Theo Tupetz

Theo Tupetz (around 1955)

Theodor Otto Ernst (called Theo) Tupetz (born August 17, 1923 in Hohenelbe , Czechoslovakia ; † May 26, 1980 in Bonn ) was a German student functionary and social politician. As head of the social welfare office of the German Federal Student Association for many years , he initiated aid programs for refugee students from the GDR and Eastern Europe, and later also from African countries. He also played a key role in the development of student grants based on the Honnef model , a forerunner of today's Bafög .

Life

The son of a lawyer attended German schools in Prague- Smíchov and Bohemian-Leipa . After graduating from high school in 1942, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and was taken prisoner by the British towards the end of the Second World War , from which he was released in June 1945. Since his family had meanwhile been expelled from Czechoslovakia, Tupetz went to the Soviet occupation zone and began studying law at the University of Rostock in February 1946 , which he did in the winter semester of 1946/47 in Halle (Saale) , where his parents lived, and from 1951 continued in Bonn. During his time in Halle, Tupetz was a member of the local LDPD university group , where he met Wolfgang Natonek and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, among others .

After moving to Bonn, Tupetz worked temporarily as an assistant consultant and translator in various federal authorities. He also joined the Association of Displaced German Students (VHDS), founded in 1950 , in which he soon became managing director (1952–54) and chairman (1954–57). Above all, he dealt with the social situation of refugee students and wrote a detailed memorandum on the basis of which he was hired by the Association of German Student Unions (VDS) as a social officer at the end of 1952 .

In this capacity, he coordinated the work of the refugee and social departments of the local student committees , prepared overviews of existing funding opportunities and advocated improvements to the responsible authorities. For the VDS, he was significantly involved in negotiating the Honnef model of general student funding. Later he worked out numerous preliminary drafts for a general federal training promotion law .

Tupetz set up a central refugee counseling service for high school graduates and students who had fled from the GDR, which later became the social welfare office of the German Federal Student Association and, in 1965, what is now the Otto Benecke Foundation eV (OBS). In addition, at the end of 1953 Tupetz designed an emergency aid program for GDR refugees, which was financed from a guarantee fund of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and was later expanded to include young repatriates and refugees from Eastern European and African countries. By the end of the 1960s, the OBS supported around 50,000 refugees in integrating into the German university system.

At the height of the student unrest of 1968/69, Tupetz was dismissed as managing director of OBS in July 1969. Previously he had numerous sensitive documents, For example, he was taken home via refugees who fled the Czechoslovakia to the West after the crackdown on the Prague Spring , because he feared that the new VDS leadership, dominated by left-wing extremists, could pass them on to Eastern European secret services. These processes could never have been fully clarified. Although Tupetz won the labor dispute in November 1970, he was not reinstated. Tupetz 'attempts to be accepted as a speaker in Bonn ministries ultimately failed because of his poor health. Tupetz could not get over his dismissal from the OBS, which he regarded as his life's work, until the end; he died in Bonn in 1980 after years of illness.

Tupetz received a late posthumous appreciation in 1995 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the OBS, when the then President Joseph Bücker praised him as a tireless “fast runner and quick thinker”: “While others were still writing memoranda and making notes on files, Theo Tupetz already had the relevant laws and draft regulations prepared. Although he later failed because of his excessive zeal, we still owe him our thanks and our recognition for the work he has done, which has benefited many German and foreign students. "

Works

• Theo Tupetz, Kurt Brade: Scholarships and training aids. The right to public funding. Explanatory text edition of the federal and state regulations (loose-leaf basic work with supplementary deliveries), Bonn from 1960, http://d-nb.info/458250155 .
• Theo Tupetz: The education system of the GDR. Bonn 1970, http://d-nb.info/760054789 .

literature

• Uwe Rohwedder: Cold War and University Reform. The Association of German Student Associations in the Early Federal Republic (1949-1969) , Essen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8375-0748-5 , p. 104 ff.
• The Free Forum. Organ for German students. ed. for the VHDS by Walter Fr. Schleser and Theo Tupetz, Bonn 1955, http://d-nb.info/1010166573
• Beyond the Elbe and Oder - 10 years of VHDS. Erlangen 1960. http://d-nb.info/1007247614
• Marianne Krüger-Potratz (Ed.): Foundation for integration! 50 years of OBS - commitment to qualification and participation. V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0397-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ For fear of infiltration from the left, Theo had all files disappear , in: Bonner General-Anzeiger of October 1, 1969.
2. ↑ Joseph Bücker (greeting) in: 30 years OBS, contributions to the festive event on November 30, 1995. OBS, Bonn, pp. 3–8.