Auxiliary Committee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church from Bessarabia
The Aid Committee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church from Bessarabia e. V. , based in Hanover , was founded in 1946 as a church aid organization for the Bessarabian Germans . On May 20, 2005, the Aid Committee was merged into the newly founded Bessarabian German Association , which was created through the merger of the previous Bessarabian German associations. Until its dissolution in 2015, the North branch of the Bessarabiendeutschen Verein was located at the headquarters of the former aid committee.
founding
On June 17, 1946, the clergyman Immanuel Baumann , who came from Bessarabia , was commissioned to found the relief committee. The order came from Eugen Gerstenmaier as head of the aid organization of the Evangelical Church in Germany . A church aid organization was created because the allied coalition prohibition did not allow political associations. As early as 1946, the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) recognized the Aid Committee as a representative of the former German Eastern Church in Bessarabia.
The last spiritual leader in the Bessarabia region of origin was appointed as the first head of the auxiliary committee. This was pastor Immanuel Baumann from Klöstitz. From 1977 until the merger in 2005, Immanuel Baumann's son, Arnulf Baumann , was the federal chairman of the aid committee.
The first seat of the committee was initially the residence of Immanuel Baumann in Hemmingen in Baden-Württemberg, then it was an office in Stuttgart. Since 1949, the seat in Hanover was initially in a basement room of the St. Marien garden church in Marienstraße , later in the House of the German East on Königsworther Platz and from 1997 in Kirchrode .
After the Second World War, the Aid Committee looked after the approximately 80,000 Bessarabian Germans who were in Germany in pastoral care and diaconal matters. As refugees they lived penniless and scattered in the four Allied occupation zones . The Aid Committee was the only Bessarabian German organization until the Landsmannschaft der Bessarabiendeutschen was founded in 1949.
Since 1949 the bi-weekly publication "Mitteilungsblatt" has been published. The forerunner was a church newspaper in Bad Urach , which made larger space available for the messages of the Bessarabian Germans and was distributed throughout Germany in large numbers.
The forerunner of the relief committee was the relief agency for evangelical resettlers from Bessarabia and Dobrudscha, created in 1945 by Karl Rüb from Sarata / Bessarabia and only active until 1946 (in short: relief agency for Swabian settlers ). From Stuttgart it looked after the members of both ethnic groups who had fled to the west from the Red Army from their temporary settlement areas in conquered Poland ( Wartheland and Danzig-West Prussia ) at the end of the war in 1944/45 .
Aid committees of other refugee groups
Similar auxiliary committees, like the one for the Bessarabian Germans, were created for the different regions of origin of the returned Germans abroad from the Baltic States , Lithuania , Volhynia , Poland , Galicia , Slovakia , Sudetenland , Hungary , Yugoslavia , Transylvania , Banat and the German areas of East Prussia , Pomerania , and Silesia . The foundation of these church institutions was based on the idea of creating a self-organization for every refugee and displaced group flowing into Germany. They should mobilize the refugees to create a new existence and also look after them in church and pastoral care through the clergy they know from home. All auxiliary committees were combined in the "Convention of the Dispersed Evangelical Eastern Churches".
tasks
- Initially set up a tracing service for the Bessarabian Germans (search for missing persons / family reunification)
- Initially creation of replacement documents (registry office, pension, burden compensation)
- Pastoral care through local church services, church days
- Press activities (publication of local literature, newspapers and yearbooks)
- Diakonie through the Alexander Asylum retirement and nursing home
Affiliated Associations
The Aid Committee was closely connected to the earlier Bessarabian German associations:
- Country team of the Bessarabian Germans
- Local history museum of the Germans from Bessarabia
- Alexander-Stift (Diaconal geriatric care facility)
and since the merger with the Landsmannschaft and the Heimatmuseum in 2005 it belongs to:
literature
- Arnulf Baumann : Sixty years of the auxiliary committee. In: Bulletin of the Auxiliary Committee of the ev.-luth. Church and the compatriot of Germans from Bessarabia , July 6, 2006
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 21 ′ 50.8 " N , 9 ° 48 ′ 32.7" E