René Leudesdorff

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René Leudesdorff 2009

René Leudesdorff (born February 18, 1928 in Berlin ; † June 5, 2012 in Flensburg ) was a German Protestant clergyman and author. He was one of the two students who occupied the island of Heligoland in 1950 .

Life

René Leudesdorff comes from the illegitimate relationship between Bauhaus artist Lore Ribbentrop-Leudesdorff and Jorge Fulda. Both were temporarily active at the Bauhaus in the mid-1920s . A relationship with his father never developed.

Leudesdorff studied Protestant theology in Heidelberg . From 1956 to 1961 he was the founding pastor in the newly established Timotheus congregation in Osnabrück - Widukindland , later managing director of the Diakonisches Werk in Hessen and Nassau (Frankfurt) for twelve years and then pastor in Dagebüll, North Frisia for ten years . From 1990 to 1995 he was head of communications for the Christoffel Blind Mission in Bensheim ; he was a long-time member of the board of the Bauhaus Archive .

Leudesdorff accompanied the German Evangelical Church Congress for over 50 years and wrote numerous articles and books as a journalist and publicist.

On April 20, 2008, Leudesdorff was awarded honorary citizenship of Jerichow.

The occupation of Heligoland

Information station on Heligoland

On December 20, 1950, Leudesdorff and his fellow Heidelberg student Georg von Hatzfeld crossed over to the British-occupied Heligoland, hoisted the flag of the European movement as well as the German flag and the flag of Heligoland and stayed on the island with a brief interruption until January 3, 1951, which at that time was a training target for the Royal Air Force bombers . All efforts of the evacuated island population to be able to return to their homeland had failed up to this point. Thanks to the journalistic support of the Frankfurter Abendpost , the protest action of the two students over the Christmas period received enormous journalistic attention - also in the United Kingdom. The British government came under domestic and foreign policy pressure and resumed deadlocked negotiations to release the island. A good year later, on March 1, 1952, Heligoland came under German ownership again, and the Heligoland population was able to return to their home island after the bombs were cleared and reconstructed. Since then, March 1st has been celebrated every year on Heligoland as an island holiday with a church service and ceremony.

For this non-violent action, Leudesdorff and von Hatzfeld received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class on September 30, 1993 from Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker . On December 19, 2010, Georg von Hatzfeld and René Leudesdorff were posthumously named “Honored Citizens of the Heligoland Municipality” at a ceremony on Heligoland after the municipal council had unanimously passed a resolution.

However, the authorship of the Heligoland campaign is not entirely undisputed. On December 29, 1950, the journalist, writer, lecturer and politician Hubertus Prinz zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg landed on Heligoland. He took a US citizen with him to prevent the Allies from bombing the island and thus the peaceful occupiers. Together with Volkmar Zühlsdorff, he had also prepared the public relations work. In his book We liberated Helgoland , Leudesdorff describes in detail the “patent dispute” over the peaceful invasion of Heligoland between the two occupiers, Hatzfeld and Leudesdorff, and the prince. While Leudesdorff apparently did not know Löwenstein - and vice versa - Hatzfeld had worked for him for a short time as an assistant at the University of Heidelberg and apparently also read Löwenstein's Helgoland appeals. Neither Hatzfeld nor Leudesdorff belonged to a Löwenstein preparation team. The occupation of Heligoland was almost in the air. It was only a matter of time before someone would take the first step. It was most likely that the Heligoland would do it themselves, because Helgoland fishermen were constantly out and about on the island and there was an active "Helgoland office" in Cuxhaven . When Löwenstein saw that the two had gotten ahead of him, he acted quickly and at least claimed the idea for himself. The journalists who accompanied him were happy to do this, as did the Heligoland later on. Due to his early emigration, his courageous fight against Hitler before emigration in 1933 and in exile, Löwenstein had an international reputation and thus greater chances of international attention - this appeared to be a necessary prerequisite for the success of the occupation and ultimately the return of Heligoland. His version of the students, who were privy to his plan and only wanted to steal the show from him, seemed plausible, especially since neither Hatzfeld nor Leudesdorff could provide valid reasons why they of all people wanted to liberate an island they had never seen before. Leudesdorff suggests that Löwenstein wanted to use the occupation to promote its own political goals in the sense of the re-establishment of a Christian Europe as a bulwark against the communist East, while Leudesdorff at least was primarily concerned with the right of the Heligoland and adventure.

further activities

Jerichow Monastery

Friends' Association Get Jerichow Monastery!

From 1998 to 2003 Leudesdorff lived in Jerichow , where he was committed to maintaining the Romanesque monastery complex . For this purpose he founded the support association Get Jerichow Monastery! whose patron is the former politician Volker Rühe . Leudesdorff prevented the conversion of the monastery complex into a luxury hotel with top gastronomy and instead suggested a European Romanesque Center (ERZ) as a research and educational facility in the monastery retreat. After the ERZ in Jerichow did not come into being, it was founded on July 10, 2006 under his direction in Halle and began work with an interdisciplinary board (chair: Wolfgang Schenkluhn ) and an international advisory board in summer 2007. As an affiliated institute of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, it will reside in the Merseburg cathedral exam from June 2008.

Evangelical tithe community (EZG)

Another initiative by Leudesdorff is the Evangelical Tithe Community (EZG) , which he founded in 1999 . Every year around 75 retired pastors sacrifice a tenth of their time to represent colleagues in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt .

Works

Obituaries

  • Geritt Matthiesen: "Helgoland died in the heart". Islanders dismayed by René Leudesdorff's death, liberator was 84 years old. Farewell service planned for June 15th . In the Pinneberger Tageblatt . No. 131 of June 7, 2012, p. 9
  • Sigrun Tausche: "Jerichow mourns its honorary citizen René Leudesdorff" in Volksstimme June 9, 2012

Film about the occupation of Heligoland

  • Who liberated Heligoland? Bomb target in peacetime, a film by Kurt Denzer and Thorsten Schmidt, FBW rating: valuable

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ dpa / lno: A liberator from Heligoland - René Leudesdorff died . In: Welt online , June 6, 2012.
  2. ^ Symbolic Invasion: How We Occupied Heligoland , spiegel.de, article from December 23, 2002.
  3. ↑ dpa / ack: Mahatma Gandhi was his role model - the "liberator" of Heligoland René Leudesdorff is dead - first pastor of the Osnabrück Timotheus congregation . In: New Osnabrück Newspaper. June 8, 2012, p. 19.
  4. ↑ René Leudesdorff: We liberated Heligoland. A historical thriller. 4th ed., Stade 2007, pp. 90-95
  5. ↑ On the history of the EZG , ezgj.de, accessed on November 3, 2015.
  6. ↑ Evangelical tithe community: Retired pastor, please report! , idea.de, notification of October 29, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Leudesdorff, René
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German evangelical clergyman and author
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 5th June 2012
Place of death Flensburg