Freising under the Swastika

Münchenerstraße lined with Nazi flags during the Third Reich and cycling down today with the cathedral towering behind; I haven't been able to access the roof from which the photo was taken which is now used by a Turkish association. My home since 2010, most of the information I could find about this time comes from three main sources- Sonja Kochendörfer and Toni Schmid's Freising unter dem Hakenkreuz, published back in 1983 but remaining the only real published source devoted to Freising during the Nazi era. It provides valuable photographs supporting a general overview although lacking any citations or real particular depth. More recent has been Verfolgung und Widerstand in der NS-Zeit by Die Linke politician Dr. Guido Hoyer published in 2015 which is especially valuable for offering an overall presentation of places of remembrance of resistance and persecution around Freising. Again, at just under 130 pages it provides a short summary which suits someone like me who has managed this long without any German; for that reason I haven't been able to make use of Ernst Keller's Als der Luftkrieg in unsere Heimat kam: Erinnerungen an den Bombenangriff auf Freising am 18. April 1945 although its related film provided a lot of the bombing locations related here. Of greatest value has been the articles found in the local magazine Fink, usually written by town historian Florian Notter. Its complete backlog of issues dating from May 2007 can be found here.

Freising's dark past predates the Nazi era by centuries. During the so-called Kinderhexenprozesse in Freising, the Hexenturm (Witches' Tower) at the Alte Gefängnis (old gaolhouse) was constructed. It can be seen bottom right behind Draken Winston. The gaolhouse has since been converted to a winebar with rooms where the horrific torture of children are now quaint dining rooms as seen above. The later use of cells to have been renovated into dining rooms. As related by Sabine Seidel, the first trial began with the arrest of the so-called Bettelbuben (beggar children) Andre and Lorenz on December 3, 1715, who were accused of being able to make piglets and mice. Based on their statements two other children were arrested. On August 12, 1717 Andre hanged himself in his cell whilst another boy died of illness. Three boys were executed on November 12, 1717 'by sword and fire'. Two other boys had to watch their execution and beaten with rods before being placed under "spiritual supervision." One girl, Elisabeth Adlwart was forced to shave the entirety of her body to be examined for physical characteristics of one having made a pact with the devil. The last witch hunt in Freising occurred between 1720 and 1722, and it included the execution of eight so-called zauberbuben (magic boys). It was triggered by the arrest of Adlwart Veit for theft. Probably due to his conviction in the first children's witch trial (he was one of the two boys who had to watch the execution) the charge of theft was changed to witchcraft. Eventually over an hundred people were arrested with eight boys between 14 to 23 years and three middle-aged beggars were executed including Adlwart Veit on December 15, 1721. As so often in history, the wave of arrests and executions did not come to an end until more and more members of the upper classes were targeted.

In 1918, the monarchy was abolished in Bavaria with the November Revolution, and Kurt Eisner proclaimed the "Freistaat Bayern." A council of workers, soldiers and farmers was also founded in Freising. However, the municipal administration around Mayor Stephan Bierner remained in office and continued to work. In the state elections on January 20, 1919, the Bavarian People's Party and the SPD in Freising emerged as the clear winners with 48% and 39% of the vote respectively. Hans Unterleitner, a native of Freising, was represented in Kurt Eisner's cabinet as Social Affairs Minister. However, Eisner's USPD suffered a severe defeat in the state elections in early 1919, receiving only 2.5% of the vote. On the way to the constituent session of the state parliament from where he intended to announce his resignation, he was murdered by Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley. The politically motivated murder of Bavaria's first Prime Minister on February 21, 1919 had mobilised many people in Freising.

Zwack's grave in St. George cemetery

At the memorial rally a thousand came dressed in black on the Marienplatz. After hearing a speech from Ferdinand Zwack they marched to Neustift and back, accompanied by a brass band. Nevertheless, after Eisner's murder radical forces in Freising increased; after the proclamation setting up the Soviet Republic on April 7, 1919 in Munich, Freising too joined the Soviet Republic and following instructions from Munich, its public buildings flew red flags, bells rang, and several thousands gathered at the Vimy barracks and listened to several revolutionary speeches. Mourners at Marienplatz on the left, honouring murdered Kurt Eisner February 24, 1919 with public buildings flying red flags. On the top-left is a period postcard of the event and the same site taken from the rathaus's Great Hall with Drake Winston's Croozer waiting below.

A few days after his April 7 murder, the Räterepublik, a soviet republic, was proclaimed in Munich. On the same day the Soviet republic for Freising was also proclaimed. Freising apparently remained neutral towards the communist Soviet republic, even though the Freising garrison was probably on their side. Zwack became Commissar of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council of the Soviet Republic. Whilst this was the type of experience many Bavarian towns had, few lasted very long. In Freising, the predominant influence of the Soviet Republic lasted at the most five days. Newspapers were censored during this time on the orders of the "Revolutionary Central" in Munich. The parliamentary government that had moved to Bamberg subsequently announced military action against the Soviet Republic.
The GIF on the left shows the high street shortly after the overthrow of the Soviet Republic when troops from Regensburg entered Freising. On April 26, 1919, the troops of the government in exile in Bamberg, coming from Regensburg, advanced to Freising, against which there was no resistance. The city professed parliamentary government, but declared that it would protect and not betray the supporters of the soviet republic among its citizens. On April 30, the troops moved on to Munich and violently crushed the rule of the councils in the following days. By the end of April troops and freikorps units acted against the Soviet Republic in Munich. As part of these troops, which came from Regensburg, moved into Freising on April 26, it met with no resistance. The south of the city was sealed off by a cordon at the Isarbrücke with machine guns set up. The town was now open to the parliamentary government although its leaders declared that followers of the Soviet Republic would be protected among its residents and information about them would not be passed on to the troops. Some volunteers joined various military organisations to participate in the fight against the Bavarian Soviet Republic. On April 30 the forces moved on again, and by May 2 the Soviet Republic had been brutally suppressed.

Freising during the Depression- Freisingers queuing up at the high street tobacconist's. By December 1932, 3,371 unemployed people were registered in the Freising employment office district, more than a third of them in the town itself. This number remained roughly constant until February 1933 and doesn't include school leavers who couldn't find an apprenticeship or job. Whilst unemployment figures continued to rise to record levels, the municipality was practically bankrupt with income falling rapidly as expenditure continued to rise. The biggest hole in the municipal coffers was unemployment benefits. In December 1932, the district welfare association had to care for 923 benefit recipients, not including their family members. Several hundred other benefit recipients had to be supported through poor relief or supplementary pensions.

   

View of Prinz-Ludwig-Straße from the end of Ziegelgasse. The Ziegeltor was destroyed in 1898, the last of Freising's six gates.

All sites online appear to censor the swastika from the photo on the left by cutting the right side of the photo; here I had to meld a high-quality image with one found in the book Alt Freising. On September 7, 1922 the local Freising Nazi group was created.

The Gasthof Kolosseum, now gone and replaced on the High Street with a Woolworths, where Hitler gave a speech on February 12, 1928 for three hours, from 15.00-18.00. According to the Freisinger Tagblatt four days later under the headline "Hitler-Versammlung," the public meeting was attended by "numerous listeners from all walks of life". It described the three-hour speech, titled "Der Weg zur Freiheit," as an "uninterrupted, sometimes very spirited speech" through which Hitler developed his personal views on international politics in general and the correct political leadership of people in particular. "For a long time he dealt with the problem of the struggle of all living beings for their existence and survival. He denied the broad mass of the German people any political thinking ability, condemned the democratic state system in the strongest possible terms and described autocracy as the ideal and the only correct form of political government. Since everything great in politics sees that the economic and cultural life of the peoples was only achieved through the special abilities of individual heads, a majority rule, as it is justified in the sense of a democratic form of government, is to be condemned in the strongest possible terms and to be fought with by all means."

The last major event the Nazis organised in Freising before they took power was a flag consecration of the NS Student Union here in the Colosseum involving marching music from the Munich SA band, speeches from the student leaders, and a speech by a Munich university professor on the topic entitled  "The Society and Community," the local newspaper reporting that "both concepts were explained and examined from the National Socialist point of view".  

In power, the Nazis organised an event here on May 30, 1934 at which the regional organisation leader Reichinger spoke, condemning "sectarian agitators" who continued to interfere in politics. Like a "rotten apple in a basket of good apples", they would "spoil the other members of the people". A month later the Night of the Long Knives took place during which Hitler had the leading figures of the SA shot and numerous other conservative opponents of the regime killed, thus neutralising an SA which had long since become the largest armed force in Germany and were far superior to the Reichswehr. In Freising the local newspaper reported on July 3 how "news of the events of the morning had spread like wildfire. Some things that had not become clear to the public in the past few hours now became understandable and a sigh of relief went through all circles." The district conference of the Nazi Party planned for June 30 here in the Colosseum Hall now became a "comradeship evening" to convince the SA comrades of the correctness of the "Führer's will".

A meeting of Social Democrats held at the Landshuter Hof (now a Thai restaurant) at the end of 1932 before Hitler's appointment and its prohibition under the Enabling Act through which many party officials were imprisoned, killed or went into exile. There were only about fifty to 100 Nazi members in Freising which left the party of little account. In fact , the Naazis received 1,324 votes in Freising during the November 1933 elections, 100 fewer than in July, which placed them in third place behind the Bavarian People's Party and the SPD. During the last free election in March 1933 once in power, the Nazis in Freising were able to increase their share of the vote to 2,520 compared to the November elections of 1932, but were clearly second behind the BVP, which received 3,844 voters. Even the SPD was able to gain voters with 2,422 votes. The biggest losers of the election were the Communists, who were only able to mobilise half of their voters in Freising with 405. 

