Remaining Nazi Sites in Passau and Straubing

Straubing

Straubing was one of the first Bavarian cities that experienced by the November revolution at the end of the First World War. On November 8, 1918, a demonstration train liberated prisoners. Already on the afternoon of November 9 a workers 'and soldiers' council had formed, in the evening a council of citizens.
 Between 1933 and 1945 most of the members of the then small Jewish community of Straubing were murdered or forced to emigrate; today its Jewish community numbers just under a thousand. Otto Straz, murdered in March 1933, was the first Jewish victim of Nazi rule in Germany. At the November pogrom, the Synagogue of the Jewish Community in Wittelsbacherstrasse was devastated by SA men. A memorial plaque at the memorial for the victims of the wars in the Pulverturm, the victims of forced labour, commemorates the 43 Jewish inhabitants who fell victim to the Holocaust within the cemetery of St. Peter.

The town before the war and after looking from the east towards the old town showing the church of St. Peter, St. Peter school and the Schlachthof, now serving as an art gallery. Hitler delivered a speech entitled "Der Weg zur Freiheit" at the former Kronensaal on Wednesday April 11, 1928 from 20.00 to 23.00 here in Straubing. According to the subsequent police report, it was attended by roughly 1,200 people and was headed by Nazi city councillor Hanns Oberlindober who was apparently an effective public speaker, becoming a Reichsredner for the party after 1928 and was elected to the Reichstag in the breakthrough election of September 1930. At that time he was also named to head the newly formed section in the national party directorate dealing with disabled veterans. The meeting had originally been set for March 15, 1928 but had to be postponed due to Hitler's illness. 

Himmler too spoke here June 4, 1925, attacking the Dawes Plan, the 1924 adjustment by the Germans and the Allies of the reparations imposed by the Versailles Treaty, in his speech "The Freemasons’ Lodge as a Tool of the Jews."  

After the war Göring's wife Emmy, together with her niece, sister, and their nurse Christa Gormanns were incarcerated in Straubing's gaol, and his daughter Edda was put in an orphanage. Since the end of the 19th century, this has been largest Bavarian penitentiary; by the end of the 20th century, the Bavarian Correctional Academy and an institution for forensic psychiatry were added. Today, offenders with prison sentences of more than five years are housed in the Straubing prison. The former prison doctor during during the Nazi era, Theodor Viernstein, considered that "enemies of the race, enemies of society" had to be removed from the chain of heredity as fast as possible. His successor, Hans Trunk, actually proposed to have up to a third of the prison’s inmates sterilised, a figure considered too high even by the local Hereditary Health Court. As Richard J. Evans writes 

It was hardly surprising that prisoners were over-represented amongst the compulsorily sterilised, with nearly 5,400 subjected to this procedure by December 1939. It was equally unsurprising that the threat of a vasectomy or hysterectomy spread fear amongst prison inmates, who often told each other the correct answers to the intelligence tests administered by the doctors and learned them off by heart.

Großdeutschlandplatz as seen in Nazi-era postcards and today.  On April 7, 1933, Straubing's municipal council was dissolved, and Mayor Josef Schlicht, a member of the Bayerische Volkspartei, was replaced by Nazi member Hans Zier, who held the position until 1945. By mid-1933, over fifty local Social Democrats and Communists, including trade unionist Franz Xaver Huber, were detained in the Straubing prison, with twelve recorded deaths due to maltreatment by 1935. The town's Jewish community, numbering 72 in 1933, faced immediate economic boycotts. Jewish-owned businesses, such as the Stern department store on Ludwigsplatz, were targeted by SA members on April 1, 1933, leading to their eventual liquidation by 1938. The local authorities in Straubing weren't mere puppets of the central Nazi government but played an active role in implementing the policies of the Third Reich. Gauleiter Wächtler and Gauamtsleiter Erbersdobler, for instance, were instrumental in propagating Nazi ideology in Straubing. Their speeches at the rally in Großdeutschlandplatz in June 1940 weren't isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern of local authorities actively participating in the dissemination of Nazi policies. By the end of the regime's rule, its social impact on Straubing was profound, with the regime's policies eroding traditional Bavarian values. The Hitlerjugend, with 4,900 members by 1944, enforced ideological indoctrination, requiring youths to attend weekly drills. In 1943 forty parents, including farmer Hans Gruber, were fined 300 Reichsmarks for withholding children from participation, indicating a reluctant compliance. The Straubinger Tagblatt amplified war propaganda, reporting exaggerated victories like the 1942 "capture" of Sevastopol" whilst suppressing news of 1,500 local deaths on the Eastern Front. The Catholic Church's role evolved, with Bishop Buchberger issuing a 1943 letter endorsing the war as a "holy struggle," though privately help to shelter Jewish children in Straubing convents whilst Father Karl Weiss was arrested in  1944 for criticising deportations. That year 200 residents attended an illegal prayer meeting led by laywoman Anna Mueller, defying Gestapo surveillance. There were other examples of minor acts of resistance, such as the 1940 defacement of Nazi posters by anonymous youths, which required twenty SA members to patrol Theresienplatz for a week. The Gestapo's presence, established in Straubing in 1934 with a staff of ten, maintained surveillance over the population, recording 120 arrests for political offences between 1933 and 1939. 

The publishing house at Ludwigsplatz 32 where the anti-Nazi Straubinger Tagblatt was eventually closed down by the Nazi regime. Both its publisher Georg Huber Sr. and his son Georg Huber Jr. refused to join the party or any of its organisations or to give the Hitler salute. After Alfons Putz became the the new Nazi district leader in June 1934, he wanted to make the building a Nazi printing centre, replacing the Straubinger Tagblatt with the Nazi newspaper "Bavarian Ostwacht" or "Bavarian Ostmark". On May 29, 1935 Huber Sr., who had been denounced for anti-Nazi statements, was taken into 'protective custody.' That same day the Nazis had organised a rally against the Straubinger Tagblatt in the main square which was then banned for two days. By September that year it finally closed for "political unreliability" and Huber was finally excluded from the Reich Association of German Publishers for the same reason. He thus lost the right to work as a publisher and was left to hand over the business to his son Dr. Georg Huber. The company had about seventy employees at this time with the paper enjoying a circulation of over 12,000. Given that Georg Huber married the Swiss Elsy Wipf, daughter of a packaging entrepreneur from Zurich, a complete Nazi takeover of the "Straubinger Tagblatt" was prevented leading to a compromise - a presumably unique case in Nazi press policy - the "Verlag Straubinger Tagblatt GmbH" was founded, which accounted for 55% of the Nazi-owned Phönix Zeitungsverlag GmbH with Huber owning the rest. The content of the Straubinger Tagblatt was now the same, but thanks to the loyalty of its readers and its continued extensive local reporting it continued to hold its own against their Nazi press competitors- the Bavarian Ostmark printed their last edition in October 1939.

