Georg Elser

The resistance fighter Albrecht Haushofer, to whom we erected the first monument on the “Road of Recollection”, in his Moabit sonnet called “Guilt” (1944/45) came to a harrowing conclusion that has implications reaching way beyond his individual fate. The erudite thinker who was deeply rooted in European culture formulated a number of self-reproaches that in fact apply to the majority of the German elites:
I should have recognized my duty earlier on
I should have labelled disaster more sharply as disaster
For too long I have navigated my judgment…
In my heart I accuse myself:
I have cheated my conscience for a long time
I have lied to myself and others –
Early on I knew the lament’s whole trajectory
I have warned – nor hard enough and clear enough!
And today I know what I owed.

Another man who knew early on what he owed, and who did not belong to the elites, who did not take part in philosophical debates regarding the legitimacy of resistance, who was no expert in politics or strategy, but who only followed the distinct voice of his own conscience that showed him a clear path leading from insight to action is Georg Elser. He was a common man but he knew that the National-Socialist dictatorship meant nothing but crime and war. To Elser, Hitler’s name was synonymous with immeasurable human suffering. Hence came his solitary decision to assassinate Hitler. If it had been successful, it would have altered the course of world history like no other event of the 20th century.

On November 8, 1939, Georg Elser tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler in Munich’s “Bürgerbräukeller”. Germany had been at war since the first of September, and Elser had no doubt that it was going to turn into a world war. He had begun planning the assault a year earlier, in autumn 1938, persistently preparing it on his own. The carpenter from Württemberg nearly managed to set an end to Hitler’s baneful life. Only years later, Stauffenberg and his circle would again come that close; by then, Germany and Europe were laid in ruins and the crime of the century, the Holocaust, had already taken place. Yet, on November 8, 1939, mere minutes before the explosion, Hitler left the hall of the “Bürgerbräukeller” where a celebration commemorating the failed coup of 1923 was held. The dictator’s “fortune” was to be the misfortune of millions of victims. Soon after, Elser got caught by the Gestapo. Under torture he confessed that his action had been aimed at preserving peace in Europe. Sent to a concentration camp to face a show trial later on, Hitler’s revenge finally caught up with Georg Elser: he was murdered on April 9, 1945.

After the war, the recollection of the assassin was eclipsed for decades by ignorance and lack of understanding. The brave maverick challenged Germany’s historical conscience in a discomforting way. His act proves the legend wrong that only people who wielded military or social power had had the chance to successfully offer resistance against the evil. Georg Elser’s fate spells out: the “common” people were not necessarily doomed to be followers of the Nazi regime.

Remembrance becomes most tangible in public symbols. Although time and again, efforts were made to set a monument to Georg Elser – for example in Munich where the assassination attempt took place or in Berlin, Germany’s capital – so far none of them had been realised. The Ernst Freiberger Foundation has made a significant move: since autumn 2008, amidst the assembly of “heroes without swords”, Georg Elser is juxtaposed to great Germans like Walther Rathenau and Thomas Mann. He thereby bears witness to the other Germany, existent before 1945 – a country that, even in dark times, remained true to the clear voice of conscience.

Hardcover
ISBN 978-3-937233-52-9
This book can be obtained from any book store or directly from be.bra Publishing Berlin.
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