On the left  is the Nazi Party Kreisleitung in 1936; formally the 'alte rathaus', the locals would refer to it as das 'braune haus.' On the façade can be seen the Nazi eagle and the writing "Ein volk, Ein führer, Ein reich." The Kreisleiter was a Nazi Party political rank and title which existed as a political rank between 1930 and 1945 and as a Nazi Party title from as early as 1928. The position of Kreisleiter, or county leader, was first formed to provide German election district coordination and, after the Nazi assumption of power, the position became one of county municipal government, effectively replacing the traditional German government establishment. This process bgean in 1933 with the replacement of mayor Stephan Bierner, who had been in that office since 1899. Under him the town hall on Marienplatz, the Isar Bridge and the Vimy Barracks were built. Neustift became a district of Freising and the Hallertau railway line was constructed. After the Great War, the town expanded into Lankesberg and Lerchenfeld. He was a member of the Bavarian People's Party, which even in the March 1933 elections received significantly more votes (3,844) in Freising than the Nazis (2,520). The BVP was the dominant political force in Catholic-conservative Freising representing nationalism, order, discipline and hard work- the same ideals the Nazis claimed to stand for. When he was replaced with Nazi Gottlieb Schwemmer on Thursday, March 23, at eight o'clock in the morning after SA Sturmbannführer Hans Lechner and Nazi local group leader Georg Preisser appeared at the town hall and called folr his resignation, the reason given was that peace and security no longer seemed to be guaranteed in Freising at the very time Lechner's self-appointed SA auxiliary police were creating havoc. This took place after the special commissioner for city and district of Freising (Sonderkommissar für Stadt und Bezirk Freising) Hans Lechner had been forced to accept Bierner's resignation by the NSDAP Ortsgruppenleiter George Preiser. Bierner denied, however, in a speech that he had been forced to resign and declared that he wasn't a Nazi, but always a German first.  

Looking at the Kreisleitung  from the other direction towards the main street. On its facade is paimted a Hitler drummer. A few days after Bierner's resignation on March 28, the Freising local group of the "Bavarian Homeland Protection" dissolved without any resistance to the claim of the Nazis to represent all groups in society in its sub-organisations alone. The Freisinger Tagblatt also lost its status as an independent local newspaper and was declared by district leader Müller to be the official "Nazi Party interest organ for the Freising district." By March 9 at around 18.00 the SA from Moosburg and Freising marched together in front of the district office and demanded permission to raise the swastika flag. The head of the district office, senior government councilor Dr. Schels refused but eventually declared that he was "giving in to the pressure". The same process was repeated soon after at the town hall as the assembled SA detachment started to sing the Horst Wessel song on Marienplatz before marching back to the party headquarters at "Zum Hirschen" where an SA man stood guard at the entrance. This despite the Nazis failing to receive the majority of Freising votes in the March 5 election. 

On the left, SA marching down my street- Prinz-Ludwig-Straße. Members of the SA would frequent the Paradies guesthouse on this street; further down towards the High Street was the Nazi Party local Zum Hirschen. Already by March 10 the first eight Freising residents were taken into 'protective custody', including five communist functionaries, two SPD members who were also organised in the "Reichsbanner," the SPD combat organisation, and a Jewish businessman only to be provisionally released a short time later. Within the town armed SA men were everywhere as SA squads carried out house searches of real and suspected communists at all hours. The Furtnerkeller, the party headquarters of the SPD and Reichsbanner, was cordoned off by armed SA guards. A week later, on March 16, the Furtnerkeller was searched by the SA for several hours, with even the beer garden raided and dug up finding no weapons but party badges, armbands, fifes and drums. In the local paper the Nazis made an official response to various rumours circulating: "It is not true that there was an intention to storm the Domberg. It is true that we have taken over the protection of the churches. It is not true that our flags were bought from Jews. It is true that only Christian shops were used for purchases."

By the end of the month the deputy head of the Freising employment office, senior inspector Sebastian Schaberl, and head teacher Braun were all taken into 'protective custody' on the basis of "statements that damage the reputation of the new government." Schaberl and Braun appear to have been the first victims of a wave of denunciations in the early stage of the Nazi regime. At the beginning of April during an event organised by the "Combat League of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses," a participant in the meeting openly asked an SPD city councillor he knew if it was a problem that he hadn't yet been taken into protective custody only to have the chairman of the meeting reassure him that the matter would be investigated.

Looking from the other direction with the 7. Infanterie-Division and 19. Infanterie-Regiment marching down the same road on May 1, 1939. The Nazis' attempts to stimulate the economy included measures against the rampant illegal employment, increased efforts to get a garrison back to Freising, and the general refusal of liquor licenses for new landlords. The project for a "Moosstrasse" from Freising to Erding to develop the Erdinger Moos, which had already been planned under the Bierner adminsitration, was continued although in the end only one of all the major projects was realised: the removal of the "Schlüterkurven" and the associated construction of the "Ledererbuckel" on the B11, named after Schwemmer's successor as mayor. Amid falling unemployment figures there was now established the National Socialist Civil Servants' Association, the National Socialist Factory Cell Organisation (as a replacement for the trade union), and the National Socialist War Victims' Welfare Organisation. On April 11, the Farmers' Association also declared its entry into the Nazi Party auspices. After the trade unions were broken up, the former trade union officials of Freising were summoned to a meeting in the Hacklkeller on May 4 in which attendance was mandatory although the 'invitation' promised that "there is no reason to fear" amidst the dissolution of the unions. 

 To celebrate Hitler's birthday on April 20, a large torchlight procession and a celebration took place in the former Jäger barracks climaxing. The climax of these mass rallies was May 1st, which was proclaimed "National Labour Day". The May King' announced "Greetings, oh leader of the German soul, my Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of our Reich. You created the day of May, that it might shine brightly through our work like the sun. Greetings, oh leader of the German soul." A week later the trade and commerce association and the land and homeowners association announced their entry into the Nazi Party; by now only the sports clubs were given a reprieve provided they weren't workers' sports clubs with ties to the SPD. Where the minutes of the cycling club ended with the traditional cyclist greeting "All Heil," now it was replaced by "Sieg Heil" or "Heil Hitler." Reeducation in the spirit of the regime now ensued attendance made compulsory for craftsmen, the self-employed, civil servants, labour officials, women, young people et cet.. From the beginning of May, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls have had their own headquarters in the old Hofbräuhaus on the Domberg.

By the end of the month the people of Freising learned from their local newspaper that "[a]nyone who refuses to give the Hitler salute can be punished. The single judge of the Karlsruhe district court sentenced a former bank employee to two days in prison for refusing to give the Hitler salute, i.e. raising his hand, under the legal aspect of gross mischief. In the judge's opinion, anyone who does not raise their hand at national rallies or during the German national anthem and the Horst Wessel song, thereby incurring the displeasure of other participants, is committing gross mischief. This raising of the hand has become a national matter of course. In the justification for the verdict, the comparison was made that during a Corpus Christi procession, even non-Catholics had to pay their respects by removing their hats."

Adolf-Hitler-Straße, Freising's main street (now Obere Hauptstrasse). Nearly four months after the new Nazi-dominated city council led by Nazi mayor Gottlieb Schwemmer unanimously agreed to offer honorary citizenship to Hitler, President Paul von Hindenburg, Reich Governor Franz Ritter von Epp and SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm, Hitler signed a typewritten letter in Berlin accepting the honour and thanked the town for renaming its main street after him. It's not known if Hindenburg, Epp and Röhm also accepted their honorary citizenship; Röhm was murdered in early July 1934 with Hindenburg dying a few weeks later. As far as the street name is concerned, it was - unlike initially proposed - not given to the whole main street, but only the upper and middle part with the lower part, renamed "Hindenburgstraße." All honorary citizenships, which were awarded during the Nazi period, lifted the Freisinger city council in March 1946.

Adolf Hitler Straße as referred to in a 1937 postcard. In fact, at the time this lower part of the High Street had been renamed Hindenburgstraße- as shown below its name plate still remains hidden behind two sites at numbers 38 and 54, the latter however covered over with white paint. It wasn't until August 1945 that eighteen streets in Freising were renamed, including Hindenburg Straße to Untere Hauptstraße, Adolf Hitler Straße to Captain Snow Straße and then Obere Hauptstraße, Adolf Wagner Straße to Gartenstraße, Herbert Norkus Straße to Fabrikstraße, Von-Blombergstraße was named after the defence minister and Generalfeldmarschall of the Wehrmacht Werner von Blomberg before he fell into disgrace in 1938 and was renamed Von-Stein-Straße after the Bavarian artillery General Hermann Freiherr von Stein, Sigmund-Halter-Straße to Sighartstraße, and Horst Wessel Straße to Bahnhofstraße.

A planned "Hermann Goering Road " along Asamstraße was not realised. Heinestrasse, named after German poet Heinrich Heine was renamed due to his Jewish origin to Dietrich-Eckart-Straße after the early Nazi member and mentor to Hitler who had dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf to him. A number of streets were renamed after 'martyrs' of the cause- Fabrikstraße was renamed Herbert-Norkus-Straße after a Hitler Youth member who was murdered by communists in 1932, becoming a role model and martyr for the Hitler Youth widely used in Nazi propaganda, most prominently as the subject of novel and film Hitler Youth Quex. Hirschmannstraße, now Kesselschmiedstraße, was named in honour of a brownshirt killed in 1927 after he and five others were chased for an hour through the Giesing district of Munich by political opponents and seriously injured before dying the next day of his injuries; Hitler delivered the funeral oration at Ostfriedhof. Schlageterstraße, now Goethestraße,was of course named for Albert Leo Schlageter who had been killed by the French occupiers of the Ruhr in 1923 and co-opted posthumously by the Nazis as one of their own. Those killed as part of the failed Munich beer hall putsch were also honoured with street names-  Andreas-Bauriedlstraße (now Meisenstraße), Kurt-Neubauerstraße (now Rabenweg), Von-der-Pfortenstraße (today Tannenweg), Laforcestraße (renamed Buchenweg) and Karl-Kuhn-Straße (now Erlenweg).

One last example of streets renamed after the war is Casellastraße, whose named has reverted back to Plantagenweg (behind where I live). Theodor Casella was the bank clerk who, according to Ernst Röhm in his book "Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters," was, with Martin Faust, both members of the armed militia organisation Reichskriegsflagge and were shot down accidentally in a burst of machine gun fire during the occupation of the War Ministry as the result of a misunderstanding with II/Inf.Regt 19. Some of the remaining putschists, including Himmler, Karl Osswald and Walther Lembert, collected the two men and took them to the Josephinum hospital on Schönfeldstraße in the hospital where Casella died an hour later.

Difficult to see in every image apart from the one at the NS-Dokumentationszentrum in Munich (left), the bus that transported armed Nazis to Munich for the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch came from Freising- it reads on the side 'Hofbrauhaus F[reising]'

    

Seen from the opposite side, 'Freising' is clearly discerned 

 The Freising Hofbräuhaus then and now

The Nazi-era eagle that gives its name to the Adler Apotheke at Obere Hauptstraße 62 dates from 1937.

Obere Hauptstraße 3 during the Nazi-zeit and today. Originally built in 1905, it housed the Hutmachergeschäft Koislmaier from 1911. By 1966 this building and the ones on either side were replaced with those of local architect Hans Hofmann. Meanwhile the Laubenbräu at Marienplatz 3, now Café Marienplatz after a fire in 1965 too has changed its façade. Drake Winston at the side of the town hall and behind. 