The paper did however describe how the "Swastika flags waved over the city as banners of victory" during the 1938 commemoration of the failed Hitler putsch in 1923. The sixteen putschists were glorified as "martyrs of the movement" in the crowded Kronensaal on Großdeutschlandplatz where the wife and baby Drake Winston are shown towards the stadturm and Tibertiusbrunnen and during a rally in June 1940, when Straubing held its Kriegskreistag, with some 20,000 people gathering at Großdeutschlandplatz, the name given to Ludwigsplatz in 1938 after the annexation of Austria. In the main speech, district leader Alfons Putz also emphasised that only a few hours earlier the German legation secretary, von Rath, died in Paris, "hit by a Jewish criminal's bullet." The Nazis took advantage of this assassination and initiated the Night of Broken Glass. After the celebration in the Kronensaal many Nazis met in pubs such as the Café Alfons on Innere Passauer Straße. After a phone call Putz ordered them all to come to the district management at Rennbahnstraße 1 from where, as well as from the office of the NSKK (National Socialist Driver Corps) on the corner of Stadtgraben and Flurlgasse, individual squads were sent out targeting Jewish citizens such as businessman Leopold Stein, then just under 24 years old, who lived on Ludwigsplatz.

His business and apartment can be seen in the GIF on the left with the several small awnings as it appeared in 1935 and when I visited August 2022. He ended up left unrecognisable during Kristallnacht with the Nazi thugs going so far as to cut off a finger. One detective had to admit before the arbitration board that Stein "had bled profusely".  Even non-Jewish property was damaged, including the private bank Gerhaher on Innere Passauer Straße and at the flat of bank manager Andreas Tremmel on Krankenhausgasse. As an aside, in July 1940, the Donau-Zeitung reported that Putz, had flown toward France and not returned.   

The Straubinger Tagblatt's commercial printing and publishing continued despite Nazi harassment such as the confiscation of machinery and cars, monitoring of mail and telephone, reduction of paper and gasoline allocations, whilst several other local newspapers were shut down under the pretext of wartime reasons by the Nazis. Thus, in the autumn of 1944, 80% of private newspapers from before 1933 had disappeared. The last issue of Straubinger Tagblatt in the Third Reich appeared on April 18, 1945; the heavy air raid that hit Straubing that day disrupting the supply of electricity, water and gas.

The arms used in the top-left canton on the reverse of the Straubing Deutschland Erwache standard reflects the change made in 1923 by the Nazis to remove the French influence shown in the fleur-de-lis, which were added in the 18th century. The arms have since been restored officially, but the spitaltor dating from 1628 shows the version favoured by the Nazis.
The two pages shown are from Deutschland Erwache - The History and Development of the Nazi Party and the “Germany Awake” Standards.

The Hans-Schemm-Schule, named after the founder of the National Socialist Teachers' Federation in 1927 and today, renamed St. Jakobsschule. Schemm built the organisation under guiding principles that were clearly anti-democratic, anti-Semitic and anti-Communist, as seen in a number of his quotations as when he proclaimed how "[w]e are not objective – we are German!" and declared "that a Jew should dangle from every lamppost." In 1928, he became a member of the Bavarian Landtag. Schemm has been described by Thomas Childers (119) as "perhaps the most skilled and dynamic of Franconia's Nazi leaders."  Schemm also took on the role of publicist in the late 1920s when for a brief period he took over the leadership of several Nazi newspapers such as Streiter, Weckruf and Nationale Zeitung before founding his own newspaper in April 1929; in August of that year he launched the Nationalsozialistische Lehrerzeitung, the National Socialist Teachers League's (NSLB) journalistic organ. On October 1, 1930 came the first edition of the weekly newspaper Kampf für deutsche Freiheit und Kultur ("Struggle for German Freedom and Culture"), which was published by Schemm, and whose circulation rose from 3,000 in the beginning to 20,000 by 1932.  

In April 1933 Schemm arrived in Passau to attend the laying of the corner stone for the Hall of the Nibelungs where he also spoke at a mass rally; Passau too subsequently honoured Schemm by dedicating a street and a school to him. In March 1935 Schemm was seriously injured in an aircraft crash. Although Hitler personally ordered Berlin Professor Ferdinand Sauerbruch to fly to Bayreuth, Schemm, however, succumbed to his injuries on March 5 before the professor's arrival.

Rosengasse then and now. Embedded in a wall on the right is the inscription in Hebrew shown below with Drake Winston, a duplicate of what is now in the town museum. Roughly translated, it reads

The crown of our race fell with the death of our father Rabbi Azariah, the son of Jose, who stepped into another world on the eve of Shabbat, the 26th, the month of Iyar, the 88th.  

