Knee-deep in alcohol: Grafing's general binge on May 2, 1945

Created: 05/20/2022, 06:02

By: Josef Ametsbichler

A glass can quickly turn into a total intoxication.

© picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild/Robert Michael

In Grafing, the whole market town used to get drunk.

Deaths, threats and full storage cellars - some people remember it to this day.

Grafing – A drinking party that got out of hand is currently annoying the people of Grafing: 250 young people gave each other a beer and vodka on the football field on Sunday night.

amateurs

Bear City is used to harder things;

and this does not mean the upcoming Grandau folk festival.

The historiography records the Grafinger "general drinking" on May 2, 1945 - the participants are said to have emptied 40,000 bottles of wine, in a cellar they are said to have waded knee-deep in the wine.

There were two dead - and the mayor was probably almost shot.

But let's start at the beginning: the day before the alcohol excess, the Americans marched into Grafing.

White surrender flags instead of swastikas hang from the windows on the market square.

A poorly aimed artillery shell from the retreating SS hits a garden on Münchner Strasse as a dud, noted contemporary witness and local historian Marin Oswald in his "Notes on the Collapse of 1945".

“The only shell that hit the town itself during the entire war!” The fact that Grafing – unlike nearby Munich – was relatively spared from the bombing of World War II brought the town some valuable camp treasures:

Alcohol stocks from Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten and Bayerischer Hof

Files from the Secret House Archives of the Bavarian State Archives were stored on the market square.

The Bavarian National Theater had brought the cloakroom to safety at the Schlederer in Rotter Strasse.

And in the Bahnhofstrasse, the Riem SS Riding School maintained a horse stable, all of this – and more – is evident from a historical list for the district office.

And then the thing with the wine and the schnapps.

Apparently for fear of destruction, several Munich hotels and restaurants stored their valuable alcohol in Grafinger cellars;

it is at least reported that the wine inventory of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten was among them, according to Grafing's city archivist, the historian Bernhard Schäfer.

Contemporary witnesses also reported from the Bayerischer Hof.

"Probably private actions through personal contacts," estimates Schäfer.

Russian forced laborer died of alcohol poisoning

In any case, it is quite certain that a French Nazi forced laborer named Jean Poillou remembered a walled-up room in the old “Wildkeller” or Kegelkeller on Lederergasse after the Nazi troops had left.

According to reports, a second depot with alcohol was found in the Heckerkeller on Rotter Straße.

What followed, writes historian Schäfer, was the "general drinking session, in which victors and vanquished, liberators, liberated and occupied alike took part," including Russian prisoners of war from the Moosburg camp (Freising district).

"Throughout the market you saw Russians staggering around with bottles of wine in their arms or lying on the floor completely drunk," reports chronicler Marin Oswald.

"Bottle shards covered the streets!" An eyewitness described Stadtarchivar Schäfer that the cone cellar was knee-deep with spilled wine.

Also handed down quite reliably: The death of a Russian forced laborer.

Archivist Schäfer has a list entry in the parish register of deaths, according to which the nameless man was found dead in Leonhardstraße – cause of death: alcohol poisoning.

Apparently there is no death certificate.

Several versions in circulation: Was the mayor threatened?

The historian says today: "In these lawless days, many things were not properly recorded." The archivist is therefore trying to reconstruct the most plausible version of this day from the few records and eyewitness reports.

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Accordingly, the Grafinger general drunkenness claimed a second fatality: an American soldier was shot, probably by a stray bullet fired while drunk.

There are also several versions of this: in one, the mayor Andreas Schütz was threatened by the GIs with being shot in view of the incident, in the other five young people in the village were suspected.

In the end, a Russian or Ukrainian was identified as the perpetrator.

Another report says that the American died of alcohol poisoning - but it is possible that the events in the fading memory of eyewitnesses who were still underage at the time are mixed up with the death of the drunk forced laborer.

Huge mass binge: the former mayor still thinks about it to this day

Irmgard Haselwarter (84), formerly Deputy Mayor, was a little girl at the time, but to this day she has kept a champagne bottle that she had taken to safety from the thirsty.

© Rossman

According to the same sources, the mass drinking came to an end when the American military leadership found the drinking too colorful.

They had the remaining supplies destroyed.

Perhaps that was also the reason why the wine in the cone cellar was knee-deep.

Grafing's former second mayor, Irmgard Haselwarter (84), was a little girl at the time, but has kept a bottle of champagne that was kept safe from the thirsty to this day.

She still remembers the drinking corpses in the streets - and can even see something positive about the general drinking: The liberated forced laborers and soldiers did not harass the civilian population, especially the women, because they were simply too drunk.

"Maybe that was a stroke of luck for Grafing."

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