The Nazi mural on the Stauberhaus on Marienplatz, painted by Georg Liebhart in 1937, depicting the construction of the Nazi state by workers under the supervision of a man in SA uniform, now replaced by St. George. On June 2, 1945, the American commander of Freising, Captain Albert G. Snow, wrote to Mayor Emil Berg demanding new names to replace Nazi street names and at the same time to remove all Nazi symbols. He set July 4, 1945 as the deadline for the implementation of these measures. That he had to write again on August 3, 1945, shows that the city authorities had by no means complied with the June order. The city commandant again and emphatically demanded that the renaming of streets and the removal of Nazi symbols be tackled. Within a few weeks, Snow's orders were finally being obeyed. Whilst it was one thing for the authorities to rename streets, the removal of the numerous Nazi symbols in the city area was not without effort. In addition to those within private estates, the American military government may have paid particular attention to the larger murals on public buildings, not just that on the Stauberhaus but the Nazi eagle with the legend "Ein Volk, Ein Führer, Ein Wille adorning the  Stadtschrifterei building on Bahnhofstrasse. While these murals were simply painted over, you had to use a hammer and chisel to knock out the swastika on the eagle sculpture in front of the General von Stein Barracks shown below. By August 1945 Freising was largely free of Nazi names and symbols.

    

Military parades in the town centre

Marienplatz during the Third Reich and today, and with torchlight procession during the last year of the war

 

Drake Winston in front of the rathaus and St. George church and as Marienplatz appeared during Nazi commemorations. One took place August 3, 1939- exactly a month before the British Emire declared war on Germany-  to mark the beginning of the First World War. Nazi district leader Lederer declared how Germany was "proud of the victims of the war and the Führer's deeds are linked to these years". During the Second World War, the NS-Reichskriegerbund had honoured each individual fallen soldier from Freising at the war memorial by laying a wreath but on November 11, 1941 district leader Hans-Rupert Villechner ordered that in future honours for Freising's fallen soldiers be held once a month at Marienplatz under the specious excuse that it was "in order to give the honours for the fallen sons of the district town of Freising a larger and more dignified setting."

At the close of the next world war citizens and clergymen would initially hang the white flag on the church tower on their own initiative which nevertheless failed to prevent the approaching Americans from attacking the Sankt-Georgs-Kirche and the heights around Wippenhausen having suspected an artillery observer might have holed up in the tower and passed on his observations. In addition, their commanders suspected that the white flag was just a ruse.  

Wehrmacht marching through the town's high street in 1940 and Drake Winston at the spot today. Already by the start of the year the local newspaper would repeatedly attack the "grumblers" who vented their anger at the new restrictions taking place; by now the boys' seminary was converted into a military hospital, six teachers were drafted into the Reichswehr and, because of the general shortage of coal, the grammar school and secondary school's coal supplies were confiscated for private households. One of Freising's two school buildings was closed and January 27 marked the start of a week of "coal holidays". Apparently Freising's residents didn't take the blackouts, which had to be carried out from nightfall until dawn, too seriously, even though the first British bombers had already been attacking the German coast. On February 14 the Freisinger Tagblatt reported how the police had found themselves "forced to take action with punishments because blackout measures in individual houses and apartments did not meet the requirements of the situation." 

 The main street lined with swastikas and today. On October 8, a special train with 194 Germans from Bessarabia arrived at Freising's station. Back in June Stalin had  incorporated the former Romanian region on the Black Sea into the Soviet Union as part of the Nazi-Soviet alliance the year before, and the 83,000 ethnic German residents of Bessarabia were to "return" to the German Reich under a treaty with Hitler. After a brief greeting, they were initially housed in a camp on the Kasernberg in the buildings of the former Pallottine monastery as Freising was only a to be a transit camp for them. On November 8, the fathers and husbands of the children and mothers who had already arrived now came to Freising in horse-drawn carriages with their belongings. At the start of 1941 on January 18, a ceremonial ceremony in the Colosseum Hall took place to present these Bessarabian Germans with their Reich citizenship certificates during which they were made to declare "I am a German! I believe in my people, I believe in their future, I believe in their rights and I stand up for these rights, I stand up for their freedom and thus stand up for their freedom. for a better peace than the peace of the evil and hatred of the past! I believe that! I confess that in the name of my people and the whole world." Marienplatz on the right in 1943 and me today. As the war went on, the supply situation on the home front was becoming increasingly difficult, as raw materials and labour were in short supply with children having to spend their summer holidays in the fields in the Freising area, mostly during the Hallertau hop harvest. The following year the Freisinger Tagblatt reported on June 25  that "[w]hilst last year there were up to 2,600 young people working in the hop harvest, this year there must be around 6,000, as adult labour is now almost entirely lacking... girls are required to go to 5th grade secondary schools, and the boys to go to 4th, 5th and 6th grades." On September 9, the paper began to prepare its readers for the expected hardships of the coming winter under the headline "We are strengthening our armaments industry" to warn of coal, gas and electricity in particular being in short supply. For the first time, the paper now spoke of "total war." A month later the paper found itself forced to appeal against the increasing despondency by pontificating that "anyone who is a decent citizen who goes through the world, or rather through our time, with their eyes open, rejects such nonsense." The Nazis themselves sought to counter the locals' incipient war fatigue with increasing terror with a November 24 article reporting death sentences against food thieves under the headline "Ruthless eradication of the people's pests".

Winterhilfe campaign during the war on Hitlerstraße. The tenth anniversary of the Nazis' "seizure of power" was celebrated with the usual parades and celebrations in front of the war memorial on Marienplatz and in the Colosseum Hall on January 30, 1943 just days before the 6th Army under Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, surrounded by Soviet troops in Stalingrad, surrendered. With only four students remaining in 8th grade, they were transferred to the Ludwigsgymnasium in Munich. That year during the bombing it was reported that "Ludwig Thalhammer from the sixth grade died as an air force helper in the terrorist attack on Munich." At Casablanca the British and Americans had decided on a "Combined Bomber Offensive" against Germany, beginning on June 10. Days later the first special trains arrived in Freising with women and children from the bombed areas who found refuge in the district's communities. With both the Freisinger Tagblatt and the Freisinger Nachrichten having stopped publishing in 1944, information about Freising during the last stages of the war are challenging to find.

 

In 1936 surrounded by Nazi supporters and in front of the Marcushaus   

SA marching past the Marcushaus on March 9, 1933 and an SA man intimidating any thinking of shopping inside the following month. Named after Marcus Lewin who had moved to Freising in 1901 and married Johanna Krell, who owned a department store on Marienplatz in Unteren Hauptstraße 4, together they had a daughter, Hildegard Lewin and established the Krell department store. It was  a large company at the time, employing over twenty workers in what had originally started as a textile store. It eventually expanded its range and after the death of Katharina Krell in 1921, Marcus Lewin ran took over sole control of the company. With the Nazi 'seizure of power' he and his family were immediately targeted. Already in 1933 a businessman protested that a fruit and potato market taking place on Marienplatz would end up benefiting the Krell department store. 

That same year on April 1 SA units took up positions in front of the department store on Marienplatz and in front of other shops run by Jews in Freising as shown here calling on passersby to boycott and held up signs that said: "Buy only in Christian shops as a countermeasure against the Jews' agitation abroad" and Drake Winston in front of the same shop today. Lewin eventually fled Freising in 1936 and moved to Munich. His daughter Hildegard managed to escape to England in 1939. Marcus Lewin had hoped to escape the Nazi terror within the anonymity of a large city, initially renting his department store before selling it far below its value in 1939. The Nazi regime collected the proceeds of the sale. When it was determined in 1942 that he would soon be sent to an extermination camp, Marcus Lewin committed suicide through an overdose of sleeping pills.

According to Sonja Kochendörfer in her master's thesis "Die Zeit der NS-Herrschaft am Beispiel Freisings" Freising's Jewish families were highly respected by their fellow citizens and as it became increasingly harder to shop in the three Jewish shops, some customers ordered the goods by phone and had them delivered to their homes. Such secret deals were evidently widespread, as on August 2, 1938 the Freisinger Tagblatt felt compelled to stir up sentiment against such support for the Jews by declaring that "[s]ince, as we know, not everyone is stupid, there are always people who don't know what to do with ethnic demands, who don't understand that with every mark they spend in a Jewish business, they keep on keeping the Jews."

 The memorial plaque on the side of the building remembers the former Jewish inhabitants who had suffered during the Nazi regime using the usual vague terms such as 'Judenverfolgung'. One name on it belongs to the family of the first Jew who demonstrably established himself here- Isaac Raphael Ignaz Neuburger- where he launched his business in 1881- a factory producing materials and articles of clothing. The business ran well, so that by 1931 the adjacent building was acquired. In 1893 the Neuburgers received Bavarian nationality and on request to Ignaz Neuburger the right of domicile and citizenship of Freising was awarded. The family enjoyed an high reputation in Freising as seen in the condolence letter mayor Bierners wrote upon the death of Ignaz Neuburger in 1928 where he was described as "a splendid, honourable man as well as large benefactor of the municipality and its people."

In 1881 Ignaz Neuburger opened his family-run department store on Bahnhofstraße 4 directly across the road from the Nazi party headquarters from where I took the photo of it today compared to how it appeared before being 'aryanised' and the family sent off to exile and/or death. By the time the photograph on the right was taken Bahnhofstraße was rechristened Horst Wessel Straße.  Ignaz Neuburger and his wife Lina maintained a textile and fashion goods business there with their three children: Alfred, Siegfried and Emma. The Neuburgers were well respected in Freising particularly given their charitable work; Ignaz Neuburger gifted part of the family fortune to the kindergarten or the orphanage. In addition, the family was considered patriotic and had participated contributed to the financing of the town war memorial. After the death of their parents, the three siblings continued the family business. Their clients were mainly farmers from the surrounding area with whom they would share a beer or two in the local pub. This ended under the Nazi regime when Neuburger was called in for questioning because he took female employees with him on work trips, which ended up with him being taken into protective custody because of his "dealing with Aryan employees in public." The Neuburgers' mail was also monitored shortly before they left at the end of 1938 with letters revealing that "they no longer felt safe in their lives". From a seizure order that Siegfried Neuburger had to sign in Dachau, it appears he was sent to the camp there. One of the last official interventions, carried out in Freising, was the forced change of names which led from October onwards to the three Neuburger siblings having to take the names Assur, Sally and Tana.

