Otto Klett

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Otto Klett (born December 27, 1910 in Kobadin , Kingdom of Romania ; † November 2, 1976 in Gerlingen ) was a German-Romanian Dobrudscha-German expellee functionary .

The high school teacher was part of the National Socialist youth leadership of the 1930s and became a member of the SS . In 1939/40 he was organizationally involved in the resettlement of the Dobrudscha Germans to the German Reich . After the Second World War he taught at high schools in Leonberg . For many years, Klett was a manager in the country team of the Dobrudscha and Bulgarian Germans. As the editor of 21 compatriot yearbooks, among others, he wrote on local history topics.

Life

Otto Klett was born in 1910 on a farm in Kobadin in the Romanian Dobruja ; in a village that was home to German colonists from Bessarabia as well as Romanians and Tatars. When Romania entered the First World War against Germany in 1916, the family had to flee.

He first attended a German elementary school, later a Romanian one, in which rivalries between German and Romanian students, according to Klett, were also "bloody and with serious consequences". After his time at the German Protestant Lyceum in Bucharest , he moved to the university there in 1929, where he studied geography, history, sociology and archeology. In 1933 he completed his studies with a degree in geography and history. According to his own statements, Klett came into contact with National Socialism for the first time as a college student [...] and was obliged to do so by a handshake from Fritz Fabritius . "

After his military service, Klett worked as a teacher in Oradea from 1934 and as an assistant at the Institute for Border and Foreign Germanism in Marburg and in 1936/37 as a "professor" at the boys' high school in Tarutyne . An NSDAP training camp in August and September 1935 on the Hessenstein brought Klett “lasting impressions and deepening” of his “orientation towards the German worldview”. From March to September 1936 his work was characterized by “youth leadership and participation in the [National Socialist] training and labor camps in Kobadin, Hermannstadt, Marienburg, as well as efforts for the Tachirghiol camp ”. In 1937/38 he got involved with the “Transylvanian Quarterly Journal” and its editor, Karl Kurt Klein ; In 1938/39 he worked as a teacher in the "new vineyards".

Klett belonged to the Waffen-SS and from 1939 was deputy head of the cultural department in the Dobrudscha resettlement command , which was responsible for the practical implementation of the resettlement of the Dobrudscha Germans to the German Reich from 1940 . Klett had collected material for a museum of the Dobruja Germans in several railway wagons and sent them to the German Reich , which had to remain in Poland during the further course of World War II .

After his military service and subsequent imprisonment, he first worked at the Aid Association for Bessarabian Germans , before he was first at the Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium in Leonberg from 1947 , then at the Johannes-Kepler-Gymnasium until 1973 as a senior teacher.

As national chairman of the country team of the Dobruja and Bulgarian Germans from 1950 to 1955, its cultural advisor from 1955 and then again from June 1973 as national chairman, Klett represented the ethnic group originally numbered around 16,000 people, of which only a part was based in the Federal Republic of Germany. He made a contribution to the Pentecost meetings of the Dobrudschadeutschen , for which up to 1200 participants met annually in Heilbronn in the 1960s and 1970s . He also campaigned for the establishment of the Dobrudschadeutschen Archive there and - from 1956 to 1976 - published 21 volumes of the Dobrudschadeutschen yearbook . In critical literature he is also referred to as the "chronicler of the Dobrudschadeutschen".

Otto Klett died while editing Volume 22 for 1977. His estate is in the Institute for Folklore of the Germans of Eastern Europe (IVDE) in Freiburg , where he was viewed by the historian Susanne Clauss .

Publications

  • Yearbook of the Dobruja Germans. Heilbronner Voice Publishing House, Heilbronn; was published annually from 1956 to 1976.
  • The resettlement of the Dobrudschadeutschen in 1940. In: Yearbook of the Dobrudschadeutschen 1956.
  • From the school system of the Dobruja Germans. In: Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter. 1st episode, 1966, pp. 23-25.
  • The Dobruja Germans. In: Yearbook of the Dobrudschadeutschen 1971.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Europa ethnica , Volume 34, Federal Union of European Nationalities. W. Braumüller, 1977. p. 16.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Johann Böhm and Klaus Popa : From NS-Volkstum- to expellee functionary. The founding members of the Südostdeutschen Kulturwerk München and the country teams of Germans from Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2014. pp. 28, 29.
  3. ^ A b Elisabeth Fendl, Werner Mezger, Michael Prosser-Schell, Hans-Werner Retterat: Yearbook for German and Eastern European Folklore. Blickpunkt II - Photographs as a source for researching the culture of Germans in and from Eastern Europe. Waxmann Verlag, 2012, ISBN 3-83097-722-0 , p. 210.
  4. ↑ a b Michael Prosser-Schell: Symbolic natural landscapes and natural landmarks in historical settlement regions with Germans in Eastern Europe: Selected aspects. Waxmann Verlag, 2014, ISBN 3-83097-945-2 , p. 104.
  5. ^ Hans-Werner Retterath: Additions. Folklore archive research on the Germans in and from Eastern Europe. Waxmann Verlag, 2015, ISBN 3-83098-376-X , p. 11.
personal data
SURNAME Klett, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Romanian expellee functionary
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Kobadin , Kingdom of Romania
DATE OF DEATH 2nd November 1976
Place of death Gerlingen