Nazi Sites in Baden-Württemberg (4)

 Some sites in Baden-Württemberg I visited outside the purpose of this site, and so this page is just to serve as an addendum until I can do justice to the locations.

 

 

Konstanz am Bodensee

During the war and today, little changed. Because it almost lies within Switzerland, directly adjacent to the Swiss border, Konstanz was not bombed by the Allied Forces during the war. The city left all its lights on at night, thus fooling the bombers into thinking it was actually part of Switzerland after the erroneous bombing of Schaffhausen on April 1, 1944. The districts on the right bank of the Rhine, which are clearly separated from Swiss areas by the Seerhein, continued to be darkened, but were not attacked despite companies like Degussa and Stromeyer.  

As early as 1933, SA men prevented visitors to Jewish shops and medical practices from entering. Signs on benches, shops, inns and at the Horn outdoor swimming pool excluded Jews from use and visiting. The systematic persecution of the Jews began in 1935 with the Nuremberg Laws. Jews then sold their residential and commercial buildings at low value and emigrated. From 1938, "Aryanisation sales" were only possible with state approval, after the deportation in 1940 the property was expropriated and auctioned. On October 22, 1940, 110 Jews from Constance were deported to the Gurs concentration camp in southern France, the last eight to Riga, Izbica and Theresienstadt from 1941 to 1944. A Reich flight tax of 25% was levied. In the first arson attack on the Konstanz synagogue in 1936, the building was saved by the volunteer fire brigade. The damaged seven Torah scrolls were buried in the Jewish cemetery. On the Reichskristallnacht the Konstanz synagogue was set on fire by members of the Allgemeine ϟϟ, section XIX Konstanz, under ϟϟ senior leader Walter Stein. The fire department was not allowed to fight the fire this time. On the contrary, attempts were made to open the synagogue's roof hatches in order to give the fire better traction. The synagogue was then blown up by the ϟϟ disposal force III./ϟϟ standard Germania from Radolfzell and sixteen male Jews were brought to the Dachau concentration camp. A Jewish property tax was levied in 1938. Until 1939, some families in Constance managed to escape to Switzerland, British Palestine, England, the USA, Argentina and Asian countries. The Swiss cantons of Lake Constance sealed themselves off. 433 Jews lived in Constance in 1933, 120 in 1940. On the evening of November 8, 1939, Georg Elser was arrested in Constance when he tried to flee to Switzerland after having previously placed a bomb in Munich to kill Adolf Hitler. Jews, prisoners of war, forced labourers and German deserters attempted to flee the Saubach. Escaping by jumping over the Saubach was possible until 1938. From the end of 1939, a border fence was erected on the Swiss side from Kreuzlinger Zoll to the Wiesenstrasse crossing and from the railway line to the lake to prevent refugees. 

 

Weingarten

  The Basilica of St. Martin and Oswald. During Nazi Germany Weingarten was incorporated into Ravensburg; after the war, the rival cities were separated again. 

 

 Hechingen 

Adolf-Hitler-Platz, now Obertorplatz

Located 37 miles south of Stuttgart, during the start of Nazi rule most of the businesses in Hechingen were in Jewish hands and were closed or 'aryanised'. Much of the architecture of the city was destroyed or damaged by Nazi attempts to build air raid shelters in public buildings. Here is St. Johnnes Kirche, from an 1880 engraving and today.

The rathaus, shown here in 1940 and today, was so damaged that it had to be destroyed.  

Marktplatz then and now

Many industries, including DEHOMAG, a predecessor of IBM, were relocated to Hechingen from damaged areas of Germany, such as Berlin. Parts of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were also relocated there.  In April 1945, American troops entered Hechingen and took over the atomic research laboratory and nuclear reactor. Many of the physicists were interned in Farm Hall in England and tried over the following years. Many of the scientists went on to have successful postwar careers for instance; on 15 November 1945 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Otto Hahn had been awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei." 

The town has completely restored its nineteenth-century synagogue, shown here in 1937 and today. As recently as June, 2018 the Jewish cemetery which had only been reopened after considerable refurbishment was targeted by vandals. Perpetrators knocked over and destroyed one tombstone whilst throwing a second, smaller tombstone over the newly renovated cemetery wall, damaging it. Unlike previous attacks- the last attacked a quarter century earlier- there had been no right-wing extremist graffiti found although Michael Kashi, a board member of the Jewish community in Württemberg which  owns the cemetery, says one does not need swastikas to identify targeted anti-Semitism. "You can see that someone did this on purpose. Unfortunately, we experience this again and again and everywhere." The town mayor, Philipp Hahn, stated how "awareness of the Jewish past in Hechingen is important to me and to the local council. Such vandalism is loathsome." The desecration had been discovered on Saturday by employees of the specialist company Kiris-Bau from Freudenstadt, which was renovating the crumbling surrounding wall on behalf of the city of Hechingen. The Jewish community, which was informed by the city, immediately filed a complaint with the Hechingen police against unknown persons - even if Michael Kashi's hope that the perpetrators would be caught is rather low. "A few months ago the façade of the synagogue in Ulm was damaged. There is even video surveillance there, and yet the crime has not yet been solved." 

