Herbert Hupka

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Herbert Hupka, 1975

Herbert Hupka (born August 15, 1915 in Diyatalawa , Ceylon , † August 24, 2006 in Bonn ) was a German journalist, writer and long-time member of the Bundestag and expellee politician. He was initially a member of the SPD , but in February 1972 he joined the social-liberal government of the CDU in protest against Ostpolitik .

Life

Herbert Hupka was born in 1915 in a British internment camp on Ceylon (now Sri Lanka ). His father Erich Hupka was to take up a position as a physics professor in the German leased area of Kiautschou in 1914 ; on the overseas trip he and his wife Therese, née Rosenthal, surprised by the outbreak of World War I, and taken prisoner by the British. From 1915 to 1919 they were interned in Molonglo, Australia, near Canberra . On the return transport to Germany in 1919, the father died of pneumonic plague .

Hupka grew up with a single mother in Ratibor, Upper Silesia (now Racibórz , Poland). From 1925 to 1934 he attended the Protestant Humanist Gymnasium. After graduating from high school, Hupka studied German, history and geography in Halle and Leipzig . During his studies he suffered from being held back because his mother's Jewish origins meant that he was considered a “ half-Jew ” under the Nuremberg Laws .

In 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and served as an occupying soldier in France, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. Sick of malaria, he was transferred to Freiberg , where a court martial sentenced him to imprisonment in 1943 for concealing his status as a “half-Jew” when he was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve . Jews and half-breeds were denied promotion to the officer corps . He served twelve months in the Torgau -Bückenkopf Wehrmacht prison, where he wrote his dissertation “Gratia and misericordia in Middle High German. On the history of religious and ethical areas in the Middle Ages ”finished. Theodor Frings was the doctoral supervisor .

In January 1944 his mother was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto . Herbert Hupka returned to Ratibor after being released from the army as "unworthy of defense" . At the end of June 1945 he was able to make his way to Theresienstadt, where his mother had survived a year and a half imprisonment. They finally got to Munich via the DP camp in Deggendorf , as a return to Ratibor was already out of the question. Although they were Catholic, they found acceptance in the old people's home of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde . Herbert Hupka had worked as an editor at Radio Munich since November 1945, and was temporarily transferred to the American military government in 1946/47 . In 1949 Radio Munich passed into German hands and became Bayerischer Rundfunk . In 1957, Hupka moved to Radio Bremen as program director . In February 1959 he left the radio and became press officer at the Kuratorium Indivisible Germany in Bonn.

Since 1957 he was with Eva, geb. Zink (1931–2012), married. In 1960 their son Thomas was born.

Political activity

Hupka was a member of the German Bundestag from 1969 to 1987 . The focus of his political work was the policy of expellees. From 1968 to 2000 he was President of the Silesian Landsmannschaft . In addition, Hupka was chairman of the East German Cultural Council and Vice-President of the Association of Expellees and a member of the Catholic student associations AV Silesia (Halle) zu Bochum (since 1934) and AV Salia-Silesia zu Gleiwitz in the CV .

Hupka took a stance against the Ostpolitik initiated under Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt , in particular against the settlement with the GDR and Poland , and accused her of being naïve towards the Soviet Union . He refused to renounce the formerly German eastern territories administered by Poland or the Soviet Union and for a long time advocated reintegrating them into a German state.

With his rejection of the Oder-Neisse border , he made himself unpopular not only with the political left. On February 29, 1972, Hupka switched from the SPD to the CDU; The relationship with his new party was not free of conflict either.

The CDU chairman Helmut Kohl , as Federal Chancellor , continued the Ostpolitik of his SPD predecessors after 1982. When the motto "40 years of expulsion - Silesia remains ours" was chosen for the Silesians meeting in 1985 under the leadership of Hupka, CDU politicians also criticized this as "aggressive" claim to property. The Federal Chancellor, who was to be the guest speaker, canceled his appearance. After massive pressure in front of and behind the scenes, Hupka withdrew the motto and replaced it with "Silesia remains our future in a Europe of free peoples".

After the end of the Cold War , Hupka partially gave up his old positions and campaigned for German-Polish reconciliation. He even openly criticized some of the continued demands for restitution by the Prussian Treuhand GmbH . He was made an honorary citizen of his former hometown Ratibor in today's Poland and celebrated his 90th birthday there in 2005.

Hupka died in his apartment in Bonn as a result of falling down a staircase and was buried in Munich.

Awards

Publications

  • Wroclaw - the capital of Silesia. Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 1956.
  • Indivisible Germany. An annual report from 1954 to 1960. Compiled by Herbert Hupka. Kuratorium Indivisible Germany , Berlin / Bonn undated [1960].
  • Ratibor. City in the Silesian corner. [City administration], Leverkusen 1962.
  • Great Germans from Silesia. Edited by Herbert Hupka. Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 1969. 2nd edition: Langen Müller , Munich / Vienna 1979, ISBN 3-7844-1734-5 .
  • History of Silesia. Ed .: Landsmannschaft Schlesien, Nieder- u. Upper Silesia e. V., Bonn. 2nd Edition. Landsmannschaft Schlesien, Nieder- u. Oberschlesien, Bonn undated [1973].
  • Silesian creed. Speeches, essays and documents from two decades. Langen Müller, Munich / Vienna 1986, ISBN 3-7844-2125-3 .
  • Last days in Silesia. Diaries, memories, etc. Documents of eviction. ed. by Herbert Hupka. 5th edition. Langen Müller, Munich / Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7844-1910-0 .
  • The evicted memory . In: Die Welt , April 27, 2002.
  • Silesia lives. Open questions - critical answers. With a foreword by Christian Wulff . Langen Müller, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7844-3045-7 .

literature

  • Helmut Neubach , Hans-Ludwig Abmeier (Ed.): For our Silesia. Festschrift for Herbert Hupka. Langen Müller, Munich / Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-7844-2078-8 .
  • Herbert Hupka: Troubled conscience. A German résumé. Memories. Langen Müller, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-7844-2509-7 .
  • Wolfgang Kaes : I ca n't believe it . In: ZEITmagazin . No. 49 , November 28, 2013 ( online [accessed January 1, 2014]).

Web links

Commons : Herbert Hupka  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alois M. Kosler: Ratibor, the hometown of Herbert Hupkas , in: For our Silesia. Festschrift for Herbert Hupka , Munich / Vienna 1985, pp. 11–22, p. 11
  2. ^ Herbert Hupka: Troubled conscience. A German résumé. Memories , Munich 1994, pp. 52-67
  3. ^ Herbert Hupka: Restless Conscience , p. 80; Wolfgang Kaes : I ca n't believe it . In: Zeit-Magazin No. 49, November 28, 2013, pp. 67–74, p. 68, accessed on December 29, 2013
  4. ^ Long-time displaced politician Hupka has died . (dpa) In: Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , Märkische Oderzeitung of August 29, 2006 (dpa: “The expellee functionary was reviled as a“ revanchist ”for a long time by his opponents, ...”). Mourning for displaced politician Herbert Hupka. Persecuted by the Nazis, hated by the left . In: Nürnberger Zeitung , August 30, 2006, p. 4. Bettina Feldbach: Curtain up: The prize goes to revanchism (Great Cross of Merit for Herbert Hupka) . In: The Right Edge , No. 44, 1997.
  5. ↑ Matthias Stickler: The Reconciler . Short review of “Silesia lives. Open questions - critical answers ”. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung online, May 2, 2006, accessed December 20, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Hupka, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and politician (CDU), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Diyatalawa , Ceylon
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 2006
Place of death Bonn