Teacher Friedrich Kühbauch & The German Public School

Teacher Friedrich Kühbauch

    He took the first service examination in 1937 at the German training institute in Neuwerbaß.  He started his first position in Beschka on the 15^th of November 1938.  He took the second examination in 1942 at the newly established German teaching institute in Essegg.  Since 1962 he has been active as a training teacher of the PH Reutlingen at the Eduard- Pranger School in Reutlingen.  

The German Public School

   In 1941, that is after the German armed forces marched into Yugoslavia, the public school was separated into German and Croatian-Serbian sections.  I, Peter Lang, was entrusted as the local group leader with the leadership of the German public school.  Starcevic, who had been principal up to then, remained leader of the Croatian public school.  However at the suggestion of Starcevic I also took over the actual leadership of the Croatian public school, and was so until 1941 at which point all of the schools in Croatia were separated.  The three German teachers Bächer, Kühbauch, and Lang came to the German school as well as the young teacher Otto Fäller from Beschka (vgl. Reg. No. 458b),  Adam Ewinger (vgl. Reg. No. 458b), the graduate student Otto Ewinger (vgl. Reg. No. 458b), and teacher Mayer (from Neupasua?), so that the German public school was well supplied with teachers for seven years.  However during the summer vacation in 1942 Otto Fäller and Otto Ewinger were inducted into the Nazi SS, teacher Mayer was transferred to another school and teacher Kühbauch was a colleague in the newly created Office for the German Schools in Essegg, so that only teacher Bächer and I remained of the original personnel.  With luck, as already mentioned, Rev. Bellmann joined with a full teaching commission.  These three teachers were active until the people fled.  But in addition there were also teaching assistants, namely Plechel from Slankamen, Elvira Klumpner from Slavonia, Else Hanff from Eßlingen, Anni Pfeffer from India and finally teacher Henn (vgl. Reg. No. 798) from Beschka.  At the same time there were never more than four teachers ordered for the seven years in Beschka.  Each teacher therefore had a double teaching commission.  The number of children in May 1941 amounted to about 450.  Later many parents moved with their children as workers to Germany, so that after that there were only about 350 students to be instructed.  However in May 1944 this number increased again through the addition of the Partisan-threatened Germans from Darkovatz and Paleschnik.  Now the number of children amounted to about 450 children again.  The refugee children received special instruction during the vacation.

[Published at DVHH.org by Jody McKim Pharr, 2005]