Last reminder of 148 years of history

Created: 12/31/2022, 6:39 p.m

By: Peter Schiebel

They want to receive the portable pump trailer of the disbanded Landstetten fire-fighting group (from left): the Perchtingen firefighters Manfred Vermehren (secretary), Christian Benedikt (chairman), Thomas Bräundl (equipment manager), Georg Lengenleicher (2nd commander) and Andreas Bartl (1st commander).

© Andrea Jaksch

With the dissolution of the Landstetten fire-fighting group at the end of November, a 148-year-old story officially came to an end.

Comrades from Perchting now want to restore a fire engine that is still stored in Landstetten.

Landstetten/Perchting

- It looks a bit as if the comrades will come back soon.

Jackets, trousers and helmets hang on the twelve large coat hooks in the garage on Klosterholzweg in Landstetten.

The names written by hand on the wall above show each firefighter his place.

Right in the middle is the bright red trailer with the portable pump, which was once used in operations.

Another pump is in the back corner.

And yet the whole ensemble has more of a museum character.

The trailer was built in 1941, the syringe is from 1960/61, and the clothes are decades old.

All together they are the last remnants of the Landstetten fire brigade, whose history recently came to an end.

At the end of November, the main and finance committee of the city council officially dissolved the Landstetten fire-fighting group in a purely formal act, which had already existed only on paper for many years (we reported).

148 years of fire service history in the smallest district of Starnberg with around 150 inhabitants came to an end almost unnoticed.

Not much is known about the history of the military.

The archivist of the fire brigades in the district, Johann Brabetz from Percha, at least knows that a fire brigade was founded in Landstetten on May 1, 1876.

At that time the village still belonged to Maising.

A good hundred years later, in 1967, the independent fire brigade disbanded and became a fire-fighting group of the Perchtinger Wehr.

Brabetz has nothing more in his documents.

Christoph Aschermann from the Starnberg City Archives also has to fit:

"We have not received any documents from the Landstetten fire department," he says.

The history of Landstetten is also not known in Perchting.

Peter (68) and Johannes March (66), who were once active there, cannot say with certainty when the extinguishing group stopped working.

At least this much: "There were two missions where things really burned out," remembers Peter März.

His brother still has a fire in a Bulldog garage in mind.

"But that didn't turn out to be anything big because we were there on time." Six to ten people had come to the exercises in Landstetten earlier, says Peter März.

Currently, one of the 33 active firefighters in Perchting comes from Landstetten, reported the commander Andreas Bartl, who has been in office since May, at the meeting with the Starnberger Merkur.

The portable pump trailer with the radio call name Florian PTG 45/1 had its last big appearance in 2012. Pulled by a vintage tractor, it drove together with three firefighters in historical uniforms at the big parade to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of Starnberg.

The secretary of the Perchtinger Wehr, Manfred Vermehren, can still remember this well.

"This sprayer used to be standard equipment for a village fire brigade," he says.

The VW Beetle engine including the crank to start it works, as does the pump, and there are also three fire pumps.

"But it won't achieve more for the TÜV test," says Vermehren.

"We would like to take over the trailer from the Perchting fire brigade association and prepare it as a museum piece," explains Commander Bartl.

In the new year he wants to talk to Mayor Patrick Janik about it.

Although he doesn't know of any plans on the part of the city to scrap the vehicle or give it away at some point, it's a shame.

"We would like to keep the trailer and present it at the open day, for example." The memory of the Landstetten fire department would thus be preserved - even beyond the 148 years of its existence.