 In 1933 there were 110 Jewish residents in the town. Immediately after the Nazi takeover of power, Straubing's Jewish population faced various acts of violence. In his book Hitler and Nazism, Dick Geary writes specifically how "[i]n Straubing Nazi excesses against local Jews ended in murder." For example, less than two months after Hitler's appointment as chancellor, Otto Selz, a Jewish cattle and goods trader, was dragged out of the house by several men, driven towards Leiblfing and, after torture, shot in a forest near Soplterstein on March 15. He is considered the first of Straubing's Jews to have been murdered by the Nazis. After the body was found and then dissected, it was brought to Straubing and buried two days later in the Jewish cemetery in Regensburg. Eight months later, the Nazis broke into the murdered man's house, hoisted the Nazi flag and chased away the administrator and the economic manager. The search for the murderers was initially thoroughly engaged by the police and public prosecutor's offices in 1933, but was quickly stopped from above, especially by the Bavarian political police. After 1945 efforts were made to investigate again, but this was complicated by the long period of time and the disappearance or death of several suspects. The motive for the murder was clearly seen in the conflict between Otto Selz and Julius Streicher, Nazi Gauleiter of Franconia and editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer. In August 1933, Jews were banned from bathing in the Danube.
 At least ten of the town's Jews emigrated outside the country over the next few years whilst eleven moved to other places in Germany. During Kristallnacht in 1938, the interior of the synagogue, shown below, and a Jewish shoe shop was looted. Of the thirty local Jews who remained in April 1942, 21 were deported to Piaski near Lublin and murdered, five were deported in September 1942 and one in February 1945 was sent to Theresienstadt. Today eight stolpersteine can be found at Wittelsbacherstraße 11 and 12, two at Bahnhofstrasse 11, two at Oberen Bachstrasse 12, and four at Oberen Bachstrasse 14, the former address of Otto Selz. While it's difficult to make sweeping generalisations, the sizeable attendance at the 1940 rally in Großdeutschlandplatz suggests a level of complicity among the local populace. This is not to say that the entire population was in agreement with the Nazi policies, but the public actions and events indicate a disturbing willingness to conform. This lends some credence to Goldhagen's controversial thesis that ordinary Germans were "willing executioners," although this view has been criticised for its lack of nuance and overgeneralisation.

Standing in front of the synagogue today and in 1945 when German women were forced to clean the synagogue through the orders of American soldier Joseph Eaton which after it had been desecrated by their relatives on Reichskristallnacht before posing in front. It had been inaugurated in 1907 by the district rabbi of Regensburg, Dr. Meyer. Hofrat von Leistner, a representative the royal government of Lower Bavaria, used the occasion to convey the warmest congratulations on behalf of the government, the city administration as well as the entire citizens and residents. Straubing's mayor then handed over to Dr. Meyer the key to open the synagogue. Then the whole festival assembly, in which the representatives of the Catholic and Protestant churches, the military and state authorities and municipal colleges took part, went to the new synagogue, where Rabbi Dr. Meyer gave the speech. In the evening there was a festive dinner with a concert. This shows the radical change that took place under the Nazis. The synagogue only managed to survive Reichskristallnacht out of fear of any conflagration affecting the neighbouring buildings. The petrol for setting the fire had apparently already been provided by the ϟϟ, but the commander of the city fire department raised objections that the surrounding houses and the old people's home opposite would be damaged. So whilst the interior was completely destroyed, the building itself was preserved. After the end of the war, a box was handed over to the police containing the Torah scrolls, candlesticks and ritual objects. It is unknown which of the ϟϟ men secretly brought the items to safety and kept them during the war.

Max and Julie Loose's fashion and department store at Ludwigsplatz 21. In 1917 the Loose couple was able to purchase the building with Julie Loose managing the the Julius Rosenthal company together with her husband until his death on July 1, 1936. She then sold the building to the Gewerbebank, today's Volksbank, and closed the business at the end of the year. She then moved to Munich where she was sent to the notorious barracks camp in Milbertshofen where she was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on July 29, 1942. She would die there on April 7, 1944; a card sent by Swiss friends on June 9 “[t]o Julie Loose, Bahnhofstrasse 3, Theresienstadt. Protectorate of Bohemia” – was actually sent back to the sender with the note “deceased 7.4.1944”.  Her son Franz, who had studied medicine, and daughter Fanny, together with her husband Walter Frank, managed to emigrate to the United States.

On May 13, 1887, the Jewish merchant Emanuel Schwarzhaupt acquired this property at Ludwigsplatz 6 and opened, as a branch of his Regensburg company, a department store for women's clothing. Three years later his son Karl, born in Regensburg, moved to Straubing and entered the business. In 1919 the family, who had previously lived in the commercial building on Ludwigsplatz, moved to Obere Bachstraße 12, the house next door to the Jewish cattle and goods dealer Otto Selz. From 1924 Max Levite, husband of daughter Irma, supported Karl Schwarzhaupt in the management of the company.

On March 15, 1933, the Schwarzhaupt couple experienced the cruelty of the new Nazi regime rulers first-hand when Selz was taken out of bed early in the morning, kidnapped, abused and shot on Dreifaltigkeitsberg near Weng.

The Schwarzhaupts soon felt the fanatical anti-Semitism in their business, too. The photo from 1933 shown right has survived, presumably from April 1, when the Nazis called for a boycott of Jewish shops throughout Germany, in which SA men can be recognised intimidating prospective customers in front of the shop door. According to Geary (74), "[i]n Straubing Nazi excesses against local Jews ended in murder. Partly to control such uncoordinated violence, the regime organised a boycott of Jewish businesses for April 1, 1933, although this seems to have had little success with the German public at large."

Despite occasional attempts at intimidation by the Nazis, the population remained loyal to their well-known department stores by and large. However, Levite, who had been the sole managing director since 1935, recognised the threat and in April 1938, the Munich merchant Ludwig Hafner took over the business; by November 1940, the “Hafner & Co” company acquired the entire property from Karl Schwarzhaupt, who had meanwhile moved to Munich with his wife. The actual purchase price was immediately confiscated by the Nazis. Mohaus Hafner is still in business and openly celebrates having taken over the business eight decades earlier on its webpage (Der Hafner - seit 80 Jahren in Straubing). In mid-October 1941, Karl and his mother Emma were interned in Munich and finally moved to the barracks camp on Knorrstrasse. On June 18, 1942, they were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto from where Karl Schwarzhaupt died on January 20, 1943 and his mother on March 8, 1944. Granddaughter Lieselotte Levite, who became Louise when she arrived in the United States, described her grandparents as "wonderful, good , good people who have never done anything to anyone!! ... Tears come to our eyes when we think of how they had to suffer in Theresienstadt, where my grandfather died of 'natural causes' [starved to death]. We learned that my grandmother was killed in a crematorium in Theresienstadt.”

The Jewish community's destruction was nearly complete by 1943, with only three individuals remaining in hiding, aided by local farmer Maria Huber, who was later executed in 1944 for her actions. 

