Lukas Eitel is studying in Erlangen, looking back and it is inexplicable to him that the Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) there named a lecture hall after the entrepreneur Rudolf Wöhrl. According to a report by the Nuremberg City Archives that has now become known, the department store founder Wöhrl, who died in 2010, was already a supporting member of the NSDAP in 1931 and joined the SS in 1933. The lecture hall was named in return for a Wöhrl donation of 250,000 euros in 2009 and without, as the FAU admitted when asked, that the biography of the honoree had been examined more closely in advance. “The university management could even have commissioned FAU historians to do this,” says Eitel. The fact that this didn’t happen is almost “bizarre” for a man who has been an entrepreneur since 1933.
Since the report by the SZ became known, the sociology student Eitel discussed a lot. None of his fellow students believed that the five-meter-long lettering “Rudolf-Wöhrl-Hörsaal” could stay that way during lectures. However, no one has expressed any doubt that FAU will now change something. Admittedly, the assumption was not enough for Eiel. He is youth policy spokesman for the left in Bavaria and stood in the lecture hall on Saturday and demanded that the hall be renamed. “Does money make you blind?” read his poster.
In fact, the university obviously does not plan to stick with the name of the lecture hall. When asked by SZ, a spokesman for the university hospital said on Monday that the lecture hall, which had been named after Rudolf Wöhrl for 14 years, “should be given a new name from January 1st, 2024”. When asked, he explained that this had not been planned so far. The statement also states that the board of directors of the medical faculty “requested the expert opinion of the city of Nuremberg”. According to this, the “currently discussed problem” will be evaluated. Apart from that, “the naming of the large lecture hall at Östliche Stadtmauerstraße 11 is limited in time” and “not carved in stone”.
Andreas Frewer is a professor of ethics in medicine in Erlangen, and he himself has given lectures in the “Rudolf Wöhrl lecture hall”. In retrospect, he says, he finds this “absolutely oppressive” – especially since those courses took place within the representative framework of a “citizens’ lecture” at the FAU, which is intended to keep Erlangen residents up to date on new research results.
The fact that the university has now announced on request that the lecture hall will be given a new name next January seems to the professor to be at least ambiguous. It is, he says, “absolutely relevant what you do at what time”. If the above knowledge were available, one would have to “act now”. Of course, further steps are required first. However, it is not clear to him that a possible renaming should only be possible in more than ten months; just as little as the fact that the university apparently didn’t bother about who exactly a lecture hall was named after before the naming in 2009 – at a time when there should have been enough “historical sensitivity” long ago.