Kloster
Wies during the Great War and today. Further down by about a kilometre
is the town Tüntenhausen. In its church cemetery is this grave to
victims of a death march near the end of the war. Tüntenhausen's pastor Josef Schmid wrote in his report to his bishop on July 15, 1945 that on April 27, shortly after noon, around 850 Buchenwald concentration camp prisoners were driven through the village with two other prisoners who died in Hospital 1004 on Freising's Domberg coming from the Straubing prison. They had come from Zolling
twoards the direction of Freising. The prisoners had suffered abuse
continuously on every occasion with footsteps, butts, and strokes. Two
of the starved prisoners were buried here and are recorded on this
memorial.
The former site of the memorial to the west of Freising in the village church of Hohenbachern; no trace of it remains.
Just outside Hallbergmoos is this 1.20 metre high memorial on which is written in bronze letters "In memory of the prisoners' march of April 29, 1945. Alberto Labro † May 8, 1945". It is intended to stand on the path of the march, disturbing it as it commemorates the so-called death march of around 300 concentration camp prisoners coming from Neufahrn which ended in Hallbergmoos/Goldach. At the same time, a march of thirty to 40 prisoners from the Straubing prison was underway. The escaped Labro, formerly Mayor of Longwy in northern France, later died in the Loibl estate, where he had found shelter. His body was eventually exhumed in November 1946 and transferred to his hometown. He had been sentenced to five years in prison for 'favouring the enemy' and was then transferred from Brussels to Rheinbach and Kassel to Straubing. From here, Labro had to start the march towards Dachau concentration camp on April 24, 1945 together with around 3,000 other prisoners. On April 29, Albert Labro gained freedom in Hallbergmoos - and died in a stable nine days later. The fate of Albert Labro is described in detail in Collection Sheet 36 of the Heimat- und Traditionsverein Hallbergmoos.
The road entering into the
complex, Major-Braun-Weg, is named after Major Alois Braun,
head of the Freisinger Panzer Replacement Division 17. It was just outside Freising to the north at the Haidberghof (which I run past very week) in the hamlet of Pettenbrunn that Braun chose as a base for the anti-Nazi Freiheitsaktion Bayern (FAB). In
early April 1945, the Major met with members of the FAB which consisted
mainly of members of the military in Freising, Munich and Moosburg, who
had also reached out to civil society groups and even American
intelligence in Switzerland. It wasn't until the night of April 27-28
that they initiated any action involving the removal of higher military
personnel and the Gauleiter of Munich and Upper Bavaria before, based on
a ten-point programme, a transitional government would be established.
With leaflets, newspaper and radio, the public was called upon for
support. In the end, nearly 440 soldiers were involved.  |
| The CIA Safehouse nearby |
Memorial
in Aign about 20 miles north of Freising to the murdered crew of an
American B24 bomber, the Gawgia Peach (42-52709), which
crash-landed
near Sillertshausen in the district of Freising on June 13, 1944 during a
bombing mission to the Milbertshofen Ordnance Depot in Munich, by
German ME 109s. Almost all members of the ten-man crew managed to rescue
themselves via parachute only to have three of them- Dennis Griggs,
Theoron O. Ivy and Robert Boynton- murdered by the Nazis. On the right
is a photo of the crew of the 831st Squadron- The second man in the
front Row is Boynton; Theoron Ivy is second to the right alongside
flight engineer Francis Winners. Griggs, the copilot, is third in the
back row next to pilot Herbert Frels who, in 1999, received the
Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism from then- Texas Governor George
W. Bush. At the time Frels had been loaded into an ambulance and taken
to the Freising hospital (where my son was born) where he would stay for
two months before going to a PoW camp. Boynton was murdered on the
ground
by Nazi officials, as was Griggs who was killed by enraged German
villagers after parachuting down to safety. It is believed that Ivy was
killed several days later by the same group of Nazis.
Allershausen
High
above the Ampertal, at the confluence with the Glonn, was a city-like
castle
dating from nearly 3,400 years ago. The steeply-sloping site protected
the inhabitants from the
south, west and north. Deep trenches and a 4.50 metre-high city wall
nearly two kilometres in length made up of densely interwoven,
mud-plastered
wood surrounded the fortification. For this, about 40,000 oak trees had
to be
felled. A quarter century after its completion, the settlement appears
to have been
destroyed in a devastating fire. It was not until the 20th century that
its remains reappeared before being lost again. Fortunately, part of the
site has been secured
for excavations. Bernstorf soon became one of the most exciting
archaeological sites in Germany. Sensational findings revealed the
former significant regional and international importance of the city:
the oldest crown
tiara of pure gold found in Europe; thirty pieces of amber, two of
which have astonishing engravings- the "amber face" and a seal with
characters in
Mycenaean script. The two amber objects were found in 2000. They were,
with jewellery, embedded in small clay coverings and carefully
buried - perhaps as offerings to the gods. Burn marks on the gold and a
charred wood residue in a gold band are thought to have a connection
with the fire of the city walls.
Gold was found in 1998 and amber in 2000
Selection of gold found and the find site
Sheet-metal belt sections- note the triangular designs throughout
Supposed miniature Diadem with supporters
Possible armband fragment; again, note triangular designs
Supposed needle
Supposed staff. 14C dating has it dating from 1400-1100 BCE
The oldest gold crown found in Europe?
Crown diadem; again, note triangular device
Amazingly, it is claimed that an amber necklace found among the grave treasure of Tutankhamen was made here! Organic
material found within the crown, shown at 35x magnification, which
appears to be resin obtained from the Styracaceae plant family. Styrax
is a natural resin obtained from the wounded bark of Liquidambar orientalis located in Asia Minor. Mnesimachus, Aristoteles, Theophrastus in his Historia Plantarum, Herodotus, and Strabo are the first ones to mention the styrax tree and its balsam.