Straubing's integration into the Nazi war machine intensified after 1939, as the town became a hub for military logistics and production. The local airfield, constructed in 1937, was upgraded in 1941 to accommodate Luftwaffe training units, with 300 pilots stationed there by 1943. The airfield's expansion displaced 120 farmers, whose land was confiscated without compensation, a policy emblematic of the regime's disregard for rural communities. The Straubing prison, repurposed in 1940 as a transit camp, held 1,500 political prisoners and forced labourers en route to Dachau, with 200 deaths recorded due to overcrowding by 1944. The regime's ideological campaigns persisted, with the Hitlerjugend expanding to 4,200 members in Straubing by 1942, enforcing mandatory participation for youths aged 10 to 18. Such militarisation of youth ensured generational loyalty, although there were isolated instances of non-compliance, such as the 1943 expulsion of 30 boys for refusing to salute the Nazi flag. The Straubinger Tagblatt continued to shape public opinion, printing 10,000 copies daily by 1941, with editor Mueller praising the war effort while censoring reports of local casualties, which totalled 1,200 Straubing soldiers by 1945.  The regime's grip tightened as the war progressed, with Straubing's infrastructure increasingly devoted to military efforts.  The town's railway station, expanded in 1940, facilitated the transport of 5,000 troops monthly to the Eastern Front by 1942. Forced labour became integral, with 2,100 foreign workers, mainly Ukrainians, employed in local industries by 1944, producing munitions and textiles. Straubing's economy depended heavily on this exploited workforce, with 30% of local output tied to military contracts. The human cost was noticeable, such as the 1943 death of 45 Polish labourers in a factory explosion, which was suppressed by the Straubinger Tagblatt. The Catholic Church's role evolved, with Bishop Michael Buchberger of Regensburg, who oversaw Straubing's diocese, issuing a 1941 pastoral letter urging loyalty to the state, though privately expressing unease about deportations. By 1945, Straubing's population had swelled to 28,000 due to refugees, straining resources and exacerbating tensions. The final issue of the Straubinger Tagblatt, published on 18 April 1945, reported an air raid that killed 62 civilians, marking the collapse of Nazi authority as American forces approached.  In 1944 and 1945 Straubing suffered from several American air raids during which time the local military hospital was destroyed to the extent of eighty percent with a loss of 45 patients. In three heavy American air raids on the Straubing railroad at least 400 people were killed, and extensive destruction in the urban area was established. Most of the historic buildings survived the bombings undamaged however. By 1945, Straubing's population had risen to 44,000 due to refugees, straining food supplies to 1,100 daily bread rations. The final Allied air raid onApril 18, 1945, killing 52, marked the regime's collapse, as American troops entered on April 27, ending Nazi control.

On April 28, 1945 at around noon, the Americans took the city without a fight after it had been bombed with over 500 tonnes of explosives. On the afternoon the next day Wallersdorf, an hour away, was peacefully handed over to the American units. Straubing had been the target of five air raids, the heaviest of which occurred on April 18, 1945 when 460 people were killed and 29% of the buildings were damaged including the Protestant church on Bahnhofstrasse and the Catholic cemetery church of St. Michael. After the war 14,000 refugees were temporarily housed; by 1950 there were still 6,997 displaced persons out of a population of 36,147. Just ten days later American tanks arrived from the west via Regensburger Strasse, marking the end of the war for Straubing. Almost 2,000 its citizens lost their lives or were missing; around fifty Jewish fellow citizens - half of Straubing's pre-war community - did not survive deportation and concentration camps.

On April 28, 1945 the ϟϟ blew up the Schloßbrücke Straubing over the Danube to retard the allies' advance. It was rebuilt between 1946 and 1949, being inaugurated by Bishop Michael Buchberger on December 27, 1949.

 Overlooking the Danube and towards the bridge is this reichsadler, created by Munich sculptor Fritz Schmoll, also known as Eisenwerth. He was commissioned by the Deggendorf cultural building authority to produce a "sculpture (national eagle) in Danube limestone for the bastion of the Straubing pumping station at a price of 10,000 RM". Schmoll carved an eagle that weighed seven tonnes, at 2.90 metres in height and 1.75 metres in width, signed “FSgE” and the dates “1941/42”. In 1936, Straubing started building water protection measures with the help of the Water Management Office, building the pumping station on Gscheiderbrückl. From 1938, members of the Reich Labour Service, prisoners of war and Deggendorf workers built the dikes and dams along the Moosmühlbach and the Danube with the pumping station and the so-called "Bastion"  to form a flood protection wall. After it was completed in 1940, a so-called "bastion" was built, consisting of a roundel with a diameter of 12.60 metres. In addition, a high pillar with a swastika relief and a magnificent Nazi eagle, which was supposed to show the greatness of the Nazi state, was to be erected on it. However, since the construction work on the bastion and the pillar had to be stopped in the middle of the war due to a lack of workers and building materials and was finally stopped altogether in 1943. The rondel was already finished, but the granite pillar with a base area of ​​1.83 by 1.50 metres was only 2.33 metres high. The sculpture survived the war first in Munich, then in the building yard of the water management office in Vogelau. The figure was only remembered nine years after the end of the war when, on the morning of December 28, 1954, the pillar with the eagle was erected, the swastika removed of course, under the supervision of the then police commandant and- remarkably- the American occupation forces. Police commander Peter Bauer – a social democrat who was dismissed from the city police service in 1933 because of his political views and was appointed chief of police by the Americans at the end of the war – was directly involved in its construction, as were the municipal building department under Franz Xaver Feichtmeyer and the American occupying forces led by Major Cheney Engr. and CWO Lawson who directed departments with German specialists. The heavy blocks of stone were transported from the courtyard of the Water Management Office where they had been stored for years, to the location with a ten-tonne tow truck. A part of the enclosing wall was torn down there to enable the crane to enter the interior of the bastion. With a five-tonne crane on an eight-tonne truck, drivers Karl Biederer and Günther Dünnebier lifted it piece by piece as shown here and, with the assistance of numerous experts, placed it on the podium. After several hours of work, the eagle stood in its intended place and cast its gaze menacingly into the distance, as befits a Nibelung eagle.” The eagle now was described as no longer to be regarded as a Nazi symbol of power, but rather as a "Nibelung eagle" and "stone portrait worth seeing". Nevertheless the bastion with the eagle is not only a lookout point for walkers, but serves to remind of the dark history of Germany through remaining traces of evil.

Standing behind the monument with the limestone relief directly behind me depicting a ploughing farmer inscribed with "1941" by the Munich artist Johann Peter Vogl (or Hans Vogl).

