Karl Rüb

Karl Rüb (* 1896 in Lichtental, Bessarabia ; † 1970 ) was a graduate engineer from Bessarabia. In 1945, on his own initiative, he set up an aid organization in Stuttgart for Bessarabian and Dobrudscha Germans in Germany who had become destitute and homeless as refugees after the Second World War .

Life

Rüb was born the child of a community notary in Bessarabia. He comes from the German community of Lichtental, founded by emigrants in 1834. He attended the Werner School in Sarata and the Gymnasium in Odessa . In 1918, at the age of 22, he joined a unit of the German army stationed in Odessa and came to Stuttgart in this way. There he studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University . After graduating in 1926, he founded a technical trading company and took over several general agencies for German companies for agricultural machinery in southern Bessarabia, the Budschak . At the same time he worked as a construction engineer. In 1935, as a collaborative engineer in the largest Romanian industrial company, he made one of his patents ready for series production. Between 1939 and 1944 he ran his own company based in the Romanian port city of Constanța , which had 6 branches. In 1945 he returned to Germany in Oberstetten, now part of Hohenstein . From there his ancestors had emigrated to Bessarabia about 100 years earlier.

plant

In 1945, Rüb founded the relief organization for evangelical resettlers from Bessarabia and Dobrudscha (short: relief organization for Swabian resettlers ) based in Stuttgart. He was appointed head of the so-called relief agency Rüb , later the relief agency for evangelical resettlers , with at times 50 employees, which supported the Evangelical Church of Württemberg . The organization was only possible through a charitable institution of the church, since the military government had banned all associations of Germans. The relief organization integrated the resettlers in Germany. It served as a contact point for homeless Bessarabia and Dobrudscha Germans. Due to the breakup of families due to the war, it helped with the search for relatives through a search card, but also with advice, accommodation and resettlement. Since many of the approximately 92,000 Bessarabian Germans were stranded in other Allied occupation zones after the end of the Second World War , Rüb organized the migration to their original home in Württemberg for around 15,000 people . In 1946, his aid organization was integrated into the newly founded aid committee of the Evangelical Lutheran. Church from Bessarabia and the compatriot of the Bessarabian Germans . In 1951, Rüb gave up all offices and retired into private life.

literature

• Ute Schmidt : The Germans from Bessarabia. A minority from Southeastern Europe (1814 until today) . 2nd revised edition. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2004, ISBN 3-412-05004-0 .
• Karl Rüb - a man of the first hour in: Mitteilungsblatt des Bessarabiendeutschen Verein e. V., issue 11, November 2008

Web links

• Description with photo at the Bessarabiendeutschen Verein