Melita Ruhn

Melitta Rühn (later Fleischer, born 19 April 1965) is a retired Romanian artistic gymnast who represented Romania at the 1980 Summer Olympics. She belongs to the German minority in Romania. She won three Olympic medals (team, vault, uneven bars) for Romania and scored a perfect ten for the vault optionals in the team competition of the 1980 Olympic Games. In 1979 she was a member of the first world gold medal-winning team of Romania. She is also an all around and floor world bronze medalist.

Career Rühn took up gymnastics aged seven at Sport School Club Sibiu coached by Ana Crihan and Adrian Goreac. Later she trained with the national team in Deva under coach Béla Károlyi.

Together with Nadia Comăneci, Rodica Dunca, Emilia Eberle, Dumitriţa Turner and Marilena Vlădărău, Rühn was a member of the gold-winning team at the 1979 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. Melitta did all the four events and contributed with a difficult and risky routine on the uneven bars.

In 1980 she was a member of the silver-winning Romanian team at the 1980 Olympic Games. Besides winning silver with the team she won the bronze medal on vault and on uneven bars. The bronze on the uneven bars was a tie with Steffi Kräker and Maria Filatova.

Post-retirement Rühn retired from competitive gymnastics in 1982, when she was 17. She finished high school in her native Sibiu and left for Bucharest in 1984. She went to the sports university there, while also competing for her home club of CSȘ Sibiu for a short period. After she graduated from college, she had a boyfriend, who emigrated to Germany with his family in 1988. They wanted to get married but the Romanian communist government only gave them their approval two years later, so she only managed to leave Romania in 1990. In Germany she stayed for the first three months in a refugee camp near Nürnberg sharing the same room with six people. Then she was allowed to move in together with her boyfriend. The former gymnast started working as a custodian.