Hans Kaufmes

Hans Kaufmes (also Johann Kaufmes or John Kaufmes , born August 29, 1897 in Brenndorf , Transylvania , Kingdom of Hungary ; † November 23, 1971 in Corvallis (Oregon) , United States of America ) was an agricultural specialist, " country farmer leader " of the " German ethnic group in Romania "(DViR), head of the" Landesbauernamt "of the DViR and from 1940 to 1944 Vice Mayor in Kronstadt (today Brașov ).

Life

Kaufmes studied agricultural science (BS) in Romania and graduated from the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart in 1922 as a qualified farmer (M.Agr.). From 1923 to 1938 he worked as the director of the agricultural school in Marienburg (today Feldioara ). He was the third person to sign the declaration by leading National Socialists in Romania against Viktor Glondy's bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Romania on July 21, 1934, “To clarify the situation. A word to all German national comrades ”. In 1938 he represented the “National Community of Germans in Romania” in the “Front of the National Revival” as a “country farmer's leader” and took part in the talks with Edit von Coler on bringing the Germans into line in Romania .

1940 to 1944 Kaufmes was Deputy Mayor of Kronstadt (Brașov). On November 16, 1940, he signed the "Agreement" made with the Transylvanian-Saxon Agricultural Association to incorporate it into the framework of the Transylvanian Gaubaueramt . On May 8, 1942, Hans Kaufmes was appointed as the country farmer's leader of the "German ethnic group in Romania" for five years as a member of the Permanent Council of Agriculture. In 1942 he traveled to Germany in a delegation from the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture at the invitation of the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture . In October 1943 he was received by the Romanian envoy Gheorghe in Berlin together with the delegation leader of the Romanian study commission Călniceanu. In mid-March 1944, Kaufmes' daughter Adele married the ethnic group leader Andreas Schmidt .

Kaufmes pushed the National Socialist concept of cooperatives, according to which the economy had to be in the service of the community and the laws of the blood community had to be superior to those of the economy. The cooperative system should largely relieve the farmers of worrying about sales, procurement and pricing; their forces should be freed up for production. With this in mind, the main cooperative “Bauernwerk” was established in Buchenland, the main cooperative “Bauernsegen” in Bessarabia and “Bauernhilfe” in Transylvania.

After the royal coup in Romania on August 23, 1944, a number of the families of leading administrators of the ethnic group stayed on vacation near Reps ( Romanian Rupea ). At the beginning of September 1944, Kaufmes was sent to these families through a gap in the front. He left them a sum of money, but the families themselves remained in accordance with the instructions of the ethnic group leadership in enemy-occupied southern Transylvania, together with the majority of the other members of the ethnic group. Kaufmes, on the other hand, fled to Austria , where he enrolled as a student in Innsbruck and was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD. Until 1949 he was employed in the Tyrolean agricultural service as an agriculture teacher at the teaching institute in Rotholz .

Kaufmes then decided to emigrate to Australia, but discovered in Hamburg in 1950 that the conditions were more favorable for him in the USA. Here he initially worked as a laborer at the Animal Breeding Institute of Oregon State University in Corvallis, from 1956 until 1969 he held the position of Research Associate (Assistant Professor) for Animal Science .

Publications

Selection:

• Agriculture and its individual branches. In: The Saxon Burzenland. Kronstadt 1925.
• The generation problem in our Saxon peasantry. In: Klingsor. 11, 1934.
• For the recovery of the German peasantry. In: People in the East. September 1940.
• Call for the farming professional competition 1941. April 1941.
• The reorganization of Romanian agriculture in the future European economic order. In: People in the East. 1941.
• The rural peasantry of the German ethnic group in Romania. 1942.
• German farmer, hold the home front! To the German peasantry. February 1942.
• Our thanksgiving. October 1942.
• To be a farmer means to be a soldier! (Speech at the harvest festival of the “German ethnic group in Romania” in New Arad ), October 1942.
• The farmer in the war year 1943. February 1943.
• The German peasantry in the 5th year of the war. November 1943.
• Securing the basic food supply. April 1944.
• Work and bread. April 1944.
• Our peasantry. In: Heinrich Zillich (Ed.): Home in the Heart - We Siebenbürger. Academic joint publishing house , Salzburg 1949, DNB 576969001 , p. 223.
• Small textbook on agriculture with special consideration of the economic conditions in the Alpine countries. Innsbruck no year
• John Kaufmes, EF Johnston, Frank Hudson, Ralph Bogart: Retention of Injected Testosterone in the Meat of Adult Ewes. In: Journal of Animal Science. 1954. (English)

Quote

In Kaufmes' publication Deutscher Bauer, keep the home front , it says among other things:

“The ethnic group leadership ordered the mobilization of the home front. Your job will be to secure the bread we need for daily life. The farmer, as the people's subsistence level, will have to carry the bulk of the work. In the entire settlement area of ​​our ethnic group, January 30th was celebrated as the day when the National Socialist movement of Adolf Hitler came to power. In countless villages the officials of the ethnic group leadership spoke to German farmers. Our entire German press has also impressively highlighted the impact of this day on world history. In addition, thousands and thousands of fellow citizens heard the Fiihrer's speech, which marks the beginning of the New Year. From all of this it sounded that we were faced with a decision. It was as it were pounding on every single person's heart and mind that the war must be won and that victory will be achieved! [...] The German farmer is expected to work the whole field even under the most difficult conditions. This must happen even when indentations and requisitions of all kinds are made to a greater extent. The harder it is, the greater will be the joy and pride that the peasantry will have in having contributed to the greatest victory of all time. "

Individual evidence

1. ^ Transylvania Institute, Monika Ferrier: United States emigrants and visitors from Transylvania
2. ^ ^{A b c d} Oregon State University : Faculty as of January 1966 , in English
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Anton Peter Petri : Biographical Lexicon of the Banater Deutschtums. Marquartstein 1992, pp. 886f.
4. ^ ^{A b c d e} Paul Milata : Between Hitler, Stalin and Antonescu: Romanian Germans in the Waffen SS. (= Studia Transylvanica. Volume 34). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-13806-6 , p. 349.
5. ^ Working group for Transylvanian regional studies. Ernst Wagner, Heinz Heltmann: Scientific research on Transylvania. Böhlau Verlag, 1979, ISBN 3-412-04978-6 , p. 252.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Kaufmes Hans. In: Klaus Popa : Völkisches Handbuch Südosteuropa.
7. ^ Ottmar Traşcă: The events of August 23, 1944. In: Journal for Transylvanian regional studies. 34th (105th) year (2011), issue 2, pp. 186–228.
8. ↑ Südostdeutsches Kulturwerk: Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter, Volume 21, Verlag des Südostdeutsche Kulturwerk, Munich, 1972
9. ↑ Thomas Nägler, Josef Schobel, Karl Drotleff: History of the Transylvanian-Saxon agriculture. Kriterion Verlag, 1984, p. 242, p. 231.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Adrian Ciupuliga: The German literature in Romania between 1933 and 1944. Centaurus Publishing Company, 1987, ISBN 3-89085-196-7 , pp 244th
11. ↑ Hans Erich Volkmann, Lutz Köllner: Economy in the Third Reich: a bibliography. Volumes 1-2. Klartext-Verlag, 1980, ISBN 3-7637-0223-7 , p. 399.
12. ^ Geographic studies in Tübingen. Issues 25–28, self-published by the Geographical Institute of the University of Tübingen, 1968.