For 14 years, hundreds of students passed the “Rudolf-Wöhrl-Hörsaal” in Erlangen, which was clearly advertised on the street, and last week only one “lecture hall”. The corresponding lettering had been pasted over and defaced “after the critical reporting”, said the Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) on Friday. The university hospital has therefore removed “the writing of the offense”. On the same day, the university announced that it would also remove the five-meter-long lettering inside the hall, which students looked at during lectures, over the weekend. This requires scaffolding.
The lettering “Rudolf Wöhrl” on the eastern city wall road is now also history …
(Photo: Olaf Przybilla)
… like the lettering inside the lecture hall – as FAU announced on Friday.
(Photo: Sophia Veneris)
The Reports from the Nuremberg City Archives on the founder of the fashion house, Rudolf Wöhrl, which were only recently published in the SZ has consequences more quickly than initially appeared. Originally, FAU had wanted to wait until 2024 after the report – which is still kept secret from the public – became known. Now the pressure has obviously become too strong; Students not only from the affected medical faculty had announced “actions” if the name of the hall did not change in the foreseeable future.
According to the report, Wöhrl, who was born in Franconia in 1913, was already a supporting NSDAP member in 1931, joined the SS in 1933 and made it to the rank of Rottenfuhrer. He has received several awards in Germany and in 2009 was given a lecture hall at the medical faculty in Erlangen after donating 250,000 euros for research purposes. Due to the numerous awards that were received, the board of the foundation had no reason to “examine Rudolf Wöhrl’s vita,” explained the FAU.
Gregor Schöllgen taught history at Erlangen University and headed the “Center for Applied History”.
(Photo: ZAG)
Erlangen historian Gregor Schöllgen questions this. “Anyone who names a public institution after a person must know their biography, no matter what it looks like,” he said on request. According to Schöllgen, the renaming of the lecture hall in 2009 was “a unilateral effort by the medical faculty”: “Since it has its own institute for the history and ethics of medicine, and with good reason, I assumed – not only – that they would get in touch with the biography of the namesake.” In the case of people from contemporary history, a reliable first impression can be gained comparatively quickly: “The files of the Federal Archives and other relevant archives were and are accessible to everyone at any time.”
Schöllgen taught history at FAU until 2017 and for several years headed the not always undisputed – “Center for Applied History” (ZAG), which mainly processed company histories, not least of well-known companies in Franconia. According to Schöllgen, in the course of this research in 2011, a ZAG employee also had the files in the Federal Archives relating to Rudolf Wöhrl copied. According to the historian, it is “a very manageable collection of things in terms of size, but meaningful in relation to Rudolf Wöhrl’s Nazi past”. The ZAG then “contacted the Wöhrl family, gave them access to the documents, advised them to have the story processed and offered them to take on this task”. The fact that the family “didn’t want to accept this offer” was their right.
The entrepreneur Hans Rudolf Wöhrl is the son of Rudolf Wöhrl.
(Photo: Frank Leonhardt/dpa/dpaweb)
Hans Rudolf Wöhrl, Rudolf Wöhrl’s son, answered questions from the company and the Wöhrl family. The family is “large and widespread”, which unnamed ZAG employee is said to have approached which family member cannot be determined. Wöhrl emphasizes that there are “serious indications” that his father was expelled from the NSDAP in 1937 “because of his business relationships with Jewish clothing manufacturers”. According to an expert report, after the war Rudolf Wöhrl himself stated that he had been “excluded from SS service in 1937 because of relations with Jews”. According to the historians, however, this is “not credible”, since the documents in the Federal Archives show that he “was still a member of the SS at least in 1939”.
Hans Rudolf Wöhrl also states that it was FAU’s free decision to name a lecture hall after his father in his honor: “As far as we know, my father’s donation to the university was not subject to any conditions.” The award, which was given by FAU for a limited period of time, ended five years ago. At the request of FAU, Rudolf Wöhrl’s widow “made a donation to the foundation herself”. “Of course,” emphasizes Wöhrl, “no one from the university is now asking for money back.”
According to the FAU, in 2019 – after a ten-year period – “no new donor or sponsor” expressed an interest, which is why the name was retained for the time being. The university now wants to “supplement the report with its own research, if necessary”. Until a new baptism, the hall will be called the “Hörsaal Östliche Stadtmauerstraße 11” as it used to be.