Feldafing und der Nationalsozialismus – Traum und Albtraum

Feldafing on Lake Starnberg was a focal point of contemporary history and a place of stark contrasts in the 1940s: In the “earthly Elysium” designed by King Max II, the NSDAP set up a singular elite school, and after 1945 a camp for up to 6,000 Jewish displaced persons was built there.

Feldafing was a villa resort and an international tourist destination. From 1934, the Nazis built their highly privileged “Reich School of the NSDAP” here, also with prisoners from two Dachau subcamps. A sharp cut came at the beginning of May 1945. The US Army forced the people of Feldafing to clean, bring beds and clothes and housed survivors of the death trains and death marches in Feldafing. Over 40 villas were confiscated. The contrasts could not have been starker: teachers at the Reich school wrote of the “unbridled hatred of the former inmates of the concentration camps” and described the survivors as “criminals”. The camp inmates feared the Germans: “Can you imagine us victims, who had miraculously survived, walking among murderers?” Nevertheless, the DP camp became a place of new beginnings; 765 children were born here. It existed until 1951, and the Bundeswehr has owned a large part of the site since 1957.

This book about the special history of Feldafing gives a voice to the very different perspectives of members of the Reich school, villagers and displaced persons.