Rudolf Hilf (1 March 1923,

Aš Aš (; ) is a town in Cheb District in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 13,000 inhabitants. Administrative division Aš consists of nine municipal parts (in brackets population according to the 2021 census): *Aš (11, ...

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

– 20 April 2011,

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

) was a German historian, political scientist and expelled politician.

Life

Hilf, born in 1923, served as a soldier in the

Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe () was the aerial warfare, aerial-warfare branch of the before and during World War II. German Empire, Germany's military air arms during World War I, the of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Army and the of the Imperial Ge ...

between 1942 and 1945. After the end of the war, his family was expelled from their homeland and settled down in Bavaria. He studied history at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

, and, in 1951, advanced onto political science. After that and until 1959, he worked as a foreign policy speaker of the first speaker of the

Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft The Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft (; ) is an organization representing Sudeten German expellees and refugees from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Most of them were forcibly expelled and deported to western Allied occupation zones of Ger ...

in Germany, along with . From 1960 to 1966, he was the private secretary of Prince Max Egon von Hohenlohe-Langenburg, a representative of the Bohemian Hochadels. From 1967 to 1973, he was managing director of the national association of the

Federation of Expellees The Federation of Expellees (; BdV) is a non-profit organization formed in West Germany on 27 October 1957 to represent the interests of German nationals of all ethnicities and foreign ethnic Germans and their families (usually naturalised as Ge ...

. After that, he was a speaker at the Bavarian State Center for Political Education until his retirement in 1988. From 1995 until his death, he has been a member of the Sudeten German Council and the executive committee of the Bavarian State Group of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft. In 1977, together with

Josef Stingl Josef Stingl (19 March 1919 – 19 March 2004) was a German politician who served as the longstanding president of the Bundesanstalt für Arbeit (West German ationalEmployment Agency) from 1968 to 1984. By that time he had already established ...

, the former President of the Federal Labor Office,

Felix Ermacora Felix Ermacora (13 October 1923 – 24 February 1995) was a leading human rights expert of Austria and a member of the Austrian People's Party. Biography In his youth, Ermacora served in the army of Nazi Germany at the rank of private. He wa ...

, , and others, he founded the International Institute of Nationality Law and Regionalism (Intereg). He was also the initiator of the German-Czech cross-border region "Euregio Egrensis", founded shortly after 1990. He was also an author of many books, studies, and articles.

Awards

* Honorary citizenship of the city of Aš (1993) * Sudetendeutscher Kulturpreis (2006)

References

External links

*
Lebenslauf
auf sudeten.de (PDF; 25 KB) {{DEFAULTSORT:Hilf, Rudolf 1923 births 2011 deaths People from Aš Sudeten German people 20th-century German politicians German political scientists Luftwaffe personnel of World War II