Karl Ruth

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Karl "Charly" Ruth (born September 27, 1907 in Steinheim am Main ; died after 1973) was a German engineer who was politically persecuted during the Nazi era.

Emigration, imprisonment and work in Bayreuth

The communist Ruth emigrated to the Netherlands in 1933, where he worked as an engineer at the Fokker works in Amsterdam. He made several business trips to Moscow and later became a technical advisor to Belgian military and civil aviation. In the Spanish Civil War he supported the Republican side as a transport aircraft pilot .

The Reich Main Security Office wrote him out in 1939 in the special wanted list West with the following information about the search: "Ruth, Karl, born April 27, 1907 in Klein-Steinheim, engineer, residing in Antwerp, responsible department II A 4 of the Gestapo Office in Berlin".

On May 28, 1940 (the Wehrmacht had started the campaign in the west on May 10, 1940 and soon occupied the Benelux countries) he was arrested by the German state police in Bruges , Belgium . Until April 1945 he was in prison, initially in Berlin , and from mid-February 1945 in the St. Georgen prison in Bayreuth . In the confusion after the bombing of the city, he managed to escape from the prison and make his way to US troops. The city of Bayreuth owes Karl Ruth that it was no longer destroyed by the Americans on April 14, 1945, but was largely taken without a fight. Only the orangery and the sun temple in the Hermitage Park fell victim to a fighter-bomber attack.

The Bayreuth Köpenickiade

"Charly" Ruth had presented himself to the US military as an innocently imprisoned Belgian officer. As a replacement for the prisoner's clothing, they gave him an American uniform without a badge of rank. In no time at all, he had an impact on the city's fate. The Bayreuth local politician Bernd Mayer described him as the “shimmering angel of peace from Sankt Georgen ”.

He was sent back to town in a jeep with an escort. As a first "official act" on the morning of April 14, 1945, he arbitrarily ordered the release of all around 2000 prisoners, including the later President of the Bundestag Eugen Gerstenmaier and Ewald Naujoks , from the Bayreuth prison . The political prisoners held there were to be shot that day in view of the approaching US troops.

He then went to the NS mayor and SS-Standartenführer Friedrich Kempfler (later CSU ) and ordered him to the village of Cottenbach , where the commander of the US troops was waiting for them. It was made clear to the Germans that “enough artillery had been brought up to shoot the city to the ground”.

Kempfler, however, had no power of command over the troops, he could only give instructions to the Bayreuth police. The negotiations with the aim of a non-fighting handover were torpedoed by General August Hagl in the Sankt Johannis district . Ruth's conversation - who was mistaken for a US soldier by the Germans - and Kempfler's conversation with Hagl remained unsuccessful. Although Lieutenant Erich Braun and around 150 men capitulated on the Siegesturm soon after 9 a.m., General Hagl on the opposite side of town did not want to give up. Nevertheless Ruth and Kempfler managed to dissuade the Americans from another air bombardment. After they believed they knew the quarters of the stealthy commander, they limited themselves to a concentrated fighter-bomber attack, reinforced by artillery. The orangery and the sun temple were unnecessarily destroyed at the last minute in the Hermitage . In fact, Hagl's last command post was in a cellar not far from the church of St. Johannis.

Detention and return to Belgium

For a few weeks "Charly" Ruth, who was called Captain by the Bayreuthers , was a useful man for the US troops. They also took him to surrounding cities, as a parliamentarian even as far as Eger . Then, a few weeks after the war ended, he was arrested again. The Americans picked the "wrong officer" with bayonets attached from his apartment and put him back in his old quarters: the nearby Bayreuth Sankt Georgen penal institution. He had "abused" the authority to which the borrowed US uniform had given him several times and, for example, helped the local hospital to get an emergency power generator.

He later returned to Belgium. Karl Charly became Charles Ruth, who helped with the repatriation of Belgian prisoners.

literature

  • Bernd Mayer : Bayreuth - The last 50 years . Ellwanger, Bayreuth 1983.
  • Bernd Mayer: Bayreuth as it was . Gondrom, Bayreuth 1981.
  • Werner Meyer : Götterdämmerung - April 1945 in Bayreuth . RS Schulz, Percha 1975, ISBN 978-3-942668-23-1 .
  • Peter Engelbrecht : The war is over. Spring 1945 in Upper Franconia . Späthling, Weißenstadt 2015, ISBN 3-7962-0066-4 .
  • Udo Meixner: 70 years of the end of the war. Bayreuth and the surrounding area . Nordbayerischer Kurier, Bayreuth 2015, ISBN 978-3-944791-53-1 .

supporting documents

  1. ^ Werner Meyer: Götterdämmerung - April 1945 in Bayreuth . RS Schulz, Percha am Starnberger See 1975, p. 206 .
  2. ^ Special wanted list West, CEGES-SOMA Brussels, AA 1835, page 260, No. 704.
  3. ^ Rainer Trübsbach: History of the City of Bayreuth . Druckhaus Bayreuth, Bayreuth 1993, p. 332 .
  4. ^ Rainer Trübsbach : History of the City of Bayreuth . Druckhaus Bayreuth Verlagsgesellschaft, Bayreuth 1993, ISBN 3-922808-35-2 , p. 332 .
  5. ^ Werner Meyer: Götterdämmerung - April 1945 in Bayreuth . RS Schulz, Percha am Starnberger See 1975, p. 133 .
  6. ↑ Helmut Paulus: The gruesome plans of the Nazi justice. In: Heimatkurier - the historical magazine of the North Bavarian Courier, issue 2/2005
  7. ^ Werner Meyer: Götterdämmerung - April 1945 in Bayreuth . RS Schulz, Percha am Starnberger See 1975, p. 144 .
  8. ↑ a b Bernd Mayer / Helmut Paulus: A city is denazified, p. 14.
personal data
SURNAME Ruth, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ruth, Charly
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter in the time of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Steinheim am Main
DATE OF DEATH after 1973