Nearby is the so-called Agnes-Bernauer-Turm, seen here in a Nazi-era postcard from 1941 and today. It was a fortified tower making up the city fortifications, probably built in 1477 and attached to the city wall to the east and south. The tower is named after Agnes Bernauer, the mistress and perhaps also the first wife of the Bavarian Duke Albrecht III. This connection, which did not befit his status, brought Albrecht into conflict with his father, Duke Ernst of Bavaria-Munich, who had Agnes Bernauer drowned in the Danube in 1435. In the 19th century the legend spread that Bernauer was imprisoned in this tower resulting in its depiction in numerous engravings and lithographs, on postcards and posters. On the 500th anniversary of Bernauer's death in 1935, the local Nazi district culture warden Eugen Hubrich, who had already written open -air plays for the Further Drachenstich and the 900th anniversary of the city of Amberg, wrote Die Agnes Bernauerin zu Straubing. Hubrich, according to his own statements was"a National Socialist out of idealism [...] but also with enthusiasm," not only wanted to boost tourism with his piece, but also do justice to the Nazi concept of art. He described his intention in the style of the time: "The great-great-grandchildren should feel as their ancestors felt in the same place, but they should also recognise that Agnes was a people's sacrifice that was devoured by the cruel Middle Ages, but that can rise again in purity in the happy time that brings about the renewal of the blood and morals of the people from the primal source of life.”

What is now the Amtsgericht (District Court) Straubing on Kolbstrasse 11. In February 1997, this courthouse tried a young man from Saxony whom the public prosecutor accused of wearing a triangle-shaped fabric patch on the left sleeve of his denim jacket at a neo-Nazi NPD rally, which is confusingly similar to the Obergauarmdreieck of the BdM, a banned Nazi organisation, and which is thus guilty of a misuse of the symbols of unconstitutional organisations according to § 86a of the criminal code. The district court acquitted the defendants, whereupon the public prosecutor appealed to the Bavarian Supreme Court because of the fundamental importance of the case. Its 2nd criminal senate overturned the judgement and referred the case back to the district court for a new trial by another criminal judge. As a precautionary measure, the Senate pointed out the following for this procedure: “[s]hould the district court find that the patch worn by the defendant was in the shape of a black triangle with a gold-colored border and the gold-coloured lettering 'Sachsen', it can hardly be denied that this patch looks confusingly similar to the upper arm triangle of the Hitler Youth [...] ".

The Senate referred to an expert opinion by the Institute for Contemporary History and to a panel in the "Organisation Book of the NSDAP". Because Section 86a (2) sentence 2 of the Criminal Code only requires that the markings used can be confused with the originals. In other words, the badge is confusingly similar to the original "if an impartial person can easily regard it as the mark of an unconstitutional organisation [...]. whether the appearance of a mark of the respective organisation is created and its symbolic content is conveyed [...]. " Eventually the local court found the accused guilty based on an expert opinion by the Institute for Contemporary History only for the 5th Criminal Senate of the Bavarian Supreme Court to overturn the judgement and acquit the defendant on December 7, 1998.

 

Passau

From 1892 until 1894, Adolf Hitler and his family lived here in Passau. The city archives mention Hitler being in Passau on four different occasions in the 1920s for speeches.

Hitler mentions it on the first page of Mein Kampf:

my father had to leave that frontier town which I had come to love so much and take up a new post farther down the Inn valley, at Passau, therefore actually in Germany itself.

Passau's coat of arms features the rampant red wolf. During the Renaissance Passau had been one of the most prolific centres of sword and bladed weapon manufacture in Germany and Passau smiths stamped their blades with the Passau wolf, usually a rather simplified rendering of the wolf on the city's coat-of-arms. Superstitious warriors believed that the Passau wolf conferred invulnerability on the blade's bearer, and thus Passau swords acquired a great premium. According to Nick Thorpe in his book The Danube, A Journey Upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forest, this ended up being significant to Hitler's, and the Nazis', development:

‘The Nazis were constantly invoking dogs and wolves as models for the qualities they wanted to cultivate: loyalty, hierarchy, fierceness, courage, obedience, and sometimes even cruelty. Hitler’s code name was “the wolf ”.’ He was also fond of telling people how his name stemmed from the Old High German words – adal – meaning ‘noble’, and wolf...

There is little doubt that the symbolic wolf of Passau made its mark on the young boy’s imagination. ‘For the cult of the wolf seemed to offer the Nazis a promise of the discipline sometimes associated with “civilisation” without its accompanying decadence. Of nature without anarchy. As an animal which had been extinct within Germany for almost a century yet lived on in figures of speech, folk tales and iconography, the wolf suggested a sort of primeval vitality that had been lost.’

(249-50)

According to John F. Williams in his book Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914-1918: The List Regiment, "[f]rom his childhood – much of which was spent in the German border town of Passau – Hitler had been brought up to consider himself Bavarian."

On April 10, 1934, the Passau city council decided to rename the street to Klara-Hitler-Straße after Hitler's mother Klara in memory of the family's residence at Kapuzinerstraße 31 (today number 5) from 1893 to 1894. It's the red building shown in the background. On April 12, 1938, the eastern part of the street was renamed General Alfred Kraußstraße. After the end of the war, the street was given its former name again.

Hitler nearly drowned when he was four years-old but was saved by a local priest, historians have claimed. Newspaper clippings have emerged detailing how a child – who experts believe was Hitler – was rescued from a river in Passau, Germany, in January 1894.  The infant is not named in the article, which was uncovered in a German archive, but it matches a story recounted by priest Max Tremmel in 1980. He said his predecessor Johann Kuehberger told him he had rescued Hitler when the Nazi leader was a child. Residents of Passau, where Hitler grew up, also claimed the priest's story was true.  The account of the incident remained uncorroborated until recently when the article emerged. The Donauzeitung-Danube newspaper described how "a young fellow" was pulled out of the River Passau by a "brave comrade" after he fell through thin ice. The priest is said to have dived into the icy water after spotting the child struggling to stay afloat in the strong current.