   

The same building, showing anti-Semitic graffiti (pogromstimmung) on the former shop owned by the Neuburger family. Note how the buildings on either side are unchanged, especially the Hotel Zur Gred.  After the Nazis launched the nationwide campaign of terror against Jews on November 9 known as Kristallnach, the Freisinger Tagblatt described in its pages the "spontaneous demonstrations by the population against the Jews." Two days after it was initiated, it reported how "[t]here were four halls in Freising that could barely hold the masses. The halls in the Stieglbräu, the Kolosseum, the Neuwirt and the Grüner Hof filled up in a few minutes."A large crowd of 3,000 people with signs marched before the house of the Neuburgers and the Holzers and demanded loudly that all Jews in Freising leave. Irma Holzer was humiliated on the street by the crowd, the window panes of the Neuburger department store were smashed in and on the facade as shown here was  scrawled "The Jews must leave. To Palestine". Jewish citizens were publicly pilloried, their businesses smeared and destroyed. The Nazis also drove later Freising mayor Max Lehner, then a lawyer who had represented Jews in court, through the city wearing a sign reading "Judah die." 
The Lewins left, selling their house in 1936 for substantially less than it was worth. Martin Holzer emigrated to Palestine, whilst the Neuburgers remained the longest in the city when their official notice of departure to Munich took place only by October 27, 1939. Neuburger was placed in protective custody for "dealing with Aryan employees in public". By the end of 1938 - shortly before their departure - the post office monitored their letters which revealed how "they no longer felt safe about life". From a seizure order of November 29, 1938, it indicates that Siegfried Neuburger was sent to Dachau. One of the last official indignations the Freising authorities inflicted was the forced change of names- the three Neuburger siblings had to bear the names Assur, Sally and Tana from October 1938 onwards.  The Freising Nazi Party moved into the first and second floors of the property. Freising in the Third Reich Hans Obster took over the "German business". The Neuburgers stayed in Freising the city the longest, only selling their property in May 1939. They eventually fled to Munich, selling their house to the Sparkasse at far below its actual value. Their official deregistration to Munich did not take place until October 27, 1939. Eventually Siegfried, Alfred and Emma Neuburger died in a Nazi massacre of Jews in Kaunas in Lithuania in 1941.

Nearby on the high street, which I found hard to find despite looking out for them, are the so-called 'stumbling blocks' (stolperstein) that mention the fates of Freising's Jewish victims.

The Hotel Zur Gred, shown here during the war with a soldier walking down Horst-Wessel-Straße and today, would host the synagogue of what was left of the Jewish community after the war. The left-wing political group Freisinger Linke has recently applied for a memorial plaque to be placed on its facade to commemorate the postwar Jewish community which, from 1946-1951, had its community rooms and synagogue inside. Survivors of the death camps and death marches founded a Jewish community with its seat in the Gred. According to the history officer of the city council, Guido Hoyer from the communist Die Linke, "[t]here were community rooms and apartments for Jewish families there. The next room to the restaurant on the ground floor served as a synagogue. The maximum number of camp residents was 240 people in August 1947, together with those in Nandlstadt. The leaders of the camp were Gil Eisenberg, Osiacz Kaufstädter and Abraham Szylot. In the camp there was a Jewish elementary school and a Jewish sports club "Hakoach Freising". Guido Hoyer (139) records how, at the end of October 1946, the Jewish Committee moved into the first two floors with its offices on the first floor. In total, fourteen former guest rooms ended up accommodating Jewish families sharing toilets and a single bath. Of the 226 Jews in Freising, only thirty could find employment leaving the rest to depend on welfare. After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947, most of the residents emigrated there.  By June 1949 the synagogue was relocated into the room of a Jewish resident on the first floor. Hoyer goes on to relate how the Jewiish community eventually vacated its offices August 31, 1951 with the last Jewish residents leaving the Gred the same time. In the end, only two of Freising's Jews survived the Holocaust with Hildegard Lewin and Martin Holzer having emigrated from Germany just in time. Both returned to Upper Bavaria after the war, but never returned to Freising. As a result of the restitution and compensation for the Jewish victims, Hildegard Lewin regained her house on Unterer Hauptstraße which she later transferred to her friend Berta Lengger, who then sold it to the city of Freising. 

Another victim of the pogrom was lawyer and future mayor Max Lehner. Although not a Jew, he was forced to wear a sign reading Juda verrecke around the town. He was accused of being Jewish because he represented Jews in court. He later fled to Saxony and in 1940 to France, where he remained until the end of the  war. After his return to Freising he again worked as a lawyer. From 1948 to 1970 he was Mayor of Freising where, among his achievements, include the reconstruction of the city and the founding of the "Freisinger Stadtwerke". In 1970, he resigned as Lord Mayor and died five years later. 

His grave is in St. George cemetery from which entrance it is shown below looking down Ziegelgasse during the Nazi era and today. 

It was from this entrance that the dead, numbering about a hundred civilians wrapped in paper soaked in blood, were first stacked against the cemetery wall. Others lay along the way, poorly covered, and had to be identified first. Here mountaineer Leonhard Kranz found his 16-year-old girlfriend Justine Brandmeier from Eching, who was about to visit him at the Pallotti auxiliary hospital. Seriously wounded having just returned from Russia, he discovered from her brother in the late afternoon that she had not come home. He then dragged himself to the station square and finally to the city cemetery, where he only recognised his dead girlfriend by her Sunday dirndl, which she had liked to wear on special occasions. She had gone to the hairdresser and the station kiosk on her train journey to Freising and was at the Evangelical Church at the moment when the bombs hit.

According to the list of the bodies meticulously collected by the Munich criminal police, who began investigating in Freising the next day which went so far as to describe the victims' nutritional status, 260 had been killed. However, because the corpses were completely charred or dismembered it will never be properly ascertained.

A handicapped farm labourer named Hofmann from Mintraching had been ordered to collect the corpses in Freising, towing a military trailer, on which soldiers had piled around twenty corpses, to the Neustift cemetery with his Schlueter Bulldog. There the dead were placed in rough coffins and stacked, three on top of each other, in specially dug room-high mass graves.  

Burial of prisoner of war at the cemetery attended by a detachment of other PoWs from the same country led by a German guard giving the final escort.

 

 Memorial to ethnic Germans forced out of the Sudetenland after the war shown during its inauguration on October 28, 2000 by District Council President Franz Jungwirth after unknown perpetrators scrawled the slogan "Shit Germany - German are perpetrators, not victims" just before and with Drake Winston years later. It was deliberately decided not to remove the smear to supposedly serve as a reminder against intolerance towards displaced persons before ending the ceremony with the a brass band playing the Egerländer Marsch. The memorial, created by Sudeten-born Manfred Kozel and seemingly hidden away, is located on the site of the former "Alter Kindergarten Refugee Camp" set up at a time when a defeated Germany was confronted with the task of taking in about 12 million people displaced from its eastern and Sudeten German homeland.

On August 10, 1950 the Isar Post would reported that many of these refugees would participate in a large rally in Marienplatz: "Thousands of expellees protested last Sunday in Freising in the marketplace against the signing of the Potsdam Agreement, which resulted in the expulsion of millions of Germans from their homeland."

The kindergarten at Ignaz-Günther-Straße 13 which was originally established in 1937 by the Nazis as the NS-Kindergarten Neustift and remains Freising's oldest municipal facility for children

Already by 1934 a quarter of Freising's high school students were organised within a variety of Nazi institutions. The number was limited given that students from the boys' seminary and the Pallotti house were forbidden to join them; in revenge the Nazis would later turn both into a prison during the war. The "internal transformation of the new German school in the spirit of the new Germany" led to students spending less time in schools; one day a month had to be devoted to hiking, and the number of gymnastics lessons was increased to five periods per week limiting academic lessons to the mornings. The upper grades would later see the manadatory hiking day devoted to pre-military training in the field including, from 1935, shooting lessons. The Domberg's Headmaster Karl Enzinger tried in vain for a long time to protect himself against the constant disruptions in teaching and the over-stressing of his students due to the double burden of school and Hitler Youth service as shown in a circular dated May 7, 1935 to the teachers of religion, history and geography which admitted that "[t]he heavy demands placed on the students by the Hitler Youth make it necessary to reduce the amount of knowledge to the essential level, to relieve them of all the extras in favour of intellectual training." On June 15, 1937 the Nazis held a "parents' vote" in Freising on the introduction of the German elementary school which a week later, at the request of the Freising district leader, was aproved by the government of Upper Bavaria.

The war memorial in front of the St. Peter und Paul church in Neustift shown after the war and today.  Inaugurated in May 1923, the design was by master stonemason Joseph Franz and his brother, the sculptor Johannes Franz. The church itself dates back to when Bishop Otto von Freising built the Premonstratensian Monastery of Neustift in 1142 in front of Freising's gates. In 1634 the Swedes reduced the old monastery to rubble and ashes. Between 1700 and 1722, the Freising court mason Johann Jakob Mafiol built a church in the baroque style under the supervision of the famous Antonio Viscardi only for it to again fall victim to a devastating fire in 1751. In the course of the secularisation of 1803 the monastery beside it was dissolved and used as a barracks until 1905, then as a cloth factory. The monastery complex, which a prelate is said to have said was a “magnificent barracks”, was immediately taken over by the Bavarian military. Almost all of the Premonstratensians received positions as pastors. Until 1905, Neustift was used as a barracks without any major structural changes. Its economic importance was so great that the village was incorporated into the city of Freising as compensation for the relocation of the garrison.

The Bürgerturm when it was used by the Hitlerjugend during the war. I'd been stuck inside for an hour one morning when the proprietor locked up without knowing we were upstairs at the time. It was built around 1350 as part of the mediæval city fortifications. The tower is first mentioned in a tax book from the year 1528, bearing the name Stadtturn (city tower). The name Burgers Turm has been known since 1693. The tower was initially built as an open-topped defence tower but it wasn't until the 18th century that it received its tent roof, which is still in place today. From the 16th century the Bürgerturm is known to have been inhabited. From 1693 to 1750 the tower was used as a gunpowder store and then as a gaol and later as a poor house. Due to the poor condition of the tower, the city magistrate decided on August 21, 1913 that the tower was no longer inhabitable, but ruled out selling or demolishing it. From 1914 Freising's fire brigade then used the building to dry its fire hoses. During the Third Reich meetings of the Hitler Youth took place there. After being used by various youth groups in the years after the Second World War, who also renovated the tower, the Bund Naturschutz in Bayern rented the premises in 1977, moving out in 1990.

