Bombing Hitler (18 page)

At the trade school in Heidenheim, Elser was quite successful, receiving one of three commendations given in his class. He clearly possessed technical talent. His pride in his work, which he displayed even at Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, had its origins here. He also acquired basic skills in metalworking, which were to be of use to him during the construction of his explosive device.

In the lathe shop, Elser soon developed fevers and headaches. The dirty conditions were affecting his health. After a year and a half, he had to quit and seek out a new trade. Following his inclination, he went into woodworking. He had become familiar with this trade in his neighborhood back home. When he used to go after work to pick up sawdust and wood shavings for the farm, he would stay and watch the work going on at the woodworking shop and began to like it more and more. On March 15, 1919, he became an apprentice to the master woodworker Robert Sapper. It was a small shop—besides the boss, the staff consisted of a journeyman and three apprentices.

During the interrogation at State Security Headquarters, when Elser was asked about his apprenticeship, he spoke more freely. At the beginning of his apprenticeship he made simple things: He built boxes, stools, and footstools; he cut out the wood, planed it, and assembled the pieces. Even at this stage the work appealed to him, and he was clearly very talented. The tasks became more difficult, and by the end of his apprenticeship he was able to produce large and complex pieces of furniture completely on his own. During this period he also occasionally worked in the construction branch, but the work was generally dirty and he didn't care for it. He was more interested in the more challenging work of furniture making, and liked to call himself a
Kunstschreiner,
an “artist in woodworking.” His weekly salary in the first year of his apprenticeship was one mark, in the second year two marks, and in the third year three or four marks. It was enough so that he could now buy himself clothes as well as tools for use on his own projects. Elser's tool collection was his lifeblood, his pride and joy—and in 1939 in Stuttgart, it was to become the undoing of his sister Maria Hirth.

At home as well, Elser demonstrated his skill and industriousness. In what was probably his first attempt to build a room, he converted a cellar into a living space.

Georg Elser as a young man.

Elser finished the Heidenheim Trade School at the top of his class. Now at least his parents could be satisfied with him. Since the apprenticeship with Sapper paid so little, he soon gave notice and moved on to Aalen to work in the Rieder Furniture Factory (now the Hotel Antik). His boss Sapper did not want to let him go—this skilled craftsman was irreplaceable. Even as an apprentice he had worked overtime when it was necessary. After he gave notice a second time, Elser simply didn't return to work. Independence and determination were trademarks of Elser's character throughout his life.

Elser then worked in Aalen until the fall of 1923. Soon thereafter, inflation plunged him into the first crisis of his working life. The precipitous fall of the currency diminished his pay week by week at first, then hour by hour. With the amount in today's pay packet, one could barely manage to buy a loaf of bread tomorrow. So Elser decided to give notice and return to working in his father's wood business and on his mother's farm—as before, in exchange for room and board and without any allowance.

In the summer of 1924, Elser found a new job in Heidenheim with the furniture manufacturer Matthias Müller, another small shop with four or five journeymen and one or two apprentices. The company produced custom-made furniture for the home. For the most part, Elser built kitchen cabinets and wardrobes. He was able to carry out these projects from start to finish, working completely alone, as was his wont. Elser's independence, of which he was very proud, was being threatened by the advent of modern furniture factories with their mass production. Individual craftsmen like Elser were able to survive mainly in rural areas because of the proximity to their customers as well as lower wages. Elser's self-reliance was a key factor that differentiated him from others who opposed Hitler. The idea that one man could eliminate Hitler on his own apparently did not occur to the members of the military resistance.

At the beginning of 1925 Elser gave notice once again. Like Elser's previous boss, Matthias Müller also didn't want to let him go. Elser left the company without permission and went back to working at home. But he couldn't stick it out there for long: “I really wanted to get away and get more training in my trade.” His mother reflected after the war: “As far as his occupation was concerned, Georg was very ambitious; he wanted to get ahead and continue learning.” His lifestyle, she said, was very respectable—he didn't smoke and he didn't drink. Georg's aversion to alcohol certainly traced back to his grim experiences with his father.

Georg Elser had other objectives: he wanted to get away from the misery of his parents' fighting, the constant control over his life and his wages, and the obligation as the eldest to always be at the family's beck and call. “He never wanted to have anything to do with girls while he was living here in Königsbronn,” his mother claimed, and unknowingly touched on a sore spot. As a twenty-two-year-old, Georg surely felt that the situation had to change, but he saw no opportunity for romantic experimentation under the watchful eye of his mother. Upon his return from Konstanz seven years later, he fell in love with a woman who was still married and, like his mother, deeply troubled. When he took the woman to his room, his mother threw him out of the house.

G
EORG ELSER, BRANDED
by posterity as an eccentric and a loner, struggled for weeks at the beginning of 1925 with his desire “to get away.” But he didn't know where to go. On one of his Sunday walks with Eugen Rau, he met a woodworker at the Zum Hirsch tavern in the neighboring town of Oberkochen. The man had himself gone away and recommended his old employer, the Wachter Company, a small woodworking shop in Bernried near the Swabian town of Tettnang.

After applying for a position by mail, Elser received approval to begin work on March 15, 1925. He took the train to Tettnang, then walked two hours to get to Bernried, a small spread-out community consisting of only a few houses.