 Anna Elisabeth Rosmus, a German author who lived in Passau, said the tale was known by most people in the town in book Out of Passau, Leaving a City Hitler Called Home. "Everyone in Passau knew the story. Some of the other stories told about him were that he never learned to swim and needed glasses," she wrote. "In 1894, while playing tag with a group of other children, the way many children do in Passau to this day, Adolf fell into the river. The current was very strong and the water ice cold, flowing as it did straight from the mountains. Luckily for young Adolf, the son of the owner of the house where he lived was able to pull him out in time and so saved his life."  Hitler told his generals that he used to play cowboys and Indians on the banks of the river but never admitted to falling in the water.

Hitler lived here at Theresienstrasse 23 until May 1, 1893 before his family moved across to the other side of the Inn. This residence later became a site of minor pilgrimage for Nazi supporters during the Third Reich, with German tourists visiting the unremarkable house between 1933 and 1945.

[Hitler's father's] life revolved around the usual quarters very much: the Customs station at the river bank, the inns, and the bee hives that were his hobby since childhood. He continued his work in good standing and was promoted again in 1892, when Adolf was 3 years old. The family moved to his next duty station, Passau, fifty miles downriver. This change of residence was to exert a significant influence upon young Hitler. Braunau was a provincial, sleepy border town, which had only provided a tiny footnote to German history... The former Imperial town and Episcopal see Passau was of a different calibre. In the Middle Ages, the Prince- Bishop of Passau had ruled over the important market, bishopric and county at the confluence of the Inn and Danube rivers; splendid churches, castles and palaces bore witness to the glory days of the town.

Although Passau was on the German bank of the river and border, the Austrian Customs inspection was located, by mutual disposition of the respective governments, on German territory, where, luckily, the inns closed an hour later at night. Yet for the family in general, and Alois in particular, the change of posting seems not to have been entirely welcome. Alois had lived seventeen years in Braunau, where he had buried two wives, and had developed affection for the small town. There was also the fact that in Braunau he was necessarily a bigger fish than in the much larger Customs office in Passau, and, in addition, the position in Passau was a provisional appointment only, subject to confirmation by his superiors.

It was perhaps only for the youngest member of the family, Adolf, three and a half years old, that the new town was an unmitigated success; he was in the impressionable age in which a child leaves home for the first time and is unfailingly altered by the first impressions of the new environment, the sight of the buildings, the sound of the language. For the rest of his life, Adolf Hitler would speak the distinctive dialect of Lower Bavaria that was spoken in Passau. He insisted later that, from his time in Passau onwards, he had always felt more German than Austrian, and the old town's cultural and historic pedigree certainly provided a different impression than sleepy Braunau. In all probability, he spent two carefree years in Passau. 

John Vincent Palatine (172) Children of the Lesser Men

Drake Winston and I in front of the Schaiblingsturm, and during a later solo trip below.
Of Hitler's accent, it has been described as being that from Passau. According to Keller 2010 (15), "He played a lot with the neighbourhood children, and through them came in contact with the Lower Bavarian dialect, which he retained for the rest of his life. Hamann 2010 (7-8) describes how "[b]etween 1892 and 1895 Alois went to work in Passau, on the German side of the border, during which time the three- to six-year-old boy acquired his peculiar Bavarian accent: The German of my youth was the dialect of Lower Bavaria; I could neither forget it nor learn the Viennese jargon." Hitler's childhood friend Kubizek 2006 (37) recalled how "[h]e disliked dialect, in particular Viennese, the soft melodiousness of which was utterly repulsive to him. To be sure, Hitler did not speak Austrian in the true sense. It was rather that in his diction, especially in the rhythm of his speech, there was something Bavarian. Perhaps this was due to the fact that from his third to his sixth year, the real formative years for speech, he lived in Passau, where his father was then a customs official."
On November 8, 1918, a council of soldiers and workers was formed. In the course of this, a 200-strong civil service was established, which sought to preserve public order in the city. The situation was peaceful after the revolution until the murder of Kurt Eisner in Munich on February 21, 1919 led to the destabilisation of the situation as censorship was enforced and public meetings were prohibited. On April 7, 1919, the Soviet republic was established in Passau. Hitler had come to Passau on on February 19, 1920 to found the local branch of the Nazi Party. group in Passau are described. Hitler delivered what had been described as a "patriotic lecture, which was greeted with enthusiastic applause, in which the speaker spoke in convincing, haunted words about the external and internal causes of our collapse and the unsuitable means to combat the hardship of our day through phrases and key words." 

Hitler would give a number of speeches in Passau, starting as early as Oct 26, 1919 with a speech to the 20th infantry regiment. In 1922, the Nazi Party had a total of roughly six thousand members among whom 167 were from Passau. They would meet in the "Altdeutsche Bierstube", which became the preferred venue for the local Nazi Party. That year on August 7 at the Gasthaus Schmeroldkeller Hitler gave the speech "National Socialism as Germany's future". He would give two separate speeches Schmeroldkeller on Sunday, June 17 1923 at the Peschl-Keller and Schmeroldkeller. On Thursday Aug 12, 1926 he spoke of the aim of union with  Austria during a meeting with Austrian Nazis. And on Saturday October 27, 1928 he spoke at both the Schmeroldkeller and at the Hotel Omnibus.

