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Peter Max Wagner
Founder of
Hilfswerk der
Donauschwaben
Submitted by
Richard Wagner
Translated
by Brad Schwebler
The
Pannonian area between the Danube and the Theiß Rivers also stands
for the many people and the many folds, that means accepting human
rights, conceding the rights for minorities.
But these minority rights were not accepted at the time and
they are also not accepted in this stretch of land today, Mayor Jakob
remembered of the Kosovo War. And so it goes not only for the beauty
of the Pannonian area, but also for the question of human rights and
the rights of minorities. In
this context he saw Peter Max Wagner as a model that is still current
today. Please think of
the stream of refugees from Kosovo or from Bosnia a few years ago and
the wave of readiness to help which came in for it.
In
the case of the Donauschwaben it appears that the end of the cold war
has served in a small way to also take advantage in a greater European
escape and expulsion in a common fateful dimension.
For this reason Peter Jakob said, one should understand the
Pannonian Fountain as well as Peter Max Square serve as reminders of
responsible politics, which we have, and we have for the problems when
responsible politics fails.
The
district chairman of the association of North Württemberg, Lorenz
Baron, who welcomed the guests first, showed there that Peter Max
Wagner, whose square together with the Pannonia memorial were
consecrated on the 29th of August, 1964, would be 100 years
old this past year.
Hans
Supritz, the chairman of the Donauschwaben team in Baden-Württemberg
recognized the works of Peter Max Wagner 53 years ago as the
disappearance of his people in Yugoslavia was very near.
In this time of greatest need and despair for the
Donauschwaben, Wagner thought of his Pannonian origins (He came from
Sekitsch in the Batschka), and he established Hilfswerk der
Donauschwaben (Aid for the Donauschwaben) in Ridgewood, Brooklyn with
countrymen and friends in May 1946.
Thousands of help packets found their way to the hungry
children, mothers, and grandparents in the concentration camps, which
the Tito partisans had erected for the ethnic cleansing of the German
minority in the Pannonian region.
Bringing families together was organized and made possible the
immigration of tens of thousands of Donauschwaben to the USA.
Peter
Max Wagner and his friends found people in the highest government
circles in Washington at the time to listen to them about their
humanitarian matters, but also in the American financial world that
the chairman knew. So support from US politics for the assistance work can be
developed in peace and do its work.
Many
of the Donauschwaben living throughout the world forgot about Peter
Max Wagner after the times of greatest need.
But the ones who did not forget him wanted to honor his work
through a memorial and a square named after him, among them were men
such as Lorenz Baron, Julius Kiltz, Franz Hoff, Michael Diener, and
Franz Weber. They wanted
to see to it that the generous humanitarian achievement of Peter Max
Wagner and his friends lived on in memory, just as now, where people
in our former homeland are again being driven out because of their
nationality and their beliefs. |