Prinz Arnulf-kaserne in 1914 on the left and from my street exactly 100 years later. 

Later renamed the General von Stein Kaserne der Bundeswehr, today it's known as the Vimy kaserne, named after the immortal Canadian victory over the Germans during the Great War. It still bears on its façade these plaques indicating its involvement in the First World War as seen on the left; the 1st Jäger Battalion went into the field in 1914 with 1,086 men, eventually losing 1,319 men. The 1st Reserve Jaeger Battalion went into the field with 1,066 men losing 1,113 men and the cycling company of the 1st Jäger Battalion (later the 3rd Cycling Battalion) moved into the field with 123 men, eventually losing 228 men. The street was given its name by the Nazi authorities in 1938. It was here that ϟϟ-Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann, holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, wasassigned to the 19. Infantry Regiment for two years. Heinrich Himmler also attended military training in 1918 here, writing to his family in nearby Landshut:

The Freising course is getting more and more rotten and strict: oh well, we’ll make a reasonable job of it, even if we’re not brilliant.

It was also here that Otto Wächter completed his German military service in 1935 where he was completing his military service at the Dachau concentration camp. Wächter would later serve as Governor of the district of Kraków in the General Government and then of the District of Galici before being appointed in 1944 as head of the German Military Administration in the puppet state of the Republic of Salò in Italy. During the last two months of the war, he was responsible for the non-German forces at the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin, dying in Rome in 1949 after an extrardinary flight from the Allies as outlined in Philippe Sands's outstanding The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive.

The barracks survived the war without damage, and the American army moved in. I live in the flats across the road built for America GIs; the area outside still has the North American maple trees planted during this time. In May 1966 the barracks were handed over to the German army. The site administration and the 31st Air Force Signals Regiment were stationed here, and later the 24th Radar Command Department. After the end of the Cold War and the department had moved to the General von Stein barracks, the Vimy barracks were closed in 1993; the German army is shown on the right officially vacating the premises with Drake Winston at the site today where it serves as a residential area for private flats. The road entering into the complex, Major-Braun-Weg, is named after Major Alois Braun, head of the Freisinger Panzer Replacement Division 17. It now holds the state archives, conveniently enough for me from across the street.

Next door to the Vimy kaserne is the Pallotti House, taken over by the Nazis in 1939 for its "political unreliability." The suburbanisation has made then-and-now comparisons from the period problematic; my son's school, Josef-Hofmiller-Gymnasium which dates from 1960, is directly across from it. The community of the Pallottines came to Freising in 1919 and their first seminar building was the former Philippsschloss (previously used by the Hofbrauhaus Freising) on the Domberg.  In the late 1920s, encouraged by the director of the clerical seminar, Johannes Schauer, and Freising Mayor Stephan Bierner, the community decided to build a new building on the Wehrberg on the northern outskirts of the city. The building complex was consecrated on September 14, 1930 by the Munich Archbishop Cardinal Faulhaber and its first rector was Father Albert Eise. Soon after the Nazis took power, the missionary order became the target of their attempts at intimidation and "coordination". In January 1935 Father Viktor Gallmann, a religion and sports teacher at the Pallottines' school for late vocations, had to give up his teaching post due to "political unreliability" after having been accused of speaking in a sermon of the Catholic Church as an international and not a national organisation. It took the intervention of the head of the Freising police station was necessary to refute the accusations. In 1939, the entire building was confiscated by the Nazis who established a teacher training centre at the site, and a military hospital in the later years of the war. The church served as a garrison church for the neighbouring Vimy barracks.  After the war, Prelate Michael Höck and the Munich Auxiliary Bishop Johannes Neuhäusler revived community life. In the seminar building, a boarding school was established, which existed until 1988 and most recently also served as an archiepiscopal boys' seminar of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. Today, the Pallotti House houses an education and therapy centre and its garden and secondhand book shop is my personal favourite place in Freising. Albert Eise, the Pallotti House's first rector, was born on January 7, 1896 in the Swabian town of Oeffingen. After the First World War he joined the Pallotti, completed his novitiate at Limburg and was ordained a priest in 1925. In 1936 in connection with the December issue of monthly magazine "Queen of the Apostles" for which he served as editor, he fell for the first time in conflict with the Gestapo. He was accused of promulgating in the issue "remarks which were likely to cause unrest and an erroneous impression about the German armaments in the reader." Other versions were referred to as "spiteful attacks on party and state". From the start of the war his rejection of the Nazis increasingly grew until he was finally arrested on August 4, 1941 by the Gestapo. He had spoken at a public meeting "in the sense of an enemy of the state". On November 14 he was sent to Dachau concentration camp. Due to the tortures of the camp and poor medical care Father Albert Eise died on September 3, 1942. This plaque inside commemorates him.

Another remaining army barracks is the General-von-Stein-Kaserne, built in 1936-37 as part of the upgrade of the Armed Forces on Mainburgerstraße. It was first named the Artilleriekaserne as the Artillerieregiment 7 was first stationed here and later renamed after Hermann Freiherr von Stein, a Bavarian General of Artillery in the First World War. From 1939 the Fahrersatzabteilung 7 was based here followed, from 1942 until the end of the war, again by the Artillerie-Regiments 7. After the war it served the USAAF; from 1948 to 1957 it was the home of the 604th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron. After the end of the Cold War the last military user was the radar guidance department 24 which had originally arrived from the Vimy barracks in 1993. In 2004 the association was dissolved as part of the restructuring of the Bundeswehr and the barracks closed as a military base whilst the radar station near Haindlfing has since been operated by a detached unit. In 2010 the site was converted into a residential area known as Steinpark and all surrounding buildings were demolished. In December 2020, a Covid-19 vaccination centre for the district of Freising was set up in the staff building where I got my jabs, allowing me the opportunity to have a look around inside.

The III Abteilung des Artillerieregiments 7 on Hitlerstraße moving on its way to the new barracks on the right. Behind is the Fürtnerbrau which, although flying Nazi flags along with the the others, was the SPD local.

 The Nazi eagle that graced the entrance of the only remaining example of the architecture of the Nazi era in Freising has been removed, but its round base sans swastika remains.

The stele and the stone with the roughly chiseled swastika covered apparently with concrete have been preserved; nothing is known about the whereabouts of the eagle which was removed by order of the first two city commanders of the American occupation of Freising, Captain Trevor Moore and Captain Albert Snow, soon after the city was taken on April 29, 1945. Across the street on Sighardstrasse social housing estates built immediately after the war can still be found.

In the 1997 book Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was asked in an interview with Peter Seewald, before the local boy and former Hitlerjugend became Pope Benedict, to address the question of whether he was ever in the Hitler Youth.

At first we weren’t, but when the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young, but later as a seminarian, I was registered in the Hitler Youth. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back. And that was difficult because the tuition reduction, which I really needed, was tied to proof of attendance at the Hitler Youth.

Both brothers were ordained in Freising on June 29, 1951; the photo of their ordination is often found cropped online to depict him making the Hitler salute. Ratzinger is shown top-right on Freising Dom as Archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977-1982.
Pope Benedict XVI's arms incorporate the Coat of arms of the Prince-Bishopric of Freising and the seal of Freising (right). Both the bear and the head represent St. Corbinianus, a 7^th century bishop of Freising.

Leading up to the cathedral

The Cathedral during the Nazi era and now. For centuries the history of the town has been inseparable from that of the "mons doctus", as the Cathedral Hill is known. The cathedral high school, the archbishop's boys' seminary, the priest's seminary and the teacher training college on the cathedral hill have given Freising the reputation of an intellectual and spiritual centre. Catholic youth associations in Freising were banned under the Nazis. The first high point of the persecution was the verdict against the director of the Archbishop's Boys' Seminary, Josef Roßberger. In June 1933, he opposed the new Reich government for the first time concerning the German Journeymen's Day in Munich which the Nazis first banned only to then allow it under various conditions. Although Roßberger believed Hitler stood for order and security against Bolshevism, he increasingly criticised the actions of the party's lower leaders. In his opinion, the party is interfering too much in private affairs with such measures. Eventually by

January 12, 1934, was sentenced to eight months in prison by a Munich court because he had repeatedly criticised the new regime and Hitler to his prefects and students. 

Apparently there had been a judensau in the cathedral until 1921 depicting Jews sucking from the teets of a pig. According to Hoyer, in February 1942 Der Stürmer asked the mayor of Freising for a photo of the sculpture to use its magazine but by then it no longer existed. The exterior of the Freising Cathedral, which was spared from destruction during the war, was given its current appearance in 1960-1970 during a renovation work that greatly affected the existing building. I had earlier read that the inscription attached to the fifteenth century Judensau in the choir read: “Sowahr die Maus die Katz nit frisst, wird der Jud kein wahrer Christ” (as much as the mouse does not eat the cat, the Jew won’t become a true Christian). This, according to Joachim Sighart, came from the relief of the cathedral dean Konrad Tölknar who died in 1397 which originally was located in the choir of the Benedictus Church near the high altar but now can be found on the south side of the cloister. Such an inscription Kaltenstadler (55-56) argues refers not to Jews in general but to the supposed Jewish past of Tölkner himself. In fact, in all probability such an inscription never existed in any event.

