Wowo Habdank reads from a Wagner novel: A Childhood on Obersalzberg
Created: 07/11/2022, 12:18 p.m
By: Andrea Weber
The whole truth about the Obersalzberg: The actor Wowo Habdank read from the autobiographical novel "Bergheim" by the Münsingen author and publisher Fritz Wagner in the Hollerhaus.
© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss
The Münsingen actor Wowo Habdank recently read from Fritz Wagner's novel "Bergheim" in the Hollerhaus.
"Strong stuff" said some listeners.
It is autobiographical material.
Irschenhausen - "That was strong stuff," some people said, while others described the reading "Bergheim" from the book by the author Fritz Wagner, who was present, as "important documentation of the time".
Like a dramaturgical radio play with gramophone-like music from a small card player, actor Wowo Habdank presented the autobiographical material in a reading.
The Münsingen author and publisher Fritz Wagner, born in 1952, grew up in the tranquil village of Oberau near Berchtesgaden.
It was only many years later that he worked through his childhood memories and described in his book how his adventure playground turned out to be the scene of dark German history.
Wowo Habdank reads from a Wagner novel: A Childhood on Obersalzberg
His childhood in the 1950s and 60s was peaceful and carefree.
It was the time of awakening and the economic miracle in Germany, the time of the first television sets in living rooms and American series such as "Bonanza" and animal films such as "Lassie" and "Fury".
In winter, the children would pull the sled up to the ruins on nearby Obersalzberg - an exciting place to play.
The place was no more important for the boys a good ten years after the end of the war.
Little Franz - the main protagonist in Fritz Wagner's book "Bergheim" and, so to speak, his own pseudonym in the autobiographical novel - only gradually understood what had happened there.
The children weren't told that Adolf Hitler's holiday home was on the mountain, or rather the restricted area with numerous buildings and an SS parade ground.
The "worst crimes of mankind were planned there," read actor Wowo Habdank in an excerpt of the book.
In 1952 the Allies blew up the extensive complex.
The ruins remained visible until 1972.
Hard stuff with Bavarian local flavor: Wagner writes about Hitler's vacation home in Obersalzberg
Wagner traces the Bavarian local color in his book, humorous at times and then brutally serious again.
For example, when Arab sheikhs were guests on his family's farm.
“The Christians ate wonderfully fresh roast pork, the Arabs thawed fish.” He talks about football training on the former parade ground, “that was the only level surface” and about the fact that football specialist Kaspar wanted to know about six million gassed Jews.
"How gassed?" Franz asked doubtfully, and Kaspar enlightened his younger friend: "Dachau, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen." The father had worked as a civil engineer for the SS and always raved about "the good old days".
He had made himself complicit.
"One's own life is the quarry from which history emerged," said Fritz Wagner at the end of the reading when asked by our newspaper.
The guests in the Hollerhaus quietly parted, with great appreciation for the frank words and the blunt truth about the history of the Obersalzberg.
ANDREA WEBER