Die Erinnerungen eines Kreisleiters. Rudolf Schuller: Der 23. August 1944 in Hermannstadt
Rudolf Schuller: The Events of August 1944 in Sibiu. From the Memoirs of a Leading Member of the German Ethnic Group in Romania

Summary/Abstract: The following article offers Rudolf Schuller’s perspective on the events of August 1944 developed in Sibiu. Born in 1903, Schuller was originally trained to take over his father’s hotel business. In 1936, he joines the German People’s Party of Romania (Deutsche Volkspartei in Rumänien – DVR) and is appointed leader of the party’s local branch only three weeks later. In summer 1937, Rudolf Schuller establishes the party’s intelligence service, its aim being to monitor the state of mind within the party, but also among church leaders, other political parties and local state authorities. In autumn 1941, he is appointed Kreisleiter (county leader) of the German Ethnic Group (Deutsche Volksgruppe in Rumänien – DViR) – a Nazi organization led by Andreas Schmidt – in Sibiu. After the events of August 23, 1944, Schuller, as well as many of his collaborators, are arrested and, in January 1945, deported to perform forced labor in the Soviet Union. Immediately after his return to Romania in 1949, he is arrested and imprisoned several times, being accused among other things of a hostile attitude toward the communist regime. In 1972, he manages to emigrate to Germany – apparently after an intervention by Gustav Heinemann, at that time president of the German Federal Republic. Rudolf Schuller died 13 years later. This excerpt from Schuller’s previously undisclosed memoirs is published with the consent of his family. It represents a fragment of a more comprehensive manuscript left by Schuller and deals with his experience of the events of August 23, 1944, as they happened in Sibiu. The excerpt is supplemented by the editor with biographical notes about the author and all mentioned persons as well as with information about the historical and military background of the narrated events.

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