Wolfratshausen: Who can solve the mystery of the mysterious box?

Seven boxes of files were moved to a safe place in 1944.

Years later, the city got the contents back.

The seventh box is missing.

Wolfratshausen – The fear of the American air raids was great.

Precautions were taken by the region's community archives, which could potentially be shelled.

They were encouraged towards the end of World War II to pack up their holdings and move them to central warehouses.

Documents were brought to the Eurasburg Palace

The Wolfratshausen market was supposed to bring its documents to Eurasburg Castle.

"Such a building in a small village was considered relatively safe," explains city archivist Simon Kalleder.

Even the main state archive in Munich had taken up space in the castle to protect its documents.

The Wolfratshausen archives were stored there until the end of the war.

They were standing "on the first floor corridor," according to an official letter from 1944.

The market shipped exactly seven boxes there.

Great historical value for professionals

Kalleder considers the actions of his predecessors to be sensible today: "If the archive had been shelled, the documents would have been gone forever." Copies of land registers, church accounts or tax registers were not made in the 17th and 18th centuries - and some of them are valuable for history enthusiasts.

"How the plague raged in Wolfratshausen can be seen, for example, in the cash books of that time," says Kalleder.

For laypeople, these documents appear highly unspectacular.

However, experts see great historical value in it.

Read the latest news from Eurasburg here.

The documents would also have survived in the city archives: the building survived the war, Wolfratshausen was spared the hail of bombs.

Eurasburg Castle also remained intact, as did the files stored in it.

Boxes go to the State Archives in Munich

After Germany's surrender, the Allies took over the administration.

Americans came across the bound books in the Eurasburg Castle.

What happened next is not 100% proven, says Kalleder.

"But it is assumed that all the archive material from Eurasburg was brought to Salzburg, to a 'collecting point' for cultural assets." Experts presumably viewed the documents there.

At some point, the collected documents went to the Munich State Archives, including the Wolfratshausen boxes.

"Today it would be difficult to get them back into our archive from there," says Kalleder.

Under Mayor Willy Thieme (SPD), at the end of the 1970s, archive employees and historians campaigned for the Wolfratshausen boxes to come back to Loisachstadt.

With success – at least partially.

City archive receives documents back - some have disappeared

The city archives received the documents back from Munich.

However, only the contents of boxes one to six.

Mysterious: The seventh box is missing - until today.

Only logs from the years 1839 to 1919 have resurfaced from the seventh box.

The rest was never seen.

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Many question marks: City archivist Simon Kalleder is the seventh box a big mystery. 

© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss

It is now known what was stored in it.

A table of contents, created on January 11, 1944 and signed by the then mayor Heinrich Jost, provides information about this.

For example, the “capital book 1862/63”, a “commercial cadastre 1806”, 34 handicraft books, the “income register 1803-1815” slumbered in the mysterious seventh box.

In addition, papers about the First World War are said to have been stored in the box: "On top loose and bundled files of various contents - war 1914 to 1918" NSDAP Mayor Jost had it noted.

The Wolfratshausen archivist particularly regrets the loss of these files today.

"It hurts." Records from that time - especially official documents - are rare anyway.

Documents may have been lost

It is a mystery to Kalleder where the contents of the seventh box from the Wolfratshausen archive went.

Possibly one he will never solve.

"I have no explanation for it." He doesn't believe it was a theft: "The files don't have any great material value," but they do have historical value.

However, the Americans would probably have had no use for excerpts from the magistrate's meeting minutes from 1861 to 1931.

The documents may have been lost.

Or they were destroyed because they were not recognized as potential archival material.

Perhaps they were also destroyed together with their box – there is no trace of that either.

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Also read: The magic of the five rings: How the 1972 Olympics moved Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen

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