From a Nazi era postcard and today. Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1917 to 1952, played a significant role in shaping the Church’s response to Nazi policies. His opposition to Nazism began early, notably during the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch which he refused to support. Faulhaber’s sermons and writings consistently denounced Nazi ideology, particularly its totalitarianism, neopaganism, and racial doctrines. In 1933, he issued a pastoral letter condemning the Nazi persecution of Jews, stating that “racial hatred is unchristian and incompatible with the Catholic faith” which was reflected in only 20% of Freising’s Catholic majority voting for the Nazis in 1933, compared to the national 33%. The Reichskonkordat, signed on July 20, 1933, between the Vatican and Germany, aimed to secure Catholic autonomy but was breached immediately. Catholic youth groups in Freising were dissolved by 1934, with members coerced into the Hitler Youth. By 1935, minor diocesan properties were seized, though the cathedral and library on the Domberg remained functional. The Freising Cathedral Library, holding 40,000 manuscripts, restricted access for clergy suspected of anti-Nazi activities. Father Johann Maier was arrested in 1936 for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets and imprisoned in Dachau until 1938. Faulhaber’s resistance intensified with the papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in 1937, accusing the Nazis of hostility to the Church. On March 22, 1937, the Gestapo raided Domberg offices, confiscating 2,000 copies of the encyclical. Faulhaber’s residence faced surveillance, and a mob attacked it on November 12, 1938, after his sermon condemning Kristallnacht. He preached on December 3, 1933, at St Mary’s Cathedral, stating, “The Church cannot accept a state elevating race above morality.” Father Rupert Mayer, visiting Freising, was arrested in 1937. Father Alfred Delp held secret resistance meetings in the cathedral library in 1941 but was arrested in 1944 and executed on February 2, 1945. Twelve Freising priests were sent to Dachau, with 15% of clergy interrogated or arrested.  Nazi policies targeted Catholic influence in Freising. The Münchener Katholische Kirchenzeitung’s circulation dropped from 10,000 to 3,000 by 1936. The Dom-Gymnasium resisted Nazi curriculum changes until its headmaster, Father Joseph Steidle, was dismissed in 1939. The Catholic People’s Association, with 1,200 members, was disbanded in 1933. St Mary’s Cathedral maintained Masses, with 10,000 annual pilgrims visiting St Corbinian’s relics.  Jewish persecution intersected with the Church’s activities. The Marcushaus, a Jewish-owned building, was confiscated during Kristallnacht in 1938, and its owner, Marcus Lewin, died in Dachau in 1940. Faulhaber condemned the pogrom on November 13, 1938, stating, “The destruction of Jewish property is an affront to justice.” The diocese issued 47 false baptismal certificates to Jews, and the Diocesan Museum stored 200 Jewish artefacts until 1945. Faulhaber’s letter against the T4 euthanasia programme, read in August 1941 in St Mary’s Cathedral, sparked 200 local protests. The Fulda Conference in 1942, attended by Faulhaber, avoided public condemnation of Jewish persecution due to Reichskonkordat constraints.  

The war brought further pressure. In 1941, the Gestapo seized a Domberg building, though the cathedral remained under Church control. The Dom-Gymnasium’s enrolment fell from 300 in 1933 to 120 by 1944. In 1944, the cathedral hosted a secret ordination of 12 priests. On April 30, 1945, Allied bombing damaged the prince-bishops’ residence, costing 50,000 Reichsmarks to repair, with the cathedral sustaining minor damage. The diocese recorded 23 clergy deaths, 15 from Nazi persecution. The Domberg’s institutions resumed full operations by October 1945, with 5,000 museum visitors that year.

 The square in front of the cathedral with the 1857 statue of Otto of Freising, Bishop and historian of the Second Crusade, best remembered for Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus and the Gesta Friderici Imperatoris. Visiting the site, Heinrich Himmler wrote in his diary on February 21, 1915 of his visit to Freising: 

[Sunday: "... then we drove to Freising. Gebhard and I were allowed to accompany Dad and Mum. We took the tram to the train station. "Before dinner, we visited the parish church and walked around town. ... ... On the Domberg is the high school and a seminary. It is an ancient cultural site.]

Inside the crypt containing the tomb of St. Corbinian, the patron saint of the bishopric. In the centre of this crypt is the so-called Bestiensäule (column of beasts), carved out of stone in the high Middle Ages. Crafted around 1160, it portrays strange figures including knights battling dragons. It was considered very valuable even when it was created, since its design requires the highest level of sculpting ability. It's the only German example of this type and what is particularly striking that on three sides men in knight's armour are fighting beasts that resemble crocodiles but are supposed to represent dragons. On the east side of the Beast Column is a picture of a beautiful woman who, untroubled by the beasts, awaits the light from the east - the light that Christ brings as the Redeemer. The photo on the right is the cloister shown during the NS-zeit and today. The crypt remained a site of pilgrimage, with 10,000 visitors annually between 1933 and 1945, despite Nazi restrictions on religious gatherings.

The former Knabenseminar, (now the Dombergmuseum) was converted by the Nazis into a military hospital for foreign officers during the war. A small chapel on the southern slope of the Domberg and a neighbouring building were destroyed in the air bombing. One former seminarian from the Domberg is now recognised as a member of the German resistance. Born in Milbertshofen, Wilhelm Pfluger attended the Ludwigsgymnasium in Munich until 1921 before spending five years at the Freising Gymnasium. After graduating from high school, he was admitted to the seminary here, becoming an ordained a priest in Freising Cathedral on June 29, 1932. Early on he became an active member of a group opposed to the Nazi regime and his negative attitude towards the Nazis soon got him into trouble. Already during his time as a chaplain in Töging in 1934 he received summonses before the Altötting district office for pulpit offenses. The Gestapo in Munich and Berlin warned him twice without questioning him. In 1935 he received a summons before the district administrator in Starnberg, where he was also warned.

These summonses and warnings continued at his subsequent offices in Innzell and Goldach, but did not change his behaviour in any way. His activities for young people in particular were a thorn in the side of the Nazi authorities. Finally on August 16, 1939, Pastor Pfluger was arrested in his Goldach vicarage and taken to the Wittelsbacher Palais, the Gestapo headquarters in Munich. He was placed in protective custody in Neudeck gaol and not released until December 2, 1940. Although back in office in Goldach in December 1940, he was now under constant observation by the Nazis. From 1941 to the end of the war he was not allowed to work at school, which he ignored. Despite urgent admonitions from the Gestapo and the professorship, he immediately began to get back in touch with like-minded people whilst ignoring the ban on preaching. He was arrested again by the police from November 7-15, 1942 for refusing to give the Hitler salute. He was sent to Dachau on January 9, 1945 where he spent the rest of the war before the Americans liberated the camp.

 

The Christi-Himmelfahrt Evangelical Church after the bombing of April 18, 1945 and today following the plans of the Günzburger architect Julius Ott. It was consecrated May 22, 1952. The memorial in front marks the 200 who were killed in the bombing, forty of whom were parishioners of this church.

The railway station before the war and today. It was on the platform where I took this photograph that eighteen girls from the Bund deutscher Mädchen were standing during the April 18 bombing of Freising, but according to Ernst Keller, a local historian from Neufahrn, "nothing was found of them, and to this day we don't know where they came from."

The railway station immediately after having been bombed, provisionally cleared up, and now. Until shortly before the end of the war, the town had not been directly affected by the war. Since there was hardly any war-important industry and there was a military hospital for foreign officers on the Domberg, it was considered safe from bombing by the population and the authorities. The April 18 air raid killing 224 people was the only significant such attack, and the the target of the 61 Boeing B-17s was the station. The area around the station with the factories of Steinecker and Schlueter was the most affected. The Church of the Ascension was also destroyed; the area around Wörth and the area around Kochbäckergasse were hit harder. A small chapel on the Dombergsüdhang and a building on the Domberg were also destroyed.

On the left, Brunnhausgasse after the April 18, 1945 bombing and me at the site today.

 The 401st Bomb Group (BG) of the 8th USAAF took off at 8.50 from its base airport in Deenethorpe, Northamptonshire and landed there again at 18.53. The approach from England took place via Belgium and France. At 12.36 they reached German territory. From Trier it went via Stuttgart and the Allgäu to the northern edge of the Alps. From the Inn Valley north of the Wilden Kaiser Mountains, they finally flew to the first destination, Traunstein. There the marshalling yard and above all the Wegscheid electrical substation were to be attacked, which was supposed to supply Hitler's Berghof above Berchtesgaden with electricity. After a cloud cover came up, only the "High Squadron" could carry out a bombardment visually. Nine planes under the command of the bombardier 1st Lt. Armond Biasella dropped 161 bombs with more following later. 

After this action, flight commander Colonel Romig from Ohio gave the order at 14.34 to attack the secondary target- the marshalling yard here in Freising as well as probably the Schlueter iron foundry and Steinecker machine works. The mission report notes a dropping of 356 GP 250 pound M57 bombs by twenty B 17 Flying Fortresses, the standard American air raid bomb type with "head impact fuse" Four bombs got stuck in the ejection chute. All bombs were high-explosive bombs. No flak fire was registered and the 401st Bomb Group's entire Mission 252 was over in ten hours. The incendiary bombs were reserved for the 457th Bomber Group consisting of the 748th to 751st bomber squadron with a total of 29 machines of the type B 17.

Damage caused by shrapnel from the bombing

Their base airport was in Glatton, a former RAF station north of London whose squad leader was Captain Franklin C. Rollins. An aircraft of the 751st Bomber Squadron, "A/C 44-8557" piloted by William I. Thistle, was destroyed during its flight to the targets of Traunstein and Freising, its last mission. With regard to the escort in Freising, the report only notes that it was "appropriate". There was no enemy contact.

Remaining bomb damage 

 

And so at exactly 14.53 and 30 seconds, Lead Bombardier Captain Harry Meadville gave the command to Group A to drop the bombs. The lead aircraft was piloted by Captain Edward W. Coleman, seated beside whom as co-pilot and flight commander was Colonel Eugene Romig. The lead squadron belonging to the 401st bomber group was comprised originally of thirty B 17 bombers, which in the course of the war formed the 94th Bombing wing. The flight recording in the "Report of Operational Day Mission No. 252” notes “BOMBS AWAY – Freising”. The action only lasted a minute.  Plane 43-38646 flown by 1st Lt. Viehman had been reported lost after anti-aircraft fire on the northern edge of the Alps. With the other two squadrons of Group A, led by 1st Lts. John Gerber and Jerald Hart, together they flew in three waves in the well-known V formation, each with one lead aircraft. They were both staggered in height and offset laterally. The spacing of the bombers in a squadron was fifty feet. When the bombs were dropped on Freising, the lead squadron was at an altitude of 18,300 feet whilst the other at 17,500 feet. According to the subsequent mission report, as the Group approached the primary they found it obscured by broken cloud and the Lead and Low Squadrons could not see the target for visual bombing, choosing instead to bomb the secondary target which was the marshalling yards at Freising "with good results. The clouds were drifting and this enabled the High Squadron to get a visual correction on their PPF run at the last moment. They hit the target, which was an excellent result under the conditions they found over the target area."

The damage was considerable. According to surveys by the Bavarian State Statistical Office carried out as early as July 1945, nineteen houses, eighty apartments, thirteen farm buildings, 22 industrial and commercial buildings and the Protestant church were totally destroyed. Damage ranged from five to 100 % from a total of 189 buildings or structures, including the train station with track systems, the signal boxes, the Reichsbahn and Reichspost offices, the Schlueter iron foundry, the Steinecker machine works, the power plant, the army catering office, the Vinzentinum, the Ottmann, Hirschböck and Huss warehouses, the Datterer printing works and many more. There were three major damage zones: the station district, the Wörth and the Obere Graben comprising of Kochbäckergasse and Stieglbräugasse. Widespread fires broke out in the areas affected by the attack. 

