Waldemar Reuter

Waldemar Reuter (born May 12, 1873 in Broacker , † January 29, 1950 in Gravenstein ) was a German doctor.

Life

Waldemar Reuter was a son of Broacker pastors and provost Ludwig Reuter (born August 25, 1836 in Copenhagen ; † September 12, 1905 in Broacker) and his wife Anna, née Dithmer (born May 18, 1839 in Finis ; † February 25, 1914 in Gravenstein). The paternal grandfather was the organ builder Andreas Peter Wilhad Reuter . The maternal grandfather named Lorenz Dithmer (1806–1873) owned a brick factory in Ekensund .

Reuter spent his childhood in Broacker. From 1885 to 1889 he went to a grammar school in Hadersleben and then to one in Flensburg until 1894 . He completed the following medical studies at universities in Tübingen , Munich , Berlin and Kiel . In Tübingen he became a member of the Tübingen fraternity Derendingia in 1894 . In his dissertation in Kiel in 1889, he wrote “Contributions to the investigations into the spontaneous straightening of the rachitic curvature of the lower leg”. He then worked until the end of his life as a resident doctor with his own practice in Gravenstein. He only interrupted this because of the First World War , during which he worked as a medical officer.

Volunteering

In addition to his work as a doctor, Reuter was also the chairman of the Gravenstein School Association and in the North Schleswig community of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Schleswig-Holstein. The congregation was considered a free congregation and was responsible for the pastorates of the rural congregations. The German pastors of the four cities were subordinate to the Danish national church.

During a time in which political disputes threatened the cohesion of the community, Reuter took over its chairmanship in 1938 and took over the mediation between the conflicting parties. The pastors joined the Confessing Church , the parishioners officially joined the church leadership of the German Christians in Kiel, on whose help they were dependent. In 1934 the congregation postulated that a belief in God could not be separated from a belief in nationality. Reuter is therefore likely to have been a political follower as the community chairman. While the leadership of the ethnic group or pastors were imprisoned or interned shortly after the end of the war, but Reuter was not, it can be assumed that he was not politically active in the interests of the National Socialists. Instead, he subsequently developed into an important figure in the German minority in the region.

At the end of the war, the German population lost all church and school organizations. As chairman of the North Schleswig community, Reuter took over its reconstruction. Shortly before the end of his life he negotiated in Copenhagen and got back three of the seven confiscated pastorates. This enabled the church institutions to start over in the region.

From July 1945, Reuter campaigned for German school lessons to be retained. On August 1, 1945 he was one of the founding members of the German School and Language Association for North Schleswig and took over its chairmanship. For some time he resigned as parish chairman. The reason for this was the annoyance with Martin Niemöller . In Copenhagen, he proposed that church and cultural issues, especially the school system, should meet. Reuter feared that this could jeopardize the continued existence of the German minority. By the end of his life, he obtained approval for 13 schools, some of which opened during his lifetime.

Based on the principles of the Hadersleben Circle , Reuter participated in the preparations for a declaration that the German minority made on November 22, 1945. In it, the residents declared themselves loyal to the Danish state and for the first time accepted the borderline established in 1920. The Federation of German North Schleswig-Holstein was created on this basis. Reuter participated in the executive working committee until 1947, which was replaced in 1947 by a main board. The board decided to run the 1947 Folketing election with a non-party candidate from the German minority. Reuter took on this task and received 7,464 votes with which he could not win a mandate.

When he died, Reuter was considered one of the leading figures in the German population of North Schleswig, whom both Germans and Danes showed respect.

family

Reuter married Mally Meta Agnes Bremer on May 31, 1901 in Göddeckerode (* July 20, 1879 in Wehre ; † June 13, 1962 in Hamburg ). His wife was a daughter of the domain tenant Friedrich Anton Heinrich Bremer (1835–1888) and his wife Auguste Wilhelmine, née Dammass (1835–1884).

The Reuters had three daughters and two sons.

literature

• Dieter Lohmeier: Reuter, Waldemar . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 9 - 1991. ISBN 3-529-02649-2 , pages 314-316.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Membership directory of the Derendingia fraternity in Tübingen. 1967, master roll no. 262.