Adam Stupp

* 1927

Sudeten Germans, Scientist
1. 9. 1939 - The outbreak of the WW2, 12. 3. 1938 - "Anschluss" of Austria
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    The revelation of a big surprise about the Hitler-Jugend boy Földi

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    “My friend Földi said to me: ‘you know what, come to my place, I’m in the Marine Hitler-Youth Association, I’m the tribe leader’. I don’t recall the exact title of his position anymore, I think it was like the leader of the Marine Hitler-Youth. He told me that the regime of his unit is very relaxed – I’d only have to come to the meetings and exercises if I wanted to, if I didn’t like it, I could stay at home. Of course that I immediately accepted his offer and shortly afterwards, I found out that there was no service at all to be held. I received from Földi a Hitler-Youth badge, the badge of the Marine Hitler-Youth. I could henceforth show that badge to the local Hitler-Youth leaders who would then let me go. So I this is how I managed to evade service in the HJ with this HJ badge throughout the war years. After the war, I found out something that seemed to be the biggest surprise of my life without any exaggeration. It turned out that Hardy Reginald George Olgen Földi Nodurany, as he called himself, had an altogether different name and was no Hungarian citizen at all. Instead, he was a Viennese Jew named Fluß. His father had bought a Hungarian passport and moved from one district in Vienna to another and thus he and his family survived the era of Hitler without any harm.”

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    Thoughts about the societal role of the Seliger Community

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    “Yes, of course that the Seliger Community has rejected from the outset the notion of the ‘Heim ins Reich’ (the back into the Reich concept). This Heim ins Reich mentality was one of the Nazis and as such, it was an outright rejection of National Socialism, that reverberated strongly at my home with my parents. So yes, it was of course especially attractive for me to join the Seeliger Community. I think that the Seliger Community has in particular contributed and has made the first steps towards a European rapprochement with the Czechs. The Seliger Community has somehow represented the pinnacle of all the German expellee-associations and it has been ready and eager to overcome the shadows of the past. I believe that the Seliger Community here has had a very positive impact.”

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    The winter in Vienna of 1945/46

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    “The winter of 45/46 in Vienna was a sad affair. There was nothing to eat, it was really bad. The caloric ration was pressed deeply down. The main daily diet was green peas but you had to cover the pot with a lid because otherwise they would run away as they swarmed with bugs. Or the bread, this corn bread, this greasy disgusting stuff which became really hard with time. So there was nothing to eat. I remember that I was invited on New Year's Eve of 1945 for a dinner and to celebrate the day. The dish was a roasted hare. When we had finished the dinner, I found out that it was in fact fox meat. So I ate a fox instead of a rabbit. So that was really bad.”

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    Möhrendorf, 26.08.2014

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The Seliger Community as an intellectual home

Portrait of the young Adam Stupp
Portrait of the young Adam Stupp
photo: privat
photo: privat
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Johann Adam Stupp was born on May 15, 1927. The son of a successful businessman, he spent his school years at the Academic Gymnasium in Vienna. With the help of a friend, he was able to evade service in the Hitler Youth and when he was about to be drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1944, he managed to stay out of harm’s way by faking a heart disease. Having survived the first winter after the war in hunger-stricken Vienna and upon completing his secondary education, he went to study in Tübingen. Here he studied Protestant theology and also spent some time at the University of Lund in Sweden, where he met his future wife who was a Latvian. Finally he moved to Bonn, where he was a research assistant at the university and at the same time also had a job in the Archives of the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat. In this position, Stupp got to know the leaders of the Sudeten-German Social Democrats, above all Roman Wirkner, his superior and at that time the chairman of the Seliger Community in North Rhine-Westphalia. In 1957, the family moved to Erlangen, where Stupp’s wife got a job as a doctor and Stupp himself, after some time, became the head of the Collegium Alexandrinum (Studium Generale). He held that position until 1993. In addition, Stupp got involved in various activities for the trade-union movement and published many essays about the Sudeten-German Social Democracy.  

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