Sample of pierced amber found at the site in 2001
Reconstruction of the jewellery found at Bernstorf
More (reconstructed) artefacts found at the site from 2001-2005
Most remarkable are these finds from 2000
The face of a Bronze Age ruler?
The
so-called "Amber face" is a roughly triangular piece of amber with
engravings on the front and back. With his inscrutable smile, the "amber
face" recalls the gold masks from the graves at Mycenae and is perhaps
the face of a ruler. The reverse shows three
symbols: on the left is a long line with a triangular extension like a
spear; the centre shows a cross within a circle; the right showing a
symbol comprising a
trapezoid and a vertical line - possibly symbols for "flame" or "lance"
and known from the Mycenaean as a "double axe", which in turn is a sign
of
cereals. It could thus have served as a seal of authority, trade and
supply, or possibly as a passport for protection, free trade and
suppliers. It
is possible that it correlates with the syllables "do-ka-me" of the
Linear B script, the
oldest readable language of the Greeks. 
Pa-nwa-ti,
an archon at the time of the Argonauts?
The
second piece of amber is engraved with four characters divided into two
zones: three adjacent characters over a graphic symbol extending across
the entire width. The top three characters are argued to correspond to
three characters of the Linear B script in the
upper zone. If so, it would read "pa-nwa-ti",
exactly the opposite as a seal impression, "tin-wa-pa." The character
set is not yet occupied in texts, but probably the syllable sequence
"Tinwa" as part of their name in Pylos. The sign in the lower part of the stone is also said to bear a similarity with the crown-like gold
diadem of Bernstorf.
The
Bronzezeit Bayern Museum was only opened in 2014 given the difficulty
in obtaining insurance for such valuable items. The brainchild of Dr.
Moosauer, after intensive efforts he managed to establish and organise
the necessary resources for the small but equipped with audiovisual
facilities Museum of which he serves as the current museum coordinator.
It is located on the Pantaleon hill in Kranzberg upon which once stood a
Wittelsbacher castle.
The
castle building were destroyed in 1632 during the Thirty Years' War by Swedish forces. No ruins are to be seen
today as farmers from Kranzberg managed to transport 459,035 bricks from
the ruins to Munich from in the period from July 12 to September 18
1660 for the construction of stables.
It
wasn't until 1938 that the 2,500 square foot hilltop was built upon
again- for the Nazis. The plans here were published in the October 1938
issue of Der Baumeister (333)
The museum today accompanied by Dr. Moosauer and the view from its parking lot
Drake Winston investigating wartime ruins along the Isarweg bicycle route towards Munich at Mintraching (Grüneck) bei Neufahrn. It was a few yards away The Expositus on April 29 that, whilst around 30 to 40 inmates of the Straubing penitentiary moved through Goldach towards Mintraching in the afternoon, machine gun fire in front of the Isar bridge occurred. According to reports from pastor Franz Josef Roßberger from Eching and Dr. Joachim
Birkner from Goldach, at around 2:30 p.m. a
single armoured car from the American Army freed a group of about 250 prisoners
from the Straubing prison, which had been moving on the road from Freising to
Munich, and brought it to Eching. This group had also been observed by Ludwig
Gilch from Mintraching. Another thirty to 40 inmates of the
Straubing penitentiary moved through Goldach towards Mintraching that
afternoon. After the machine gun fire,
the group disbanded, the guards disappeared and the prisoners were
housed in the surrounding farms.
Zolling
Memorial to Kurt Willi Schmidt, born on July 15, 1924 in Gera, Thuringia. The non-commissioned officer died at this point in the municipality of
Fürholzen near Neufahrn bei Freising, with his ME 109 G6 fighter plane
was shot down during a dogfight with an Allied bomber group. He had four siblings; one of his brothers died of war injuries, the other committed suicide after the war ended. Kurt's fate remained with his mother and long unknown to his sisters, since the father kept the news of Kurt's death secret, to the mother's hopes that at least one of her sons would go to war had survived not to destroy. Kurt died on April 24, 1944, at just 19 years of age in Fürholzen in the district of Freising. The young non-commissioned officer flew a Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6 on that day to intercept an American bomber squadron moving to Munich, where he was shot down. He probably died already in the air, as there are no eyewitnesses when the burning fighter plane crashes Watched the parachute rise. The plane wreck was finally found 69 years after the crash by local historians under the direction of Marco Grätz and Ernst Keller who managed to identify Kurt Schmidt as a pilot using the nameplate of the aircraft. His surviving sisters learned about the discovery only after the investigators appealed to a local newspaper to contact them. A memorial stone was erected at the crash site on the occasion of Kurt's 70th anniversary of death, erected by the Krieger- und Soldatenverein Massenhausen/Fürholzen/Hetzenhausen. His
final resting place is in the war cemetery at Schönau near
Berchtesgaden. 
Took considerable time to hunt down the site of a Roman villa that had been excavated just about 15 miles away back in 1987 before being covered up again with only this photo giving me the clues as to its actual location. It's just outside a little town called Mauern north of Moosburg- the name could come from the Roman "ad murun", and sure enough Roman bricks were found nearby in Alpersdorf in 2007 is not surprising. A small thermal bath and a kiln were excavated here. The thermal bath had underfloor heating and was divided into typical rooms such as changing room, cold bath, tepid bath and warm bath. Concentrated metal objects were found in the heating shaft of the praefurnium that were probably hidden there when the Alemanni plundered the area, but then no longer picked up.Info about the excavations: http://www.archaeologischer-verein-freising.de/index.php…
Rudolfing
