Michael Holzmann focuses on enlightenment: In Dietramszell he sheds light on how the community deals with Paul von Hindenburg - and he clears up a prejudice.
Dietramszell - The handling of individual protagonists in the "Third Reich" is controversial.
Paul von Hindenburg is one of them.
As Reich President, he helped the Nazis to power in the early 1930s by appointing Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor.
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In this historical context, Michael Holzmann goes back to the past 20 years in Dietramszell and states: "Hindenburg and Dietramszell - that's a difficult relationship".
This is how the historian recently started his lecture in the Dietramszell rectory.
Historian speaks of "difficult relationship": Hindenburg in Dietramszell
After the death of his wife in 1893, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg resumed an old pastime: hunting big game.
According to Holzmann, there were no chamois in his collection.
Hindenburg was therefore looking for a region in which this animal species was represented - so Dietramszell became his favorite summer holiday home.
"Every year he stayed with the von Schilcher family for three weeks and went hunting," reported the history expert.
Initially, von Hindenburg was a welcome guest in the monastery village, and in 1926 he even became an honorary citizen.
The mood has changed over time.
"The residents accused him of numerous minor things, which turned out to be serious allegations," said the doctor of history.
Among other things, the Reich President did not invite the mayor of Dietramszell to a banquet - and he was indifferent to the peasants' plight.
Holzmann documented the loss of reputation with the presidential election of 1932: "While in the first round 157 people from Dietramszell voted for the non-party Paul von Hindenburg, NSDAP competitor Adolf Hitler got 228 votes." he no longer sets foot in the church.
How did Hindenburg get the monastery wall of Dietramszell?
Despite his initial dislike, von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor in 1933.
Holzmann therefore described the statesman as the "most important stirrup holder".
In 1939 - five years after his death - a bronze bust of Hindenburg was attached to the monastery wall in Dietramszell.
Why?
According to the 69-year-old, this has not yet been proven.
He speaks of a "return carriage" by the Nazis towards the church: The journalist and politician Herrmann Esser - among other things a member of the Bavarian state parliament, later the Reichstag and one of Hitler's earliest followers - had "a soft spot" for the Zell area, according to the speaker.
He wanted to have more influence on the convent school.
The village, however, stood at a crossroads.
Holzmann suspects that this is why Esser had the bust attached to the wall.
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Michael Holzmann, historian from Dietramszell
© SH/Archive
Bust disappeared after WWII - Hindenburg memorial
After the end of the war in 1945, the monument disappeared.
Because: "Everything that is reminiscent of National Socialism must be dissolved," was the decision of the Allies after the capitulation of Nazi Germany.
The bronze bust only reappeared seven years later.
On the monastery wall in Dietramszell, five meters to the right of the original location.
"To this day, it is not possible to prove where the bust was in the meantime," says Holzmann.
The image of Hindenburg remained in this place until 2014.
Then the Munich performance artist Wolfram Kastner grabbed the bust, removed the bust, stuck a swastika sticker on the right eye and placed it under a wooden cross in the von Schilcher family's garden.
Kastner wrote on a poster that after its disappearance in 1945, the bust was "put up again by old Nazis, finally removed in 2014 and placed under the cross of Hindenburg admirers".
The historian, in his own words, was “greatly upset”.
Because: "Nobody from the von Schilcher family was a NSDAP functionary."
"Brown Nest?" Historian clears up prejudice
The expert has observed that many people from Dietramszell – and not only since Kastner's controversial art campaign – were worried about “being connoted as a brown village”.
He himself had this experience: Before he moved to the monastery village himself, he was warned: "Dietramszell?
You'll end up in a brown nest." But "up to now" Holzmann "has never heard a brown tone or a statement firsthand".
The Dietramszeller deals intensively with the topic.
It started with a symposium in the community in 2019 with Wolfram Pyta, Professor of Modern History from Stuttgart.
The educational work is to continue: A historical trail with ten stations on von Hindenburg's person and his relationship to Dietramszell is currently being developed (we reported).
The 69-year-old "would also like to get young people on board".
Last year he visited the city archive in Wolfratshausen with children from the Dietramszell Montessori school.
“The children are very interested.
That is why we are continuing this project this year.”
And the Hindenburg bust?
As reported, it was brought to the House of Bavarian History in Regensburg last autumn.
Holzmann describes this as “the best solution”.
Screwing them back onto the monastery wall with an explanatory text would not have been an option for the historian: "It would have become a risk that we would have gotten a group of people in Dietramszell that we do not want here."
ELISA KIESLINGER