SEPTEMBER 2002

KARL STUMPP Born in 1899, Alexanderhilf, Odessa Died in 1982, Stuttgart, [Germany] Historian, Geographer, Researcher Text in Spanish Language

"Stumpp's book is an inexhaustible storehouse, a true monument of the German Russians."
(Prof. Dr. Klaus Mehnert, journalist and political scientist)

Holiday: Herbstanfang, Beginning of fall

KARL STUMPP - GEOGRAPHER, NATURAL SCIENTIST AND HISTORIAN

Stump was a historian who experienced more recognition by his countrymen, the federal government and the international public in East and West than has been experienced by any other person before and since. In the field of historical research in the Federal Republic of Germany his name is - unjustly - given a negative overtone today because the beginnings of his educational mission were during the period of National Socialism. His life's work, Die Auswanderung aus Deutschland nach Russland in den Jahren 1763 bis 1862 (Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763 to 1862), which he dedicated to his family members and to all other German-Russians surviving in deportation in Siberia and Central Asia, achieved recognition as the standard work in historiography and it has also garnered respect in modern post-Soviet historiography. The book is especially popular among Aussiedler and Spätaussiedler (repatriates to Germany) who pursue genealogical and family research. To them, Stumpp's work is a true fountainhead from which all groups of Black Sea Germans, Volga Germans and those from other settlement areas can draw information. Who was this man?

Karl Stumpp was born in a German farming family on 12 May 1896, in Alexanderhilf near Odessa. Little has been passed down to us of his childhood and of his youth. One report is that he went to Germany in 1918 with other young compatriots to serve voluntarily in the military. That did not come to pass because shortly after his arrival everything collapsed in Germany with the November Revolution. Karl Stumpp studied geography and natural history in Tübingen, along with 15 other Black Sea Germans, and earned his master's and doctoral degree in 1922 with his dissertation entitled, Die Deutschen Kolonien am Schwarzen Meer (The German Colonies on the Black Sea). That same year he married Martha Prinz, who accompanied him his entire life and served as his secretary. From 1922 until 1933, Stumpp worked as a teacher at the girls' high school in Tarutino, Bessarabia, he headed several youth groups and two choirs there, was involved in family research, gave lectures about the German-Russians, and was involved in various other activities. Due to his refusal to accept Rumanian citizenship, he was deported and returned to Germany. In Stuttgart, Stumpp took over the directorship of the VDA, gave more than 400 lectures on the history of the German-Russians, drew up maps of German-Russian settlement areas (37 are preserved), wrote several articles for the paper Deutsche Post aus dem Osten (German Post from the East), and participated in the first assembly of German-Russians in 1939.

After war broke out, between July 1941 and October 1942, he and his 50 member "Stumpp Kommando" group recorded the German population in some 100 villages in the Ukraine, gave numerous speeches to Ukrainian residents, discovered and photographed the grave of Samuel Contenius in Josephstal (destroyed in 1944), but he was eventually fired and sent back to Germany in October 1942 because of his "too humane treatment of the Ukrainian population." He had done intensive research in the archives of Dnjepropetrovsk, and as a result of this work he wrote his new book in 1944, Die Kolonien Chortitza (The Chortitza colonies), which he supposedly sent by post to the regional archives at the end of the war. After the war he also wrote his greatest work, the Auswanderung, based on these documents located at Dnjepropetrovsk. At the end of the war Karl Stumpp relocated his bombed-out family in Tübingen and received a position as a secondary teacher at the Uhland High School. Together with Heinrich Roemmich, he was active in the establishment of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Ostumsiedler, published Volk auf dem Weg between 1951 and 1963, and after the Landsmannschaft was established, he published 12 Heimatbücher from 1955 until 1966. He held various positions in the Landsmannschaft: head of cultural affairs (1957-1968), national chairman (1963-1968) and speaker (1968-1975). Between 1951 and 1975, Stumpp gave more than 300 speeches about the fate of the Germans Russians during the deportation, he traveled three times to the USA between 1971 and 1978, gave 19 speeches there and was appointed honorary president of a museum of German-Russian immigrants in Rugby, North Dakota. He drew his current information on the circumstances of his countrymen from numerous private letters, which he edited and provided in reports to the federal government and to the public. His life's work finally climaxed in the process of family reunification and the later mass emigration of his countrymen. Stumpp did not distinguish himself through his ambitions or the pursuit of financial advantages, but rather through his inner drive for a cause, through humane compassion for his disadvantaged countrymen, including his mother and his sisters. He received numerous acknowledgments and honors for his achievements, among these the Order of Merit First Class. When he died on 20 October 1982, in Stuttgart, his name had already become a legend.

German text by Anton Bosch

Source: Heimatbücher der Deutschen aus
Russland,Volk auf dem Weg, and others

Our appreciation is extended to Alex Herzog, Boulder, Colorado, for translation of this article.