"Mahnmal" monument centerpiece

[Jon Fish]

another.....

[Jon Fish]

Just put one of these on e-stand

[ErichS]

Nice photos Jon, if I didn't already have a FHH plaque I would jump on yours!

[ErichS]

Here's one more that I just picked up.

[Jon Fish]

Cool one Erich. You have a decent FHH card collection now !

[ErichS]

Cool one Erich. You have a decent FHH card collection now !

Thanks Jon, yes my collection is getting there.

[Jon. H]

Erich, first of all congrats on a new beauty to a great collection!

I simply love those lions!

[Doug Kenwright]

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but in #253, the Blood flag poll top is darkened..

Was this usual for the march? A 'mourning black' out effect of some type?

The normal finish of this pole top is quite bright...

[ErichS]

An interesting article on what happened to the remains of the fallen . . .



The following article is from our November 2005 issue.

Swept Under the Carpet. How Munich quietly disposed of its Nazi ‘martyrs’ in 1945. By Peter H. Koepf

Seventy years ago in Munich, Adolf Hitler founded the Nazi martyr cult. With a pseudo-religious fervor focusing on the 16 killed during his failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Hitler managed to turn this crushing defeat into a resounding victory. Ever since, the Nazi movement’s former “capital” has repressed this chapter of its history.

A n eerie scene unfolded in Munich’s Nordfriedhof cemetery on the evening of July 5, 1945, when a couple of municipal gravediggers lowered a coffin into plot number 149-3-43 and hastily filled the hole with dirt. No requiem, no eulogy, no priest. The cold burial was over in minutes and Wilhelm Ehrlich had been unceremoniously given a final place.

Ehrlich was one of the 16 “martyrs of the movement” whom Hitler had had buried in Munich. According to the Munich tourist board, the “Ehrentempeln” – or Temples of Honor – on Munich’s Königsplatz were “National shrines of the German people.” Millions of Hitler Youth and Nazi party members regarded the men buried there as role models of self-sacrifice. Ehrlich and the others had become National Socialist heroes.

In 1945, Munich officials decided to eradicate this former Nazi shrine. Even Karl Meitinger, head of the city planning department under the Nazis, was busy thinking about the future. Speaking at the city council’s first postwar meeting in August 1945, he said: “We must strive to salvage the form and appearance of the old city center at all costs.” He expressed the hope that, within a few decades, “our beloved Munich” would be restored to what it once was. The city would then be the focus of a new era of tourism, and its reputation as Germany’s city of the arts could once again flourish. To this end, he said that the Königsplatz would be “de-Nazified,” the Temples of Honor torn down. The bodies of Ehrlich and the other Nazi “martyrs” would have to be removed as discreetly as possible.

The story began on Nov. 9, 1923, Ehrlich and thousands of other heavily armed Nazis marched with Hitler and former Field Marshal Erich Ludendorff from the Bürgerbräukeller tavern into the town center. In the beer hall, Hitler had fired a bullet into the ceiling the day before and declared the “national revolution.”

The police were already waiting for them on the Ludwig Bridge. “Don’t shoot,” the Nazi rebels pleaded. “Hitler and Ludendorff are with us. We’re your comrades! Germans would never fire on other Germans!” The police held their fire and the mob continued its march. They headed north along Residentenstrasse to the “Feldherrnhalle” (Commander’s Hall) where they met with more heavily armed police and army units. Belting out the German national anthem with arms raised in the Hitler salute, the Nazi rebels again stated that Hitler and Ludendorff were among them. This time, however, a shot was fired, followed by a salvo. When the guns fell silent, 14 of Hitler’s mob lay dead on the ground. Another two were killed later in the day during Ernst Röhm’s attempted seizure of the military command post at the corner of Schönefeldstrasse and Ludwigstrasse.

Once he had come to power, Hitler commemorated the 16 dead as “Heroes of the Movement.” He had twin Temples of Honor built on Königsplatz between the two main Nazi Party buildings. Twenty fluted columns towering 23 feet above the ground were arranged on two 70-foot-wide limestone pedestals. Supported by the columns was an open roof built of steel and concrete with etched glass mosaics decorating the underside.

In a mythical two-day ceremony, Hitler had his dead “comrades” brought to their final resting place. On Nov. 7, 1935, 12 years after the attempted putsch, the bodies of Ehrlich and others, were exhumed and taken to the “Feldherrnhalle,” escorted by SA storm troops.

After the pallbearers ceremoniously carried the caskets up the massive steps, the crowd started singing the Horst Wessel song: “Flag high, ranks closed, / The S.A. marches with silent solid steps. / Comrades shot by the red front and reaction / march in spirit with us in our ranks.” Moments later, Hitler appeared and greeted the comrades individually before pausing meditatively in front of each casket.

Early the next morning, Munich was awakened by a 16-gun salute. The old comrades assembled around the “Bürgerbräukeller” and, commemorating the infamous march of 1923, retraced their steps to the “Feldherrnhalle.” Leading the silent procession was Julius Streicher. Behind him were three men bearing the “Blutfahne” (literally, “blood flag”), a relic salvaged from the 1923 shoot-out. Hitler was flanked by veteran fighters followed by members of the “Blutorden” (literally, Blood Order), SA and SS troops, Hitler Youth, and paramilitary troops.