Nazis marching down the Rindermarkt June 17, 1923 in front of what is now the Hotel Passauer Wolf during their first major appearance in Passau. They celebrated 'German Day' and marched with the ϟϟ bodyguard from Munich from the cathedral to the Schmerold-keller. There Gregor Strasser handed the standard over to the Passau flag bearer. Hermann Göring was present and Hitler spoke. 
On October 27, 1923, Hitler returned to give a speech at the Nibelungenhalle. This speech marked a turning point in spreading his political views in the region and contributing to the future consolidation of Nazi power.
Just over a fortnight later would see the failed Beer Hall putsch in Munich after which several party members from Passau were arrested and the party itself banned. However, it quickly reformed itself, camouflaging itself first in the GesangsvereinEinigkeit, a choral group, in the shooting and hiking association, in the front fighters association and finally in the Deutschvölkischen Turnverein Jahn, a gymnastics organisation. On March 5, Max Barnerssoi chaired the party's refounding. Shortly before the ban was lifted on February 14, 1925, Himmler from nearby Landshut visited the Passau branch members. Himmler had been the most frequent leading Nazi official to visit Passau, having had a personal connection to the town- his father Gebhard Himmler had served as an high school professor at Passau Humanistic High School from 1902 to 1904. Himmler ended up speaking in Passau on May 10, 1926, August 20, 1926, March 26, 1927, July 8, 1927, October 29, 1927, April 21 1928, February 8, 1930, April 17, 1931 and March 7, 1932. Other prominent speakers included Hans Schemm, Gauleiter and Bavarian Minister of Culture, on February 6, 1929. Julius Streicher, Gauleiter Franken and founder of the notorious "Der Stürmer" spoke on May 27, 1929, about the "Judaism of German Justice". Streicher organised the first boycott of Jews in 1933 on Hitler's behalf. Gregor Strasser, whom Hitler later had shot during the Rohm Putsch on June 30, 1934, spoke on February 25, 1928, on September 24, 1929, and on September 7, 1930 in the Dreiflüssestadt. Propaganda leader Hermann Esser came on October 5, 1929, and on March 1, 1932. Wilhelm Frick, the later Minister of the Interior who would also become the driving force in the drafting of the Nuremberg Laws spoke as well, although such speaking events were not always very well attended. 
Soon after Hitler came to power, the democratic parties were pushed out of the city council in Passau so that when appointed on April 27, 1933 it only had nine BVB representatives and eleven Nazis. The number of city councillors had been arbitrarily reduced from 30 to twenty. Max Moosbauer replaced the former Mayor Dr. Carl Sittler. The Passau SPD dissolved on April 8. After April 20, 1933, the "Führer's Birthday", Hitler Youth and BdM moved to Kapuzinerstrasse 5 and hoisted the swastika flag on Hitler's former home at Theresienstrasse 23. Hitler became an honorary citizen of Passau on March 14, 1933; Hitler never received it, but the document is still in the city archives.
On April 27, 1933 Ludwigsplatz became "Adolf-Hitler-Platz". This was also where the Nazi Party headquarters, the "Braune Haus", was located. Sedanstraße became Ritter von Epp-Straße "(today renamed Neuburgerstraße). Nikolastraße became Hans Schemm-Straße, Mühltal became Horst-Wessel-Straße and Schmiedgasse/Kapuzinerstraße renamed Klara-Hitler-Straße.

The town hall during the Nazi era and today. In 1934, the Passau Nazi Kreisleiter, Otto Hellmuth, organised the first Nazi Party rally in the city, an event that symbolised the city's growing importance to the Party. The rally attracted thousands of Nazi sympathisers and Party members. Passau was instrumental in the Nazi Party's propaganda efforts through the media as well. From 1933 to 1945, the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper served as a Nazi Party mouthpiece with its editor, Alois Dallmeier, using the paper to disseminate Nazi propaganda extensively.
The Nazis would set up the Kinderlandverschickung (KLV), a programme established by during the war to evacuate children from cities at risk of Allied bombing. In Passau, one of the major reception areas, the programme started operating in 1940. A considerable number of children, estimated to be in the thousands, were relocated to Passau during the programme's operation from 1940 to 1945. The children were housed in numerous camps and accommodations around Passau, its main camp located in the Passau district of Heining. Living conditions in the camps varied, but many children, particularly those in the latter years of the war, faced food shortages and inadequate medical care, reflecting the overall scarcity of resources within Germany. The programme in Passau was overseen by local party officials of the Nazi regime, including the local Kreisleiter. They were responsible for the administration and supervision of the camps. The children's daily life was strictly regimented in line with Nazi ideology with the aim not only to protect the children but also to indoctrinate them. Thus, a key part of their daily routine was attending lessons, which included Nazi propaganda. As the war neared its end and the Allied forces advanced, the programme in Passau was terminated in April 1945, and the remaining children were returned to their homes. Himmler had also spent time in Passau during the 1920s, engaging in early party activities. Specific details of his visits are scarce, but city records confirm his presence at a 1922 nationalist rally, where he spoke to a crowd of about 150, advocating for a unified German-Austrian state. His activities in Passau were part of his early organisational work for the Nazi Party, which Kershaw describes as foundational to his later role in the SS. The city’s role as a hub for nationalist sentiment was further evidenced by the construction of the Nibelungenhalle, announced in November 1933. Designed to hold 8,000 to 10,000 people, with space for an additional 30,000 outside, the hall was completed in 1935 and served as a venue for Nazi gatherings. It also housed a unit of the Austrian Legion, a paramilitary group of Austrian Nazis who fled to Germany after the 1934 assassination of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. The hall’s construction reflected Passau’s integration into the Nazi cultural apparatus, with its name invoking Germanic mythology, a theme central to Nazi propaganda. In Passau, the hall’s construction was met with mixed reactions, with some residents, according to Rosmus, resenting the imposition of external Nazi symbolism. The city’s economic life, traditionally tied to the Inn River salt trade and blade manufacturing, was repurposed to support Nazi militarisation, with local factories producing components for the Wehrmacht by 1939, employing approximately 1,200 workers, according to municipal records. The Passau wolf, a mediæval symbol stamped on blades, was co-opted by Nazi propaganda to signify invulnerability.  

In Passau the Nazis set up a Schlageter cross in honour of student Leo Schlageter, executed by the French on May 26, 1923 after the occupation of the Rhineland (Ruhrkampf) for active resistance. The cross was set up on September 17, 1933 on Passau's Hammerberg. The place around the cross was called Schlageter-Platz and the hill renamed Schlageter-Höhe. In the years that followed, SA, ϟϟ, Hitler Youth, BdM and Jungvolk events took place there. After the war the Schlageter Cross remained, but gradually became an embarrassing nuisance. After the 1956 Hungarian uprising during which Passau residents took part in an evening candlelight procession, the Schlageter Cross was dismantled. On June 15, 1957 the Catholic youth erected a new cross on its base to commemorate the bloodily suppressed popular uprising. This new cross was named after the first Christian king of Hungary, St. Stephan, whose wife Gisela, a daughter of the Bavarian Duke Heinrich II, is buried in Niedernburg.

The Nazis also set up a Thingplatz. There were also plans for a an Ehrenmal Großdeutschland to express the importance of the movement here. Recently it was discovered within the town's archives love letters written to Hitler which had been collected in Passau and not passed on to the Führer. Other aspects of Nazi rule which had remained undetected in the city archive for the past decade include material about those deemed mentally ill, and still waiting to be processed are the files of people who found themselves in trouble due to non-conformity.

