dr
Michael Platzer (84) presents a book about the Gauting scouts.
Gauting
– With his personal memoirs “Fire Arrow.
A Boy Scout Youth in Gauting” the author Dr.
Michael Platzer (84) not only erected a lasting monument to his own youth, but also to the founder Hans Albert Zimmermann (1908 - 1982), known as "Zimmy".
Gauting's former mayor Dr.
Ekkehard Knobloch, who had been with him in the boy scouts since 1952 as a “cub,” motivated him to write down his memories, says “Micha” Platzer.
For more than three decades, men and women who are now gray have been coming together in late autumn to immerse themselves in bygone times as young boy scouts with Achim Weiler from Gauting, explains Ekkehard Knobloch.
While playing the guitar, the young "Fire Arrows" sang old, familiar, happy songs like "Schön ist die Jugendzeit".
Albert Zimmermann, always called "Zimmy" by everyone, is considered the charismatic founder and soul of the boy scout youth.
Born in Kassel, he founded a scout group as a student in Düsseldorf in 1933, which called itself the "Black Freischar Normannen" but refused to join the Hitler Youth, Platzer writes.
For this reason, the student was arrested by the Gestapo on February 5, 1936, before all youth organizations outside the HJ were banned.
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In the early days, the “Fire Arrows” sent group pictures as Christmas cards.
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"On my first major trip to Italy in 1952, we benefited from his knowledge of the country and the language," writes Platzer.
In the POW camp, "Zimmy" had already prepared the revival of the German scouts and made friends with the scout brothers there.
On January 1, 1950, engineer Albert Zimmermann, who was employed by the US Army in Munich, founded the “Fire Arrows” Gauting with the carpenter sons Dieter and Volker Wildt, Klaus-Peter Kirchheim, Michael Forster and Franz Beran.
The club house of the boy scout youth was a comfortably furnished, converted basement room in the founder's house on Gockelberg, accuses Dr.
Bursts his gaze back.
In August 1950, the large "Friendship Camp" with the Hungarian Scout Association,
with Russian and Ukrainian girl scouts received a lot of media coverage, Platzer proves with printed newspaper clippings.
Many young people from Gauting wanted to be there afterwards.
In the 1950s, the young "Fire Arrows" had 120 members - including the later mayor Knobloch.
“Zimmy raised us to be independent,” Platzer recalls.
When he was thirteen and the youngest, he had to buy groceries for the whole group on a scout trip to Italy with fully packed bikes and overnight stays in a tent.
When he objected that he didn't know Italian, "Zimmy" simply replied: "That's your problem!"
In the 1950s, the young "Fire Arrows" had 120 members - including the later mayor Knobloch.
“Zimmy raised us to be independent,” Platzer recalls.
When he was thirteen and the youngest, he had to buy groceries for the whole group on a scout trip to Italy with fully packed bikes and overnight stays in a tent.
When he objected that he didn't know Italian, "Zimmy" simply replied: "That's your problem!"
In the 1950s, the young "Fire Arrows" had 120 members - including the later mayor Knobloch.
“Zimmy raised us to be independent,” Platzer recalls.
When he was thirteen and the youngest, he had to buy groceries for the whole group on a scout trip to Italy with fully packed bikes and overnight stays in a tent.
When he objected that he didn't know Italian, "Zimmy" simply replied: "That's your problem!"
"A good deed every day": In his book, Michael Platzer recalls how a certain sister, Rosa Orthofer, wrote to the scout leader to thank him for the fact that two of his boys, including himself, transported her luggage from the Gauting train station to the Hauserberg because they didn't have a had money for the taxi.
And during the Christmas campaigns from 1952, young "fire arrows" made toys for children such as farms, dollhouses or wooden waddling ducks.
However, after "Zimmy" moved from Gauting to Berchtesgaden in the 1970s, activities such as regular camps in the open air on the Würm ceased due to a lack of offspring.
In 1998, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Munich Boy Scout Youth, the former Gautings celebrated the anniversary with a campfire at the Reismühle under the motto of the youth nature movement "Forward and through!"
wrote the Starnberger Merkur at the time.
But with the death of the last scouts, the knowledge of the enormous social change in the post-war period would have been "lost forever", Knobloch thanks his now 84-year-old scout friend Platzer for the small chronicle.
The illustrated book "Feuerpfeil" is available for 12.90 euros in the Gautinger Buchhandlung Kirchheim.
Christine Cless-Wesle