The Wachter Company is still in business today, run by the grandson of the owner back in Elser's day. At that time the equipment at the shop was very simple. Everything was still done by hand, somewhat to Elser's dismay. The only machine was a circular saw, which the master had built himself. There wasn't even a workbench—the pieces had to be planed by hand. Since Georg was the only employee, he was taken into the family. He had a room in the attic and took his meals with the family. Room and board were free, and he received a weekly wage of eight to twelve marks. All in all, it wasn't bad compensation, but Elser felt very isolated. After six weeks, he gave his notice. The owner was reluctant to let him go.

At the beginning of May, Elser simply took off into the wild blue yonder, with no new job in sight. For the first time in his life, he was out traveling on his own. He took his time, first hiking along Lake Constance, perhaps through Kressbronn and Langenargen, but in any case headed for Friedrichshafen. It took him a week to cover this stretch of about fifteen miles. Although his mother knew him only as a hard worker who spent many Sundays at home working in his shop, he now discovered personal freedom and the pleasure of idleness. For a work-obsessed Swabian, this represented a subversion of the traditional values. The shackles of the repression and constant fighting that had marked his life started to loosen.

He didn't need to ask for money along the way, and with his savings he was able to stay at inns. He always asked around about work, but had no success. Through the employment office in Friedrichshafen he found a position as a woodworker at Dornier Metal Works in the neighboring community of Manzell. It's hard to imagine a more dramatic technological shift for that time: from simple carpentry executed by hand to a modern airplane industry expanding by leaps and bounds and producing one sensational product after another.

At his plant, which had been founded only recently in 1923, Claude Dornier produced a series of flying boats called “The Whale.” Everything was still in a pioneer stage. In 1925 alone—during Elser's time there—the new seaplane set twenty-five world records. Inter-national air travel, which was still in its infancy, depended largely on Dornier planes, primarily “The Whale.” Although the flying boat was constructed of metal, the propellers were fashioned out of wood. Since the work required great precision, it was right up Elser's alley. Perhaps it was here that his well-known “check-o-mania,” which people were to make fun of later on, got its real start. The wood was glued together in layers, cut out roughly with a circular saw, and then planed with painstaking patience to the prescribed curved shape. The work was not boring, because the propellers varied in shape, the number of blades, the kinds of layers, and in diameter. And in this modern plant, the compensation was appropriately high. With piecework and much overtime, Elser earned more money than ever before.

However, he was still not satisfied with his personal circum-stances. Since Lake Constance attracted many vacationers in the summer, he was not able to find a room in Friedrichshafen and had to take a room at an inn in Kluftern, which was located near the rail line between Friedrichshafen and Markdorf. At Dornier, he became friends with Leo Dannecker, who played the clarinet and wanted to join a music organization in Konstanz. This idea appealed to Elser, who had enjoyed playing music since his school days. The two of them found work as cabinetmakers with a clock manufacturer in Konstanz and gave notice at the much more promising Dornier Works.

It was the practice of the clock factory in Konstanz to purchase clockworks in the Black Forest, then build individual cases for them. Using this method, they produced mantel clocks, wall clocks, and grandfather clocks. But during the Depression, when unemployment was so high, orders from customers fell off. The clock factory was located on the left bank of the Rhine, at Fischenzstrasse 1, in a spacious factory building in the part of town known as Paradies. On the ground floor there was a chemical and pharmaceutical factory called Medico. The clock factory had its operations on the second floor.

The first room Elser rented in Konstanz was in the old part of town at Inselgasse 15 on the third floor of the rear building, in the apartment of Bruno Braster, a painter. The front building was an old patrician villa with four floors, listed in older documents as the “Haus zum Blaufuss.” Elser shared the room with a friend named Fiebig, a Communist who also worked at the clock factory. In 1928, Fiebig convinced him to join the
Rote FrontKämpferbund
(Red Front Fighters League), an organization of the German Communist Party that was banned in 1929. After his friend died in 1930, Elser moved to St. Gebhardstrasse in Petershausen, a part of town located on the right bank of the Rhine. His girlfriend Mathilde Niedermann lived at number 4 on the same street. He later rented a room from his girlfriend's sister-in-law at Fürstenbergstrasse 1, where he stayed until early 1932.

As they did while he was in Friedrichshafen, Elser's family maintained ties with him. His mother in particular continued to look after him: Georg sent his laundry home to be washed and mended. Two of his siblings came to visit him in Konstanz: His sister Anna spent Pentecost of 1928 or 1929 with him, and his brother Leonhard stopped by during a bicycle tour with friends in 1929.

The greater personal freedom Elser found in Konstanz came at the price of more insecurity in his job situation. From August 1925 until early 1930, Elser worked at the same clock factory making clock cases. During that time, he was placed on leave for six months on three separate occasions. The entire clock industry remained in constant crisis, and the company changed hands several times. In 1920 it was called the Winterhalder Home Clock Factory; in 1925 it became the Constantia Clock Factory, owned by Rudolf Metzner and Georg Fuchs; then in 1926-27 it went into bankruptcy. For a period of six months Elser had no work, even though he regularly inquired at the employment office as well as furniture manufacturers and cabinetmakers. In 1928, the company reopened as Schuckmann & Co. Clock Factory, and Elser was rehired.

By the beginning of 1929, Schuckmann was in difficulty, and he offered the entire facility to the city of Konstanz for 90,000 marks. The city considered this price too high, so Schuckmann tried to sell off individual parts for ten marks per square meter. But the company could not be saved, and in desperation the boss set fire to the place. The police immediately saw arson as the cause of the fire. Once again, all the workers were dismissed. The story of this small com-pany can serve to illustrate how things were during the years of the Great Depression.