Ruth Weiss – “Exclusion is a shame!”

For a lifetime, Ruth Weiss not only nicely named and campaigned for disadvantaged and persecuted, but also did so, regardless of his threats. On Saturday, July 26th, she celebrates her 101st birthday with her son Sascha and some guests of honor in Denmark. At the same time, an exhibition in Tübingen will open in your honor.

As a child of just twelve, Ruth and her parents escaped the increasing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany in 1936 and was able to flee to South Africa. There she already noticed as a teenager that people with dark skin had fewer rights than those with light skin; She felt that “white” and “black” were ideological terms that alone served less about many: no one is white or black.

As a young journalist, she named this injustice by name-and as a consequence from 1966 lost her right of residence in Apartheid South Africa. The single mother of a little son became homeless and was only able to work as a journalist with a permanent residence in the neighboring country of Sambia and from 1980 in Zimbabwe from 1980. Her journalistic work was also recognized in Great Britain and Germany, here, among other things, as head of the Africa department at the Deutsche Welle in Cologne.

South Africa was only allowed to visit Ruth Weiss again from 1990 – after the release of Nelson Mandela. The South African Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer wrote about her: “Even if I am friends with her, I can objectively say that she is the humanly warmest and most attractive woman I have ever met.”

In the most recent present, Ruth Weiss made her voice against the exclusive asylum policy of the German government: »The millions who are looking for asylum from rich countries because of conflict, instability, poverty – or hope of better life – asylum. Exclusion is a shame! “

In 2010 a junior high school in Aschaffenburg was named in Ruth Weiss, and four years later she received the Federal Cross of Merit 1. Her brave life can also be found in her autobiography “Paths in the hard grass”. The named after her Ruth-Weiss-Gesellschaft is committed to tolerance and the fight against racism.

I got to know Ruth Weiss for the first time in 2005: At that time she came to a school reading in Münster unannounced. She listened for a long time before she reported and said quietly: “I am Ruth Weiss and wanted to meet her personally.” She visited our house several times for disadvantaged children, which we had founded with committed educators in a township near Cape Town many years ago, and wrote articles for joint books. Most recently, she was one of the first signpersons of a petition to the Bundestag, who also pleaded for a commemorative lesson for the international Holocaust Day for the relatives of sexual minorities as victims of National Socialism for the first time in 2023.

So now her 101st birthday. In addition to the private celebration in Denmark, there will be a special event in your honor on the evening of July 26 from 7 p.m.: René Böll, son of Heinrich Böll, has designed an exhibition with East Asian ink drawings, the wisdom of Ruth Weiss. Among other things, the mayor of Tübingen Boris Palmer and Cem Özdemir will speak. The event can also be followed online.

May Ruth Weiss be able to raise her voice for a long time!

The exhibition “People need freedom!” Is from July 28th to August 3 in the Western top innovation center, Eisenbahnstr. 1, 72070 Tübingen, open, open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.