On April 12, 1933, a small group of National Socialists managed to confiscate the gymnasium of the "Freie Turnerschaft" in Hohenpeissenberg.
Of course, this happened with the backing of the district leadership in Schongau.
BY RUDI HOCHENAUER
Hohenpeißenberg
– How this action took place was described in 1962 by the former sports club board member Hans Lory.
None of the actors involved at the time are still alive.
The gymnasium of the "Freie Turnerschaft" was a thorn in the side of the Nazis in Hohenpeissenberg.
Here the workers not only played sports, of course they also politicized, they were among themselves.
And the workforce, which was made up of more than 90 percent miners, was left-wing politically and had little to do with Hitler.
The workers' sports club had existed since 1913 and for many years it was a major goal of the club members to finally have their own sports hall.
The aim of the bourgeois circles was that everything should ideally remain as it was.
The workers had other ideas.
A plot of land could be purchased and the gymnasium was built largely in-house.
A total of around 5000 hours of work were put in here.
After work in the mine, the men found themselves back at the site and worked until dark.
At that time there was no free Saturday, the working week went from Monday to Saturday.
The gym was inaugurated in 1931.
The monthly membership fee was 60 pfennigs – the daily wage of a miner underground was 6.30 marks.
The association, which had almost 100 members, had equity of over 2,000 marks, and a mortgage of 6,000 marks was taken out with the state insurance company in Upper Bavaria. The interest rate at the time was 6 percent, and 420 marks were paid in interest and repayments per year.
The loan term was to last until 1963.
Mayor Anton Pröbstl had loaned 6,000 marks out of his own pocket, and he waived interest until 1933.
It was a matter of the heart for him that the gymnasts finally got their own hall where they could train.
SS men had marched in front of the Hohenpeissenberg town hall
The gymnasts back then were good, the old miners kept saying that there were comrades who could, for example, do a handstand on a hunt.
In 1928 the 15th anniversary of the sports club was celebrated with gymnastics and sporting events, the sports club was part of the town.
On April 12, 1933, the municipal clerk Mattias Kögl came to the board of directors of Freie Turner, Hans Lory, with a request for the keys to the gym.
However, Lory did not give them out of his hands and brought them to the then mayor Anton Pröbstl.
Pröbstl then gave them back to the parish clerk, who then handed them over to the local group leader Heinrich Keppler.
Twelve SS men were deployed in front of the town hall, two of them armed with military rifles.
They marched towards the gym.
On the forecourt of the gymnasium, Max Primbs junior announced to the board of directors that the gymnasium was now available to the SS and the branches of the NSDAP.
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Max Primbs made it far in his Nazi career, he became a district leader in Innsbruck and was the right hand of the Tyrolean and Vorarlberg Gauleiter Franz Hofer.
Then the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" was sung and the swastika flag was to be hoisted on the flagpole.
However, the wire on which the flag was supposed to be raised got caught and the flag could not be hoisted.
Property returned in 1962
Local group leader Heinrich Keppler was pissed off and threatened to have the flagpole cut down.
After a few attempts, the pull wire came free and the flag could be hoisted.
Mayor Anton Pröbstl, Anton Welzmüller, Leopold Bader, Otto Mößmer and Hans Lory were present.
There were, of course, a number of onlookers who did not hide their delight at the confiscation of the gymnasium.
The record says: "Then the Nazis went into the hall and removed the pictures and diplomas from the gymnastics events from the walls." During the Nazi era, a Gaufilmstelle was set up in the building.
A Hitler Youth Home was built in the basement.
The building and the land were given to the municipality in 1935.
The restitution negotiations dragged on for 16 years after the war.
The assets of the "Freien Turner" were "cash" in 1933 and transferred to the state of Bavaria.
These workers' sports clubs were all dissolved in the spring of 1933, and the assets were confiscated.
A regular return to the sports club did not take place until 1962.
Anton Pröbstl did not live to see this, he died in 1957. The loan he had given the sports club was lost,
Sports were then practiced again in the hall and many children were sent to gymnastics lessons. Heinrich Hirschvogel worked here as a youth coach for TSV in the 1960s.
At that time he was already around 60 years old, but when he did gymnastics on horizontal bar or parallel bars, the children were amazed.
In 1973, the hall was demolished and replaced by today's TSV building.