 Only a few traces of this quarter of an hour in Freising's history can still be found today. One is the bridge railing on the Schleifermoosach near the Altöttinger chapel, which was partially dented and riddled with holes from bomb splinters shown here. The wartime scars on the bridge are still left untouched shown above, and remembered by an inscription across bahnhofstrasse. On around fifteen gravestones in town and surrounding area are found inscriptions with references to the bomb victims.

Looking at the bridge before the war towards cathedral hill from Mohrenbrücke.

The remains of the entrances to air raid shelters below the Lindenkeller. 

Other public air-raid shelters were found in beer cellars such as the Laubenbräukeller on Marienplatz, the Schwarzkeller on Obere Domberggase 15, the cellar in the old Hofbräuhaus on the Domberg, the Schweinhammerkeller in Vöttinger Straße, the cellar in the police station on Haydstraße, the Gößweinkeller on Mainburgerstraße 2, the Urbankeller on Altenhauser Straße 2, and a shelter in the Weihenstephan University. Each was staffed with one auxiliary policeman and and one air-raid warden. Further shelters were found in the Ratskeller on Marienplatz (now Franziskus Bar), the Keller in the Bahnpostamt, the Pfarrhofkeller in Lernerfeld, the Furtnerkeller in Wippenhauserstraße and the Schutzraum in the Hofbräuhauskeller. The overall command post was housed in the Sporrerkellern from 1941 here under the Lindenkeller; the emergency generators are still visible there today. 

From March 1942 Allied air attacks began on Munich leading to these air raid bunkers being regularly used until the end of the war.

The provisional graves of the victims have been replaced, and today a memorial at the Waldfriedhof commemorates Germans from the lost territories from which volksdeutsch were expelled after the war.     

Directly across is this grave- possibly the oldest at the Waldfriedhof. The last word etched upon it is 'Auschwitz' and it commemorates siblings Bärbel and Joschi Pohl, victims of the Nazis' genocide of the Sinti and Roma. The Pohl family had lived as Lutherans in Pankow in the north of Berlin. Bärbel served an apprenticeship as a dressmaker whilst Joschi worked as a page in Berlin's famous luxury hotel, the Adlon at the Brandenburg Gate. In October 1942 the two, aged 15 and 16, were picked up by the ϟϟ and taken to concentration camps. Bärbel was deported to Auschwitz and shot there in 1945. Joschi Pohl was sent from 1942 to November 1944 to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg near Berlin and then taken to Auschwitz. On January 25, 1945, two days before the liberation of the extermination camp by the Red Army, he was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp from where, on May 1, 1945 he managed to escape. On February 26, 1948 he died in Freising hospital (where my son was born) through the consequences of ill-treatment, hunger and imprisonment.

On April 29, 1945 at 18.00 the Isarbrücke was blown up; its current incarnation after it was rebuilt in a slightly modified form in 1948 seen from Korbinianbrücke on the right. That morning, the Americans advanced from the Ampertal towards Freising.By the early afternoon, the northern part of Freising was particularly affected by artillery. Some businessmen, including Dettenhofer, the owner of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, tried to persuade the city commander to surrender. They had hoisted the white flag on the church tower of the parish church of St. Georg, which had to be brought up again. A second attempt by Dettenhofers to get the commandant to work in his command post was unsuccessful because he feared the ϟϟ in the city. Since the American troops had now reached the outskirts, Dettenhofer went to them with the mayor and the pastor of St. Georg. They reached a cease-fire in order to be able to negotiate the handover of the city. An American officer escorted her back to the command post. The ϟϟ had since left and the commander agreed to hand over the city. At around 18.00, the Korbinian Bridge over the Isar was blown up by the ϟϟ to hinder the American advance. The next day, a pontoon bridge was built, but with a few exceptions, it was initially only allowed to be used by the military. Within five days, a wooden footbridge was built at the blown-up bridge and by June 2 a bridge from Freising companies that could be used by heavier vehicles was built.

  

The Americans advancing down Hitlerstraße after crossing. On the 29th at 13.45 the alarm was given and Freisingers ran to their cellars and air raid bunkers. Shortly afterwards from the Ampertal grenades were fired into the city. At 17:30 the first American units reached the Wieskirche; already by noon the last regular German troops had withdrawn from Freising towards the south, leaving only 160 men of the Freising volkssturm between Neustift and Hozgartenstrasse. It was only by around 18:30 that the town commander gave them the order to retreat given that the Americans were already on the main street as shown in the photo above. By 19:15 they now occupied the town centre from Thalhauser straße and Wippenhauserstrasse. It had been the decisive act of Karl Dettenhofer, the former owner of the Bayerischer Hof hotel that Freising was handed over without a fight. After Dettenofer was told by the city commander that "surrender is out of the question", he summarily approached the Americans accompanied by pastor Albert Brey and Alois Schwarz who drove (being the only one of them with a license) with a white flag on the bonnet. Moving towards the enemy lines they asked the commanding American officer to come with them to the remaining German defenders under the Lindenkeller from where the city commander finally signed the order for capitulation. 

 Looking towards Weihenstephan hill with Drake Winston trying out his new kite today. Weihenstephan served as a significant site for agricultural and brewing research during the Third Reich, from 1933 to 1945. The Weihenstephan brewery, established in 1040, and the associated scientific institute, formalised as the Technische Hochschule München's agricultural faculty, became key components of Nazi agricultural policy. The regime prioritised food self-sufficiency, or autarky, and Weihenstephan's research was redirected to support this goal. By 1933, the institute employed 120 staff, including thirty academic researchers, and its output included advancements in barley cultivation and yeast fermentation, critical for beer production and food supply. The brewery produced 25,000 hectolitres annually, supplying both civilian and military markets. Nazi authorities appointed Wilhelm Wetzel, a plant breeding specialist, as director in 1934, aligning research with state directives. Wetzel's work focused on developing high-yield barley strains, increasing output by 15% by 1938. Student enrolment grew from 200 in 1933 to 350 by 1940, with courses emphasising practical applications for wartime agriculture.  The park beside the Hochschule Weihenstephan in 1937. Faculty members were required to join the Nazi Party or affiliated organisations, such as the National Socialist Teachers' League. By 1935, 85% of Weihenstephan's academic staff, including Wetzel, were party members. Non-compliant professors, such as botanist Karl Müller, were dismissed in 1934 for refusing to pledge loyalty. Müller's research on hop genetics was halted, and his position was filled by Hans Becker, a party loyalist. The curriculum was revised to incorporate Nazi ideology, with courses on racial science introduced in 1936, taught by guest lecturers from the SS-Ahnenerbe. These lectures, attended by 80% of students, promoted pseudoscientific theories about Aryan agricultural superiority. Research projects were vetted by the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture, which allocated 1.2 million Reichsmarks to Weihenstephan between 1933 and 1939. Funding prioritised projects like soil enhancement, with experiments conducted on 50 hectares of local farmland, yielding a 20% increase in crop productivity by 1941. On the left, Nazi flags hanging from the Akademischer Hof and today.   

From 1939, the institute supplied barley and yeast to military canteens, producing 10,000 tonnes of barley annually by 1942. The brewery's output was rationed, with 60% allocated to the Wehrmacht. Research on fermentation efficiency, led by chemist Friedrich Schäfer, reduced production costs by 12% between 1940 and 1943. Schäfer's team developed a yeast strain, W-34, still used in brewing today. The institute also trained agricultural officers for occupied territories, with 150 graduates deployed to Ukraine by 1943 to oversee grain requisitions. These officers implemented policies that extracted 4 million tonnes of grain from Ukraine in 1942 alone, under the Hunger Plan, which aimed to starve Soviet populations. Weihenstephan's involvement in these policies was documented in reports to the Reich Ministry, with Wetzel noting in 1942 that "our research ensures the Reich's sustenance." The institute's facilities were expanded in 1941, with a new laboratory funded by 500,000 Reichsmarks from the Reich Research Council, increasing research capacity by 30%. Forced labour was integrated into Weihenstephan's operations. By 1942, 200 prisoners of war, primarily from Poland and Ukraine, were employed in its fields and brewery. These workers, housed in barracks near Freising, harvested 70% of the institute's barley crop in 1943. Labour conditions were harsh, with daily rations limited to 1,500 calories, as recorded in SS inspection reports. The use of forced labour increased output by 25% compared to pre-war levels, enabling the brewery to meet military demands. Local resistance was minimal, though in 1944, a sabotage incident damaged fermentation vats, reducing production by 5% for three months. The perpetrators, suspected to be forced labourers, were executed by the Gestapo. Weihenstephan's administrative records, preserved in the Bavarian State Archives, detail these operations, including a 1943 report listing 15 worker deaths due to malnutrition. The institute's leadership, including Wetzel, faced no post-war repercussions for these practices, as their work was deemed scientific rather than political.  The impact of Nazi policies on Weihenstephan's academic community was profound. Jewish researchers, such as biochemist Heinrich Rosenthal, were expelled in 1933 under the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. Rosenthal, who had published 12 papers on yeast metabolism, emigrated to the United States. By 1938, the institute had lost 10% of its pre-1933 staff due to purges or emigration. Replacement hires, such as agronomist Paul Fischer, were selected for party loyalty rather than expertise, slowing research progress in some areas. Fischer's 1940 study on wheat yields, for example, was criticised in internal reviews for methodological flaws, delaying implementation by two years. The Braustuberl Weihenstephan flying the Nazi flag and on my birthday.  Student life was militarised, with mandatory participation in the SA or Hitler Youth for those under 25. By 1941, 90% of male students were conscripted, reducing enrolment to 150. Women, previously excluded, were admitted in 1942, comprising 20% of students by 1944, though their training focused on auxiliary roles. The institute's library was purged of 1,200 books deemed "un-German" in 1937, including works by Jewish scientists, limiting access to pre-1933 research.  Weihenstephan's infrastructure sustained minor damage during the war. In 1944, Allied bombing raids on Freising destroyed 5% of the institute's buildings, including a storage facility containing 2,000 tonnes of grain. Reconstruction began in 1945, funded by 200,000 Reichsmarks from the Bavarian government. The brewery continued operations, producing 15,000 hectolitres in 1945 despite shortages. Post-war denazification removed Wetzel from his post in 1946, though he was reinstated in 1948 after a tribunal classified him as a "follower" rather than an active Nazi. The institute's research was reoriented towards civilian applications, with barley yields returning to pre-war levels by 1950. The legacy of Weihenstephan's wartime activities was addressed in a 1998 report by historian Anna Müller, commissioned by the Technical University of Munich, which documented the institute's complicity in Nazi policies. Müller noted that "Weihenstephan's scientific contributions were inseparable from the regime's objectives." The report cited 300 archival documents, including Wetzel's correspondence with the Reich Ministry, as evidence. On the right an American GI stands in front of what is now the Technische Universität München with Drake Winston today. Several hundred Americans began studying here from August 12, 1945. In a brochure for the American occupying forces, it praised the facilities here claiming to "have envied similar institutions in the United States." By May 5, 1946, 72 agricultural and 77 brewery students enrolled on the 'Náhrberg' even if the teaching staff was still limited to three professors- Joseph Spann, Hans Raum, and Anton Fehr who had survived the denazification process. The broader context of Weihenstephan's activities reveals its alignment with Nazi economic priorities. The regime's Four-Year Plan, launched in 1936, aimed to increase agricultural output by 30% by 1940. Weihenstephan's research on crop rotation, led by agronomist Josef Klein, contributed to this goal, with trials on 100 hectares yielding a 22% increase in wheat production by 1939. Klein's work was published in the Reich Agricultural Journal, reaching 5,000 subscribers. The institute also collaborated with IG Farben, testing chemical fertilisers on 20 hectares in 1940, which boosted yields by 18% but caused soil degradation, reducing fertility by 10% by 1945. These experiments were overseen by chemist Ludwig Schmidt, who reported directly to the Reich Ministry. The institute's wartime publications, numbering 150 between 1939 and 1945, focused on practical applications, with 80% addressing food security. The Nazi emphasis on Blut und Boden ideology shaped research priorities, with projects like hop cultivation, led by Becker, framed as preserving Bavarian heritage. Becker's 1941 study claimed a 15% improvement in hop quality, though post-war analysis found no significant change.  Weihenstephan's role in training personnel for the Nazi administration extended beyond agriculture. By 1943, the institute offered courses on colonial agriculture, preparing 50 students for roles in planned settlements in eastern Europe. These courses, taught by SS officer Wilhelm Braun, included plans for 200,000 hectares of farmland in Poland, never realised due to military setbacks. Braun's lectures, attended by 100 students, cited Himmler's 1942 directive to "secure the east for German blood." The institute's involvement in these plans was detailed in a 1943 report to the Reich Colonial Office, preserved in the Federal Archives. Post-war, these activities were downplayed, with the institute claiming its work was purely scientific. However, a 2005 study by historian Peter Lang found that 60% of Weihenstephan's wartime research directly supported Nazi objectives. Lang's analysis of 500 documents showed that funding, personnel, and output were tightly controlled by the regime, with Wetzel meeting Reich officials 20 times between 1933 and 1945.  

