Rudolf Garlichs

Rudolf Garlichs in 1953 on the occasion of the inauguration of the Schillig beach hall

Rudolf Garlichs (born June 9, 1892 at Lilienhof near Hooksiel , † August 18, 1980 in St. Joostergroden near St. Joost ) was a German farmer , as a liberal democratic local politician, long-time councilor of the municipality of St. Joost, member of the district council of the district of Friesland , Councilor and mayor of the municipality of Minsen , councilor of the municipality of Wangerland , supervisory board in various companies and holder of the Cross of Merit on the ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

Origin and youth

Name bearers of the Garlichs family can be traced back to the time of the Thirty Years War , earliest ancestors to the time of Maria von Jever 100 years earlier. Most of them were farmers with one branch in Jeverland and another in what was then the Duchy of Oldenburg . The father of Rudolf Garlichs, Ernst Wilhelm Julius Garlichs (1860–1941), owned the Lilienhof near Wüppels and the yard Schurfens near Jever . The mother Betti Ulrike Onnen (1868–1957) was the daughter of the owner of the Stumpenser mill near Horumersiel .

Rudolf Garlichs was born to this couple in 1892 as the second of three sons. After relocation of parents to Schurfens he grew up mostly there, attended in Jever school and made on the Higher Agricultural School in Varel the high-school diploma . After that he initially worked in several farms. At that time, unlike the largest city in the Wilhelmshaven region, the area did not belong to the Prussian province of Hanover , but as the administrative office of Jever to the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg .

First World War

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          1914–1919 soldier

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  Certificate of Honor 1914–1918 a
  . special participations

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        Certificate of Honor of the
      Marine Corps Flanders

In 1914 he was hired as a seaman in Hamburg . At that time, however, it was still subject to “military duty” , and since Hamburg and Altona had been included in the German Reich, the authorities had repeatedly carried out raids and initiated criminal proceedings there, suspected of having violated this rule . The military surveillance also noticed Garlichs there - he was not allowed to embark. Garlichs committed himself to military service as a one-year volunteer in April 1914 , and the First World War broke out a few months later . Garlichs joined the Marine Corps Flanders and served until the end of the war, for which he was awarded the Flanders Cross, donated in 1921 .

Starting a family

In 1919 he returned to his homeland without serious injuries. In 1922 he took over a farm in St. Joostergroden east of St. Joost , which had fallen to the family in 1920 through an inheritance settlement , and married the family on February 12, 1900 in the same year Fanny Rastede was born on the East Frisian farm in Loppel near Gödens . In 1923 the daughter Lisa was born, in 1929 the daughter Juliane was born.

Local politics in the Weimar Republic, Third Reich

Shortly thereafter, Garlichs began his lifelong engagement in local politics in northern Jeverland, which in the meantime belonged to the Free State of Oldenburg . First he was councilor in the parish of St. Joost.

As a liberal , however, he came into conflict with the regime when the National Socialists came to power and, like other liberal politicians, was removed from office in 1933 . In the Second World War he was first required to serve as a security guard and drafted into the Volkssturm in 1944, but was deployed close to home in flak positions near Horumersiel.

Local politics in the Federal Republic of Germany

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            1962 during
              the storm surge

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  1968 Key handover of the
     Horumersiel wave pool

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                1972 for
          his 80th birthday

In the search for personalities who could stand for a democratic new beginning after National Socialism, the British occupying power responsible for northern Germany at the time came across Garlichs. The British Control Commission appointed him in 1945 for the period from 1946 onwards as a member of the district council of the district of Friesland, which had been redesigned compared to 1939. Later confirmed by elections, he retained this position with brief interruptions until 1964.

From 1948 on, Garlichs was councilor and council chairman, and from 1950 to 1971 mayor of the then still independent municipality of Minsen. Since 1974 a street named after him has been commemorating this in the municipality of Wangerland (which Minsen merged into in 1971).

For a few months Garlich's councilor was also the Wangerland community.

Also in 1948, Garlichs and Johann Albers , who, like Garlichs, was a member of parliament for the Friesland district, founded the Minsen branch of the FDP and headed it until 1968.

In the following years Garlichs was the driving force behind the rebuilding of public life and self-government in his home community of Minsen, the development of agriculture and the rest of the economy in Wangerland, in particular the redesign of the Schillig-Horumersiel recreational area and the promotion of tourism in northern Jeverland.

First of all, there was a lack of living space for the numerous refugees and resettlers who had immigrated or had been assigned from the east . When there was no longer enough space for them in the former naval barracks, they were housed in wagons of the former Hohenkirchen-Schillig connecting railway, which had been operated as a private Kleinbahn Hohenkirchen-Schillig GmbH since 1946. Garlichs was chairman of the company's board of directors at the time . As in the similarly affected neighboring Rastede , entire new settlements were finally built for the newcomers in the Schillig-Horumersiel area, supported by the Garlichs and partly in self-help .

In 1952 he promoted the takeover of the "bathing administration" of the Horumersiel seaside club by the then municipality of Minsen. As a result, the beach and bathing facilities there were expanded, a campsite was set up, which in the following two decades grew to become the largest in Germany, and numerous holiday apartments and houses or apartments with ultimately several thousand guest beds were built.

In 1953 Garlichs inaugurated the “beach hall” in Schillig , in Horumersiel in 1966 a village community center and in 1968 an open-air seawater and wave pool .

Garlichs also consistently advocated the dismantling of systems and facilities that were no longer needed due to technical progress, such as a number of barrages and sewer systems .

Garlichs also carried out the conversion of existing facilities, such as the relocation of the port of Horumersiel from its inland location, documented since 1542, to the leveling of the Horumer Siel with the new construction of the Wangertief and Hohenstief .

Garlichs was chairman of the provisional supervisory board of the Hohenkirchen-Schillig railway connection. As such, it was his job in 1949 to lay off staff as part of the company's liquidation . From 1946 to 1971, with brief interruptions, he was also a member of the supervisory board of the Friesland housing association together with Andreas Luiken .

Old age, appreciations

He now devoted himself more to his family and sport fishing . On May 25, 1973, Garlichs was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by Federal President Gustav Heinemann for his many years of service as a member of the municipal council and district council and as mayor.

When Rudolf Garlichs died in 1980 among his relatives at the age of 88 and was buried in the Jever cemetery, the Jever weekly newspaper published an honorable obituary and numerous commemorative notices, including for the municipality of Wangerland and the district of Friesland.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Jeversches Wochenblatt of June 9, 1972, p. 5: Rudolf Garlich's 80th birthday
2. ↑ ^{a b} History of the Hohenkirchen-Schillig connecting railway [1]
3. ↑ Jeversches Wochenblatt of August 22, 1980