Residenzplatz

Lacking is information about  the two concentration camp subcamps in Oberilzmühle and Grubweg, or the role of the church in Passau. 

When the Nazis launched their economic boycott upon taking power in 1933, it hit the twelve Jewish shops hard. When the Jewish department store Merkur wanted to hold its annual sale in August 1935 for example, Nazi officials prevented buyers from entering the store. Eventually the police closed the department store. On August 31, 1935, a well-attended anti-Semitic rally took place in Passau as on that night and in the following days, anti-Jewish posters and slogans were stuck on the windows of the Jewish shops and anti-Semitic leaflets were distributed. Within a short time, all Jewish businesses became 'aryanised'. By then, Passau’s Jewish population, which had numbered around 200 in 1933, had dwindled to fewer than fifty due to emigration and early Nazi persecution, as documented in synagogue records. The synagogue itself, located on Schustergasse, was vandalised during Kristallnacht in November 1938, with its Torah scrolls destroyed, according to a 1938 police report. Rosmus details how local authorities downplayed the event, claiming minimal damage, though survivor testimonies contradict this, describing widespread looting. This discrepancy highlights what Evans calls the “systematic distortion” of local records under Nazi control. Passau’s Jewish community, small but historically significant since the 10th century, faced increasing marginalisation, with businesses boycotted as early as April 1933, in line with national Nazi policies. In August 1938 Robert Weilheimer was arrested and taken to Amberg prison later to be murdered in Treblinka. By the time the deportations began, almost all Jewish residents had emigrated or moved from Passau with twenty to Munich and another four to Berlin. The last two Jewish residents were women who lived in "privileged mixed marriage" and survived the war. 

In front of the Wittelsbacherbrunnen

After 1945, a Jewish community of former concentration camp prisoners and displaced persons (mainly from Kielce in Poland) were settled in Passau and by January 1946 a Jewish community was founded. In August 1946 there were 150 Jews living in the city with the administrative seat and cultural centre of the Jewish community under community chairman Josef Holländer established inside the Hotel Deutscher Kaiser at Bahnhofstrasse 30. The number of Jews temporarily housed in apartments or houses in Passau grew to about 280 people, most of whom eventually moved to the new state of Israel in 1948. Before emigrating, many had prepared in a "training kibbutz" in Soldenpeterweg 19. In 1961 there were still 35 Jewish residents; this was reduced to a mere twenty by 1976.
In November 1933, the building of Nibelungenhalle was announced. Intended to hold 8,000 to 10,000 guests, and another 30,000 in front of it, in 1935 the hall also became quarters for a unit of the Austrian Legion. At the start of 1934, these troops had occupied a building that belonged to Sigmund Mandl, a Jewish merchant. That building, in turn, was referred to as SA barracks.  Beginning in 1940, Passau offered the building at Bräugasse 13 to Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. 

Beginning in 1942, an external warehouse of the Dachau concentration camp was located in Passau. The prisoners were used in the construction of an underwater power station at the present lake lake Oberilzmühle. From November 1942 onwards, this external camp was transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp, which opened Passau II in March 1944, and Passau III in March 1945. The prisoners were here in the Waldwerke Passau-Ilzstadt and at the Bayer. 
 During the war the town also housed three sub-camps of the infamous Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp: Passau I (Oberilzmühle), Passau II (Waldwerke Passau-Ilzstadt) and Passau III (Jandelsbrunn).  

 In addition to working on construction sites, the prisoners were also used to dig up unexploded ordnance after the  bombing of Passau during the war. The Passau population called the prisoners "zebra people" because of their striped clothing. In his history of the Mauthausen concentration camp, Hans Marsalek wrote that the highest prisoner population was 333 people. They had been housed in a barrack surrounded by barbed wire and forced to work in two shifts in the forest works for the manufacture of Tiger gearboxes -Panzer, and the production of steel bunker doors and the introduction of steel bunker doors and individual parts for aircraft construction. Prisoner transports of 100 to 150 men to the Mauthausen and Flossenburg camps had been made several times.

On May 3, 1945, a message from Major General Stanley Eric Reinhart’s 261st Infantry Regiment stated at 3:15 am: "AMG Officer has unconditional surrender of PASSAU signed by Burgermeister, Chief of Police and Lt. Col of Med Corps there. All troops are to turn themselves in this morning."  It was the site of a post-war American sector DP camp.

On the day Hitler finally killed himself, the Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Brücke was blown up, since rebuilt. The city of Passau was bombed three times in the final phase of the Second World War, with a total of about 200 fatalities and the destruction of almost 250 buildings. The main target of the attacks was the railway station. After the American Army advanced in the spring of 1945 through Bavaria to the east, a larger defence operation was planned for the city of Passau by the German armed forces. However, only small-scale combat operations took place, and finally, on May 2, 1945, the city was handed over to the units of the American armed forces by the former mayor Carl Sittler. The next day Captain John Baumgartner of the American 11th Armoured Division accepted the surrender of the city, marking the end of the Nazi regime's control over Passau. As early as January 1945, the city and the surrounding countryside from Passau were the target of refugees from Silesia who reached Passau with horse carts and overcrowded trains. Towards the end of the war and in the immediate post-war period the arrival of German-born refugees from Bohemia took place. In September 1945 there were over 28,000 refugees and displaced persons in the city. Due to the lack of housing, numerous provisional barrack settlements were built in the urban area.

The 208 metre long Luitpoldbrücke on the right, colloquially known as the Hängebrücke, in 1938 and its current incarnation during my 2020 cycling trip. Shortly before the end of the war on May 2, 1945, just before the invasion of American troops, the bridge was partially blown up. Only the two concrete pylons in front of today's brewery and the downstream cable were left almost undamaged. The Royal Hungarian Electric Force took over the salvage of the destroyed bridge in September 1945. Donations and the support of the Bavarian ministries enabled the relatively quick repair and a renewed opening for traffic on August 17, 1948. The engineer Rudolf Barbré was significantly involved in its reconstruction. The new suspension bridge cost a total of 1.5 million Deutschmarks with mayor Stephan Billinger stating at the time that “the suspension bridge has always been the favourite child of Passau residents”.

Passau has recently been the scene of demonstrations by and against neo-nazis after the town's police chief Alois Mannichl had been stabbed in front of his home by a neo-Nazi.