MfS and the only member of the Leipzig city ​​council who voted against the demolition of the Paulinerkirche at Leipzig University .

Life

Hans-Georg Rausch came from an old pastor family. After graduating from high school, he studied theology. During the Second World War he served as a sergeant in the artillery and was wounded several times.

In 1947 he finished his studies and became pastor of the Probstheidaer congregation in Leipzig. The GDR regime initially viewed him critically. On the occasion of the popular uprising of June 17, 1953, the Stasi noted that he had "incited" against the party and state leadership. However, this assessment changed in the following years, in which Rausch was an unofficial employee of the MfS. At the end of the 1970s it became of no interest to the State Security, because the desired effect, a split in the Evangelical Church of Saxony and the division into individual parishes, had not occurred.

family

Rausch married Annemarie Preusse in 1942. There are four children from this marriage. The marriage ended in divorce in 1968. In his second marriage on August 1, 1969, he married Annemarie Frick, née Böhmig.

"Church split"

In 1955 the church administration tried to relieve him and move him to another position. Rausch mobilized his community and obtained support from the local church council. At the same time he turned to government agencies for support in his conflict with the church and signed a declaration of commitment as IM "Eduard" for the MfS. The conflict with the Church escalated during the year. Hans-Georg Rausch declared his parish in Leipzig-Probstheida to be independent. Church lawsuits for his dismissal have been dismissed by state courts on the grounds that they were internal affairs of the Church.

Conversely, Rausch failed with his lawsuit to get the church tax revenue allocated to the community. At times, the town was the advice of the district finances. Rausch later had to earn his own living as a truck driver.

In total, the community was run independently for twenty-eight years.

politics

In 1957 Hans-Georg Rausch was "elected" to the city parliament of Leipzig for the Kulturbund of the GDR (he was also a member of the CDU block party ).

Hans-Georg Rausch was the only one to vote against the demolition of the university church at the decisive meeting of the city council on May 23, 1968. At that time the Leipziger Volkszeitung reprinted all the speeches of the church demolition proponents, but not a word of the lonely naysayer. "Printed matter no. 64" has disappeared from the city archives. It is not known to what extent the voting behavior was coordinated with the Stasi.

The collaboration with the Stasi ended in 1976. Hans-Georg Rausch left the GDR in 1984 and moved to Hesse.

reception

The writer Erich Loest portrays Hans-Georg Rausch in his novel “ Völkerschlachtdenkmal ” , published in 1984, as “Leipzig's last heroes”. After the fall of the Wall, Loest proposed Rausch for honorary citizenship . After the Stasi cooperation became known, this proposal was not pursued any further. He dedicated a few words of appreciation to the former pastor Rausch in a speech "Against indifference" on June 17, 1989 (in the old Federal Republic "Day of German Unity") in the Lübeck St. Petri Church .

literature

• Rudolf Scholz: Leipzig's last hero or the life of pastor Hans-Georg Rausch . Dingsda, Querfurt 2002.
• Erich Loest: Monument to the Battle of the Nations .
• Georg Wilhelm: The dictatorships and the Protestant church . 2004, ISBN 3-525-55739-6 , pp. 415–460 ( GoogleBooks - chapter The "Rausch" case ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans-Georg Rausch in the catalog of the German National Library