Ludwigsburg

 The courtyard in use by the Wehrmacht and today. In 1921, Ludwigsburg became the largest garrison in southwest Germany.
The synagogue in the town was destroyed by the Nazis during Reichskristallnacht, the pogrom of November 1938. Two years later the Nazi propaganda film, Jud Süß, was filmed in Ludwigsburg. The film was based on a historical figure, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, who was executed in Stuttgart in 1738; Oppenheimer lived in Ludwigsburg. 
During the war, the city suffered moderate damage compared to other German cities. There were 1500 deaths. It was the home of the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag V-A from October 1939 till April 1945. After the war, there was a large displaced persons camp which housed several thousand mainly Polish displaced persons until about 1948. After 1945 until the middle of 1946, there was also an allied internment camp for war criminals in Ludwigsburg and the American Army maintained the Pattonville barracks on the edge of town, large enough to have its own American high school. The land was returned to Germany in 1994. 

Rexingen

The monument overlooking the town was built in 1933 and officially inaugurated in 1937. Shortly before the war ended the swastika was removed and in 1952 replaced with a cross. Since the Thirty Years' War there has been a Jewish community in the city for 300 years, initially under the protection of the Knights of Malta and Maltese, which temporarily constituted half of the population. In 1932 the Jewish inhabitants of Rexingen had shrunk to a few hundred. A third of the victims of the extermination camps, ten families and several unmarried young men (adopted in the Rexinger synagogue on February 6, 1938) succeeded in emigrating in 1938-39, mainly to Palestine and the United States. The Israeli Moshaw Shawe Zion was founded by Jews from the town. The former Rexingen synagogue managed to survive the Nazis and is now a memorial and evangelical church. Another memorial site is the town's Jewish cemetery.

 

Schönau

  Schlageter's grave then and what's left of it today. After his execution Schlageter became a hero to some sections of the German population. Immediately after his death a Schlageter Memorial Society was formed, which agitated for the creation of a monument to honour him. The German Communist Party sought to debunk the emerging mythology of Schlageter by circulating a speech by Karl Radek portraying him as an honourable but misguided figure. It was the Nazi party who most fully exploited the Schlageter story. Hitler refers to him in Mein Kampf. Rituals were constructed to commemorate his death, and in 1931 the Memorial Society succeeded in getting a monument erected near the site of his execution. This was a giant cross placed amid sunken stone rings. Other smaller memorials were also created.  After 1933 Schlageter became one of the principal heroes of the Nazi regime. The Nazis renamed the Haus der Technik in Königsberg the Schlageterhaus. Hanns Johst, the Nazi playwright, wrote Schlageter (1933), a heroic drama about his life. It was dedicated to Hitler, and was performed on his first birthday in power as a theatrical manifesto of Nazism. The line "when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun", often misattributed to Nazi leaders, derives from this play. The original line is slightly different: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning," "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). It is spoken by another character in conversation with the young Schlageter.  Several important military ventures were also named for him, including the Jagdgeschwader 26 Schlageter fighter-wing of the Luftwaffe, and the naval vessel Albert Leo Schlageter. His name was also given as a title to two SA groups, the SA-Standarte 39 Schlageter at Düsseldorf and SA-Standarte 142 Albert Leo Schlageter at Lörrach. An army barracks on the south side of Freiburg was also named after him. 
Groups like the Black Forest Society (Schwarzwaldverein), a self-described ‘Fatherlandish and nationalist’ hiking club with local chapters throughout the region, organised at Whitsuntide hikes here as it was the birthplace of Leo Schlageter. Schlageter had been shot in 1923 by French occupation authorities in the Ruhr. Already a nationalist hero, Schlageter soon took his place among the pantheon of Nazi martyrs. By including pilgrimages to his hometown within the annual calendar of events, the Black Forest Society contributed to the creation of a Nazi politics of public memory.

Schlageter had been shot in 1923 by French occupation authorities in the Ruhr. Already a nationalist hero, Schlageter soon took his place among the pantheon of Nazi martyrs. By including pilgrimages to his hometown within the annual calendar of events, the Black Forest Society contributed to the creation of a Nazi politics of public memory. Moreover, like the NSDAP itself, the Black Forest Society claimed that it fought against the spirit of class and happily repeated Nazi slogans such as ‘public good before private profit’. Additionally, the monthly journals were filled with endless photographs of members’ processions through swastika-bedecked streets, which reinforced the Nazi message.

Semmens (86)

 Heidenheim an der Brenz

Schloss Hellenstein looking over the town from a Nazi-era postcard and today. Erwin Rommel was born November 15, 1891 here in Heidenheim, Wurttemberg to schoolmaster Erwin Rommel, Sr. and his wife, Helene von Luz. 
 During the war, a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp was located below in the town itself, providing slave labour to local industry. After the war was over in 1945, a displaced persons camp was outfitted in the city to help relocate Jewish displaced persons. The camp, housing at times up to 2,300 individuals, was dissolved in August 1949.