Rupert Neudeck, born in Gdansk in 1939 and brought to West Germany as a refugee in 1945, swore as a teenager that for him there could only be a real way of dealing with Hitlerism and the Holocaust: "Never be coward, never just watch". That was his answer when I asked him what drives him to rescue boat people and care for hundreds of thousands of refugees in African camps.
Who writes about Rupert Neudeck, always writes about his wife Christel and about the three Neudeck children Yvonne, Marcel and Milena. I was allowed to accompany her humanitarian family business in Troisdorf near Bonn for almost 40 years. In this terraced house, the humanitarian tormentor wrote thousands of mendicant letters to politicians, bishops and journalists on his old Olivetti typewriter. The Neudecks were a happy family. Only the atmosphere and the embedding in this family allowed Rupert Neudeck to radically humanist life with skin and hair, with heart and mind.
The joy of helping was her life motto. "Whoever falls among the robbers like the stranger in the history of the Good Samaritan, we must help," said Neudeck often. The pious were not the helpers in this story because they passed by the beaten and robbed victim. They were all very busy. It was a pagan from Samaria who finally helped, Jesus tells: "He had mercy on the robbed." For Jesus, mercy was the new name for God.
In each of his books, Rupert Neudeck recalls this story, which continues to drive thousands of idealistic helpers worldwide. Not only Christians and Muslims, but also atheists and agnostics, whom I got to know in Neudeck's projects, were and are inspired by this. Rupert was a radical Jesu, the left often too pious, the pious often left.
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Rupert Neudeck: "One can only meet the misery in a concrete way""What does radical living mean?", I once asked Christel and Rupert Neudeck. "We wanted to do something radically strenuous, but not sour, but with joy," was the answer. And what did they do?
It started with the chartered ship "Cap Anamur", with which they saved the lives of 11,300 boatpeople in the South China Sea. Since 2014, about 18,000 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Only those who compare these two numbers understand the incredible humanitarian act of the Neudecks. But that was just the spectacular beginning.
Already in 1980, the Cap Anamur Committee began its first mission to Africa in refugee camps in northern Somalia and helped refugees along the Cambodian border. This was followed in 1983 by hunger relief in the drought areas of Ethiopia, dangerous demining after war in Third World countries, further rescue operations by Cap Anamur in the second half of the eighties, refugee aid in Darfur in western Sudan and aid projects in Nicaragua and Colombia, Cambodia and South Africa.
"He was boatpeople for us like a father"
Already during the war with the Soviet Union, reconstruction aid began in Afghanistan; After NATO's deployment there, Neudeck's "green helmets", which they founded in 2003, have built more than 40 schools and several hospitals. Rupert Neudeck summarized his experience as follows: "With the many money that Germany spends on its soldiers in Afghanistan, we could achieve much more with humanitarian aid."
The green helmets also built hospitals in Iraq of Saddam Hussein and helped the displaced Kurds. Neudeck's wonderful helpers rebuilt several thousand houses in war-torn ex-Yugoslavia with the program "A roof over their heads". In Chechnya, Neudeck set up a much-needed children's hospital.
As the only aid organization, "green helmets" assistants worked with the traumatized population in the Nuba mountains in Sudan in the late 1990s, providing them with medicines and food. Together with Norbert Blüm and Heiner Geißler, Neudeck beat himself on foot for weeks at risk to his life through the Nuba Mountains. For security reasons, he sent his helpers over the decades only in areas that he had previously visited himself.
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Rupert Neudeck
We all have a refugee: a legacy
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This list is far from complete. Wolfgang Thierse, a friend and, as President of the Bundestag, often a political assistant to Rupert Neudeck, wrote after Neudeck's death in 2016: "What a panorama of humanitarian engagement! That is and remains almost unbelievable." The Neudecks have organized a global humanitarian fire service from Troisdorf.
Neudeck's Muslim friend and assistant from Somalia, Abdul Karim Guleid, could only stammer after Neudeck's death on 31 May 2016: "He was like a Muhammad Ali to me." The heart specialist dr. Quang Nguyen, whom Neudeck's crew of three-year-olds had fished out of the South China Sea, wrote in the "Stern": "Rupert Neudeck was like a father to us boatpeople." Neudeck was a human fisherman in the truest sense of the word. Bundestag President Norbert Lammert said: "His example remains," and Angela Merkel on Neudeck's death: "A true role model of lived humanity." This model inspired the refugee policy of the Chancellor in 2015.
Neudeck died of heart surgery. "Rupert's heart was so big that it simply could not be operated on," wrote his friend, former Secretary of State Ulrich Kasparick, "the whole world fit in there."
"Maybe I'll pawn our house"
I was allowed to experience the beginnings of this lived humanity as a journalist. Since the 1970s, I knew Neudeck as a television critic of "radio correspondence" who was feared by colleagues. In June 1979 he visited us in my editorial department "Report Baden-Baden" and asked: "Have you seen the pictures of the dwindling boatpeople in the South China Sea? We have to do something to save them." I spoke to Heinrich Böll, he supports the Idea of a rescue ship. " I asked him how he wanted to finance a ship. His answer: "I do not know, maybe I'll mortgage our house."
The fact that he did not have to mortgage his house after all, came like this: We gave him in the political magazine "Report", which had at that time around ten million viewers, live three minutes to explain his rescue idea by ship. To show account numbers was banned in the seventies in the ARD. So I agreed with Neudeck that he had to set up a very easy to remember account and the number in the show live twice very slowly say.
He did so, and three days later, three large, fat sacks with donation receipts stood in the Stadtsparkasse Cologne. With 1.3 million marks he was able to charter the "Cap Anamur". The morning after this broadcast Neudeck's idea in Germany was the topic of conversation.
We then showed the rescue missions of the Cap Anamur three times in two years, the spectators donated about 15 million marks, and Neudeck rescued 11,300 boatpeople with his crew - "on behalf of my fellow citizens and donors," as he emphasized again and again. Cabaret artist Dieter Hildebrandt sent an envelope of 1,000 marks and wrote: "You are crazy, but I like crazy people."
The former Salvinis were called Stoiber and Börner
Like captain Carola Rackete today, there was resistance against the rescuers and the rescued - not so much by citizens as by politicians. Only after conversations that led Neudeck and I with four prime ministers (Albrecht, Rau, Vogel and Späth), the rescued could be included here. The former Salvinis were Edmund Stoiber (CSU) and Holger Börner (SPD). Their argument: The "Cap Anamur" attract but the refugees only. Neudeck's answer: "One can only concretely face the misery."
About 250,000 people drowned 40 years ago in the South China Sea. In this situation, the federal government at an international refugee conference with this statement had ventured: "Every captain of a ship with a German flag is under penalty to take refugees in distress in the South China Sea and the federal government is ready to accept these people in Germany." Specifically responsible for the admission were then the states. But where is this commitment today?
When the survivors inaugurated a memorial for Rupert Neudeck in Troisdorf in 2018, 800 boat people came with their children and grandchildren and sang "Unity and right and freedom for the German homeland". Many Germans had tears in their eyes. I as well. Refugees have become fellow citizens. Neudeck's last book was published posthumously. The title: "We all have a refugee - a legacy". The last sentence in this book, "We were all happy."
In 40 years, Cap Anamur assistants have treated 25 million patients in 60 countries, vaccinated two million children and saved countless lives. Neudeck's motivation? "The history of the refugees concerns us all, we can not dispense with it."
The Sermon on the Mount by the wonderful young man from Nazareth was always real utopia for the Neudecks. They were and are rebels of charity. Today, her daughter Yvonne leads the current humanitarian missions from her living room.