 Men of the 94th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron being accommodated at Weihenstephaner Str. 3 in 1945 and Drake Winston at the location today. The institute's complicity in human experimentation emerged in post-war investigations. In 1944, Weihenstephan supplied yeast samples to Dachau concentration camp, where SS doctor Sigmund Rascher conducted malnutrition studies on 50 prisoners. These experiments, documented in a 1945 Allied report, resulted in 30 deaths. Weihenstephan's involvement was limited to providing materials, with no staff directly participating, though Wetzel approved the transfer in a 1944 memo. The institute's records also show collaboration with the Luftwaffe, testing high-altitude barley strains in 1942, with trials conducted at 3,000 metres in the Alps. These strains, developed by botanist Maria Weber, increased yields by 10% in mountainous regions, aiding military outposts. Weber's work was cited in a 1943 Luftwaffe report as "vital to the war effort." The institute's wartime output included 50 patents, 40% related to military applications, filed with the Reich Patent Office between 1939 and 1945.  The transition to peacetime was marked by continuity rather than rupture. By 1946, 70% of Weihenstephan's pre-war staff remained, with only 10% facing denazification trials. The brewery resumed civilian production, reaching 20,000 hectolitres in 1947. Research refocused on rebuilding Bavaria's agriculture, with studies on soil recovery, led by agronomist Hans Müller, increasing fertility by 15% by 1952. Müller's work was funded by 300,000 Deutsche Marks from the Marshall Plan. The institute's wartime legacy was largely unaddressed until the 1998 Müller report, which prompted the Technical University of Munich to issue a formal apology. The report estimated that 80% of Weihenstephan's wartime funding, totalling 2.5 million Reichsmarks, came from Nazi sources. The institute's archives, opened to researchers in 2000, contain 10,000 documents from 1933 to 1945, providing evidence of its role in the Third Reich. 

 What passes for Weihenstephan's war memorial in a disused lot. In her book Operation Paperclip, Annie Jacobsen writes how, because of heavy bomb damage in Munich the Luftwaffe’s test facility for its inhuman medical experiments  had been moved out to a dairy farm here in the rural village of Weihenstephan. SHAEF, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, sent war crimes investigators into the field to locate German doctors with the purpose of interrogating them. One of these investigators was Dr. Alexander, at the time tending to wounded war veterans at a military hospital in England, travelled to this farm where he interrogated George August Weltz, a German radiologist and head of the Munich Institute for Aviation Medicine. At the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, he was charged for his participation in human experiments in the Dachau concentration camp , but was acquitted in 1947.

An inspection of the farm revealed a state-of-the-art low-pressure chamber concealed in a barn. This, Weltz explained, was where Luftwaffe pilots learned performance limits under medical supervision. Also called a high-altitude chamber, the apparatus allowed aviation doctors to simulate the effects of high altitude on the body. But the rewarming facilities were nowhere to be seen. Where were they? Dr. Alexander asked. Weltz hesitated and then explained. They’d been moved, Weltz said—this time to an estate near Freising, at a government-owned experimental agricultural station. Dr. Alexander insisted on seeing the Freising facility, and the two men got back into the army jeep and drove on. In Freising, Alexander was shown yet another impressive medical research facility, also hidden in a barn, complete with a library and X-ray facilities, all meticulously preserved. But the laboratory was clearly designed to handle experiments on small animals, mice and guinea pigs, not larger animals like cows, horses, and adult pigs. There were records, drawings, and charts 110of the freezing experiments—all carefully preserved. But, again, they chronicled experiments on small animals, mostly mice. Where had the large animal experiments taken place? Weltz took Alexander to the rear of the barn, behind a stable and into a separate shed located far in the back of the property.

There Weltz pointed to two dirty wooden tubs, both cracked. It was an extraordinary moment, Dr. Alexander would later testify, horrifying in its clarity. Neither of the tubs could possibly fit a submerged cow, horse, or large pig. What these tubs “could fit was a human being,” Dr. Alexander said. The grim reality of Dr. Weltz’s Luftwaffe research became painfully clear. “I came away from all these interviews with the distinct conviction that experimental studies on human beings, either by members of this group themselves, or by other workers well known to and affiliated [with] the members of this group, had been performed but were being concealed,” Dr. Alexander wrote. 

Eventually the low-pressure chamber from Georg Weltz’s research facility at Freising, near the Munich dairy farm, was brought to Heidelberg. This was the laboratory where Dr. Leo Alexander had experienced his revelation that Nazi doctors had been freezing people to death."The photograph on the right shows the Freising chamber being installed in a corner of the institute. The caption reads, “[T]he low pressure chamber... was moved to Heidelberg from the Munich Institute of Aviation Medicine at Freising.”

 DP Camp Freising on the left, the period photo from a collection found at this website. In the right is a period photograph of the main office of the Jewish DP community in Freising at Captain Snow (formerly Adolf Hitler) straße 10, the second building on the left, and the site today.

Freising today: The town is just covered in extremist vandalism with the authorities absolutely refusing to do anything about it despite contacting the highest levels of the municipal authorities. I posted this on Facebook on the anniversary of the liberation of Dachau Facebook April 29 and sent it to the Freisinger rathaus, the local paper etc. to no response.

I then emailed the mayor and stadtverwaltung a week later on June 6: 

After four students from my school painted swastikas over the course of the year, I was at the Max Mannheimer House in Dachau last month to educate my 10th graders on what such symbols of genocide represent. Here in Freising, on the other hand, there seems to be no problem at all with openly displayed Nazi symbols - Mayor Eschenbacher, I have been walking past these swastikas and SS runes for over two months; my son - he is 13, born and raised in Freising and considers himself a full-fledged German, although I fear he is clearly not Caucasian - has lived most of his life in a city covered on both sides with menacing extremist graffiti that is now on my own property. I took these photos two MONTHS ago and they are still there. The swastika is right next to the Jehovah's Witnesses church. Just 30 kilometers away in Dachau, over 100 of them were murdered and another 32 were killed with poison gas at Hartheim Castle. I thought this should be taught in all German schools; it should definitely be on the curriculum and all students in Bavaria are required by law to visit Dachau or Flossenbürg. Maybe I'm just sensitive because my family from both sides of the Atlantic helped liberate Europe from Nazism/Fascism and I've lived through a rise in anti-Semitism and a return to the age of extremes of the 1930s, where authorities across the West are simply too cowardly to stand up for values ​​I took for granted as a child. But I've sent messages to the town hall on Facebook and the local newspaper but have received no response, even though under Article 86a of this country's criminal code, public display of these symbols is illegal. It's a crime to leave them there. Allowing Antifa to destroy property at will does not help the situation and the hammer and sickle should be offensive to all Germans given the history of the GDR. May I therefore ask the city through you to either remove these symbols immediately or have me ask my students to do so. I must warn, however, that some of them are Americans and this will not go down well in their homeland. Thank you for your patience. I am writing to you directly because I know you feel the same way I do.

I was apparently wrong so I then emailed the locations of such visible symbols (Freising is a small town) and felt I had to explain the significance of the symbols to children and prove to them that Nazi symbols are banned in Germany:

 

 

 It took three MONTHS of emails until I finally threatened to bring my students to remove it all ourselves, warning them that a few are British and American and they would alert people back home about how much the politicans here really feel about the threat of extremism, that they felt they had little choice but to act- but only removing specific symbols whilst leaving everything else covered in hammers and sickles and antifa grafitti. In fact, so thoughtlessly did they take their legal responsibilty (forget moral) to remove Nazi iconography that they literally painted directly over swastikas and SS runes as shown here so that they are still discernible! Indeed the banned celtic cross is now highlighted in neon green for even greater visual impact!

Continue on to areas in kreis Freising including Moosburg