The first head of the building authority in Baierbrunn - anecdotes from the town hall

Created: 05/27/2022, 13:00

By: Andrea Kästle

Today, at the age of 82, Horst Schömer has a soft spot for writing stories in his kitchen.

He has written around 800 stories, many of which deal with life in Baierbrunn in the past.

He has already read from his texts several times, and a novel he penned is also in the drawer.

© Kästle

Horst Schömer was Baierbrunn's first head of the building authority.

In 1974 he began his service in what was then the Old Town Hall.

He never lived up to the cliché of the staid administrative employee.

But on the contrary. 

Baierbrunn

– Today, around 20 people work in the administration of Baierbrunn town hall.

50 years ago there were just four, including the mayor.

One of them, along with the treasurer and secretary Anni Höpfl, was Horst Schömer, the first head of the building authority.

In 1974 he began his service in what was then the Old Town Hall.

Horst Schömer is a person who likes to tell stories well, writes a lot himself, and who remembers the old days with humor.

He grew up in Baierbrunn, he loves the community, which is why he applied for the job advertised on the doorstep.

When he was a boy he had tended the Schuler farmer's cows in the community, he climbed into the warm cow dung to thaw his feet, which were always cold.

Now he wanted to help shape the further development of the small town on the left high bank of the Isar.

Start without pen and paper

Which wasn't so easy at first.

Because, as he reports in his kitchen, surrounded by tons of paper, the municipality was not at all prepared for another employee.

He had neither pen nor paper, there were no land registers, no ink, no rule, he had to order everything first and have the order approved by the municipal council.

Why the man needs all this was critically questioned in the committee before Deputy Mayor Rudolf Zins brought the assembled to their senses: "We hired him and now we have to see that he can work."

First project: the sewers

Meanwhile, August Tauschek, the SPD mayor at the time, had already conveyed to him on the first day that it would not be possible to roll things around in Baierbrunn.

"He got a folder from his desk and gave it to me, he said: 'It's all part of it now!'" The folder contained the documents for the Baierbrunn Canal, which was to be tackled at the time but which was not Tauschek's favorite project. On the contrary: "He always said," says Schömer and smiles, "we already have a sewage system, namely one on four wheels".

Schömer drilled his way into the matter, he talked to the district master builder Kirschner from the district office, who soon became almost a friend to him, and finally managed to get the route corrected a little.

What saved the community a lot of money: "I guess at least a million."

written local history

As I said, Schömer was not only a civil servant, he is also a storyteller who expresses himself well both orally and in writing.

He is regularly represented in the "Altbayerische Heimatpost" with articles, but he has also written folders full of stories from Baierbrunn.

He read from them again and again, even in elementary school.

And so now we not only learn from him that in his office on the ground floor of the old town hall, the Raiffeisenbank alarm system, which was still on, went off for no reason, even though the bank had long since moved out.

But he also tells how he experienced life in the community "in the past".

How, after the war, there was meat to eat at Seitz Hans and at some point those involved noticed that Seitz's dog was no longer running around.

That at that time you could always find someone in the "Post" to gossip.

That at some point a messenger from the publishing house "Wort & Bild" was in his office and handed over a check - over 150,000 marks.

Everyone in the town hall was on their lunch break, and nobody was in the bank either: "I sat there and thought about what I could do now."

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Supervised large projects

The sports and community center, the building yard, the local project: Schömer oversaw all of these projects.

The B 11 was given a cycle path, and a traffic island was built at the entrance to the town to slow down motorists.

As the head of the building authority at the time remembers, motorists promptly got stranded again and again.

At some point he moved to the first floor of the old town hall with his drawing and work utensils.

Now the municipal council met on the ground floor, the Raiffeisen bank and the post office had moved out of the building, which the municipality now wants to buy back from “Wort & Bild”.

In the meantime, Schömer reports and laughs, the planning applications are still lying around in the attic.

He worked in the building authority for a total of 29 years.

A time that shaped him and Baierbrunn.

reading

On Thursday, June 2, Horst Schömer reads some of his stories in the rooms of the association "Mittendrin in Baierbrunn", Wolfratshauser Straße 44. The stories are about growing up in the community, headline: "I'm surprised that I'm so funny am.” He will be accompanied by Waltraud Jauß on the harp, beginning at 2:30 p.m.

Horst Schömer at work in the 1970s.

In his first days at the building authority, he didn't even have a pen and paper.

© Kästle

As a young boy: Horst Schoemer, born in 1940, at the age of about ten.

After school, he first did an apprenticeship as a mason, then he studied civil engineering.

© Kästle