Tens of thousands of spectators stood along the parade route lined by a cordon of SA soldiers. Accompanied by the monotonous beat of marching drummers, the Horst Wessel song blared from gigantic loudspeakers. Black smoke wafted from 400 blazing pylons along the route, each bearing the name of one of the “martyrs” of the movement in gold letters. Flag-bearing delegations from the Nazi administrative districts stood nearby. As Hitler passed each pylon, the immortalized name of each “martyr” was announced over the loudspeakers.

The caskets were taken on carriages to Königsplatz square. At the moment the first carriage arrives on Königplatz square, a shot was fired and the flags of the movement and of the Wehrmacht were lowered. Veteran fighters placed the caskets on the podium. Two large swastika banners will be raised in unison on Königsplatz square.

The Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi newspaper, reported that the Königsplatz had thus been transformed into “a mighty forum for the movement.” The heroes were now resting in the Nazi Party’s “holy sanctuary.” Hitler proclaimed: “Just as they marched fearlessly, so too shall they lie in the wind and weather, in the storms and rain, in the snow and ice, and in the sun, under the heavens. They will lie here in open as an eternal symbol of the German nation. For us they are not dead.”

In the minds of Nazis, the men were now resurrected. Thus, they used their new state religion to transform the defeat of 1923 into a triumph. “Victory Is Yours!” read the headline in the Völkischer Beobachter. The men had been immortalized. In the issue from Nov. 9, 1935, Alfred Rosenberg wrote that the heroes were “resurrected in the freedom of the Third Reich.” Josef Berchtold, the retired lieutenant responsible for establishing the SS, said: “Their martyrdom has arisen to become an unbounded symbol of our commitment. Just as the hour of death at the Feldherrnhalle has become the hour of birth of the future Reich, so have the dead planted the seeds of today’s victory. When the names of the dead were called out, a small group of National Socialists once answered ‘Here!’ Today, an entire nation cries out ‘Here!’ for the dead of Nov. 9, 1923, and for the murdered victims of our struggle. The German people have been resurrected, and with them our deeds.”

Ten years later, Germany lay in ruins and the defeated Nazis were trying to forget the past. On the night of July 5, 1945, municipal gravediggers removed the 16 “martyrs” from the Temples of Honor. The plan was to quickly bury them somewhere else. The remains of Johann Rickmers were sent to the city crematorium: Domestic mail services had been suspended by the Allied forces and his ashes could not be sent to their final resting place in Westphalia. All these burials were lonely affairs.

On June 27, 1945, Mayor Karl Scharnagl, who was appointed by the American occupying forces, published the following decree: “Any public participation during the burials, or any kind of outward display whatsoever, must be avoided.” On July 12, the director of Munich’s municipal cemeteries submitted his report to the mayor: “On July 5, 1945, the bodies, or the remains thereof, were removed from the temples on Königsplatz square without incident. The bodies were placed in family gravesites or buried in common graves. This was carried out at a time of day when the cemetery was closed to the public.”

Designed by Professor Heinlein, the sarcophagi originally cast at the Wasseralfingen steel works in Baden-Württemberg and the eight columns weighing over 21 tons were recycled. The scrap was used to make brake shoes for municipal buses. Weighing nearly 2,900 pounds, the metal caskets were donated to the Munich tram service and converted into soldering material to repair rail ties and electrical lines.

Munich had discreetly rid itself of its former Nazi “heroes.” The bronze eagles designed by party member Kurt Schmidt-Ehmen were removed and the former Nazi buildings on Königsplatz are now used by music students and cultural institutions.

Unlike Berlin with its Topography of Terror, Munich has managed to avoid building a memorial to the past. Today, the only thing that signifies the role of the Königsplatz square during the Third Reich is a paltry plaque displayed on the stone foundation of one of the former “Temples of Honor.” The former “capital of the Nazi movement” is now the “Weltstadt mit Herz” (literally, world city with a heart) – right in line with Karl Meitinger’s plan.

- Peter H. Koepf is the senior editor of The Atlantic Times. He is the author of the book “Der Königsplatz in München. Ein deutscher Ort,” published by Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin, 2005.

[ErichS]

This article is from the Atlantic Times, Nov. 05.

[ErichS]

And a photo of the Ehrentempels in ruins.

[Erich B.]

Thanks for posting the article and photos, Erich! Very interesting, and now we know that unless any employee(s) of the transportation service took souvenirs, the sarcophagi are gone forever.
Erich

[Jon Fish]

A shame indeed that nothing officially survived.But I'm sure there must be some chunks around in garages in the Munich area that no one knows what they are from !
And so things are lost to time

[ErichS]

Thanks for posting the article and photos, Erich! Very interesting, and now we know that unless any employee(s) of the transportation service took souvenirs, the sarcophagi are gone forever.
Erich

I guess this puts the rumor to rest about a Canadian Vet having shipped home one of the Sarcophagi lids and mounting in his yard.

[Giel VW]

One from the Munich museum.