Freising under the Swastika

Freising

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. My home since 2010, most of the information I couold 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 1 and 2 the Soviet Republic was brutally suppressed.

Freising during the Depression- Freisingers queuing up at the high street tobacconist's.

   

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

  

Fischergasse in the 1930s and today. Fischergasse is, as Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl noted in his 1866 essay on Freising, the only historic street that refers to a trade.

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 and "uninterrupted, sometimes very spirited speech" through whih 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."

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.

1933 saw the replacement of mayor Stephan Bierner, who had been in that office for more than thirty years, with Nazi Gottlieb Schwemmer. 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 was not a National Socialist, but always a German first.

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).

Renamed Horst-Wessel-Straße during the Nazi era, the äußere Heiliggeistgasse in the 1930s and today on the left, and photo on the right from around 1870 showing the former Münchner Gate which had been emblazoned with the arms of Freising. The neo-Romanesque Altöttinger chapel on the right is still there.

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 Heinrich 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. Citizens and clergymen initially hung 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.  

Marienplatz in 1943 and today

The main street lined with swastikas

 
The Fürstbischöfliches Lyceum in 1933 on Untere Hauptstrasee directly across Marienplatz.

 

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 benefittng the Krell department store. That same year 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." 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.

 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 ."

 

 

 

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.

 

 

  On the other side is clearly shown a Hitler Youth drummer. My son took my photo from the entrance of the former Hotel Zur Gred shown below during Kristallnacht and today. 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".

 

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 very 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.

   

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 Gred.

On November 10, 1938 the second large, publicly organised action against the Jewish community took place against in Freising after four large meetings including those organised by the Nazi Ortsgruppe in the Kolosseum and the owner of the Stieglbräu as well as at the Neuwirt and at the Grünen Hof. 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.

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 Hofmnn 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. 

 

 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 report 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."

Neustift's kloster when it served as a military barracks and today and the kindergarten which was originally established in 1937 by the Nazis as the NS-Kindergarten Neustift.

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.

SA marching down my street- Prinz-Ludwig-Straße and looking from the other direction-  the 7. Infanterie-Division and 19. Infanterie-Regiment marching down the same road on May 1, 1939. 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.

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 facade 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.

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 the 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. Its first rector was Father Albert Eise. 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 left. 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 (Wohnungsbau) built immediately after the war can still be found.

On the base of Mary's column on Marienplatz is a reference (incongruously in German rather than Latin) to local boy and former Hitlerjugend Pope Benedict's 2006 visit when he was made an honorary citizen.

In the 1997 book Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was asked in an interview With Peter Seewald 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. Apparently there had been a judensau in the cathedral until 1921. 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). The exterior of the Freising Cathedral, which was spared from destruction during the Second World War, was given its current appearance in 1960-1970 during a renovation work that greatly affected the existing building.

 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 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. In 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.

     

Men of the 94th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron being accommodated at Weihenstephaner Str. 3 in 1945 and Drake Winston at the location today.

 

Looking towards Weihenstephan hill In 1904 with Drake Winston trying out his new kite today, and the park beside the Hochschule Weihenstephan in 1937

The Braustuberl Weihenstephan flying the Nazi flag and on my birthday. On the right an American GI stands in front of what is now the Technische Universität München at supposedly the oldest brewery in the world- Weihenstephan.

  

Nazi flags hanging from the Akademischer Hof and today

 What passes for Weihenstephan's war memorial in a disused lot

 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.

Top: Nazis on Marienplatz during the Third Reich, and Neo-Nazis commemorating the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Freising at the same location, as they do every April 18. 

Bottom: Neo-Nazis at the same site on March 13, 2011 over seventy years later; looks like the handful of members hurried out of their car to take the picture at 3 in the morning... One weekend I was stopped by a nice group of National Socialists on the bridge in town over the Isar and given this brochure against foreigners such as myself. My Chinese wife, a bit further back, wasn't offered one. Difficult to see in the image are the dashed borders within those of Poland and Czech Republic denoting the land Germany "lost" (including the Sudetenland) after the war and which, presumably, this group has still not accepted.

Continue on to Moosburg