Bombing Hitler (19 page)

Through the employment office in Kreuzlingen Elser found an attractive position in the nearby Swiss village of Bottighofen. So he went to work in Switzerland for the first time, at an hourly wage of 1.30 franks, which at the time was 1.04 marks. He was very content there; however, within six months the work ran out at this small business as well, where Elser was the only employee. He was let go.

Elser got through these periods of unemployment but became more serious as a result, as some of his siblings noticed after his return. He survived on unemployment benefits and his savings without having to depend on anyone. By 1927 he had saved enough that he was able to spend 140 marks to buy himself a new bicycle, a symbol of affluence on a modest scale. For his own enjoyment, he built small artistic pieces such as jewelry boxes and sewing boxes, often decorated with fine marquetry. He gave most of these to his girlfriends.

Beginning in May 1929, Elser would ride his bicycle every day to the Schönholzer woodworking shop in Bottighofen. It was a short trip of three miles—no more than twenty minutes by bicycle. At the customs office in Kreuzlingen he showed the customary red card used for local cross-border traffic. At that time border control was fairly loose. The customs officers on both sides were unconcerned when locals smuggled small quantities of coffee, sugar, cocoa, and tea. Looking back on these innocent times, Elser felt that he knew the border area between the customs offices in Kreuzlingen and Emmishofen quite well. The fact that he could not imagine the changes brought on by the beginning of the war in 1939 became his undoing on November 8, 1939.

In Konstanz, Georg Elser was able to broaden himself and become more independent. He acquired skills in clock making and produced cases for sophisticated clocks. Later on in Königsbronn he used these skills to establish a small business. His assassination plans were to hinge upon these very skills.

Elser would not achieve greater personal independence until he could escape the watchful eye of his mother. His contacts with women did not come about as quickly as the Elser literature heretofore would have us believe. At first he might venture a kiss after an evening spent practicing at the Konstanz zither club or an evening at the Kreuzlingen temperance club. Then word would have it that he was “going” with yet another girl. Even the Berlin Gestapo was sufficiently titillated by the subject in 1939 that they created a separate chapter in their reports entitled “Sex life.” Appropriately, it was followed by the chapter entitled “Religious life.”

The first time that Georg Elser slept with a woman he was twenty-two years old. This was probably around the beginning of his time in Konstanz. His first experiences were so brief and superficial that he could not recall the last names of the two young women involved. The Kripo summarized Elser's romantic encounters with bureaucratic crispness: “During my stay in Konstanz, I first had sexual intercourse with a certain Brunhilde, whose last name I cannot recall. . . . After Brunhilde, there was a certain Anna, then Mathilde Niedermann, then Hilda Lang; then later on in Königsbronn there was my land-lady, whose name was Härlen.” It cannot be said for certain that Elser changed girlfriends frequently. It was likely just some envious people who in their thoughtlessness subsequently made him out to be the Casanova of the Ostalb.

Love brought with it confusion for Elser. An outing with his girlfriend Mathilde Niedermann to the island of Mainau in Lake Constance was captured in a photograph from the year 1929. Mathilde, quite the lady in her elegant shoes, is seated on a large stone; Georg is standing behind her with a smile on his face, a handkerchief rakishly tucked into the pocket of his jacket. Standing next to them is Leonhard Elser, ten years younger than Georg and visiting his older brother at the time. It was probably summer. In December of 1929, Mathilde Niedermann, who was working as a waitress, became pregnant. By the time she became aware of it, it was already too late for an abortion, which in Switzerland was permitted up until the third month. Georg Elser didn't want the child. So following up on announcements found in newspapers, the two of them went to Switzerland and tried to find help in Weinfeldern (in Thurgau) and Geneva. On both occasions they were turned down because it had been longer than three months. When Elser first heard the results in Geneva, he didn't believe Mathilde Niedermann and had the doctor explain everything to him again in minute detail. Their mutual trust was destroyed.

It was only with great reluctance that Elser paid child support for his son Manfred, who was born September 13, 1930. Time and again he had to be warned by the youth welfare office, until finally a large part of his wages were garnished. This drove him to seek greater independence, so in Königsbronn he started working for himself more, taking on jobs from private individuals in order to avoid the child-support payments. Mathilde Niedermann held this against him for the rest of her life.

Georg Elser with his girlfriend Mathilde Niedermann and his brother Leonhard on the island of Mainau in 1929.

Georg Elser's son Manfred and his mother Mathilde Niedermann (Bühl), around 1939.

In the meantime Georg sought comfort in Konstanz with Hilda Lang, a seamstress who lived at Hussenstrasse 9. From 1923 until 1936, she had a position as a cutter with Pius Wieler and Sons in Kreuzlingen; she was a very capable and popular worker, who had the resilience to weather the crises of those times.

Elser first met Hilda at the Kreuzlingen Free Temperance Union, a close-knit group also frequented by many people from Konstanz. He was at times so close to the Lang family that he occasionally attended church—a Catholic church—with Hilda. The relationship continued until the summer of 1932, and the two visited each other often when Elser was living in Meersburg, until a cry for help from his mother called him back to Königsbronn.

During the interrogations in Berlin, Elser concealed this part of his life at Lake Constance. He must have enjoyed the temperance group; the evening social gatherings fulfilled a need for him. And once during a brief visit from his sister Anna, he was pleased to show her the café where he occasionally enjoyed the luxury of a cup of coffee. Fundamentally, Georg was very modest and yet at the same time very tenacious, capable of enormous sacrifice in pursuit of a greater goal. At the temperance group, Elser particularly liked being the rooster in the henhouse. The organization had about thirty members, both working class and middle class, as the Swiss police determined. After questioning the Swiss members in 1939, the Swiss police summarized their findings: “Elser was a member for a year and a half during the period 1929-30. At that time Elser carried on a relationship with Hilda Lang of Konstanz, who was also a member of the same temperance union.” Then comes a statement that doesn't quite fit the typical image of Elser: “Elser was considered a dapper young fellow and was quite popular.” Nothing here of the eccentric, nothing of the slightly grubby craftsman in Munich, nothing of the man plagued by depression.

For the most part, Elser seems to have been serious about both Mathilde Niedermann and Hilda Lang. He took each of them to Königsbronn and introduced them to his family, primarily to his mother, who twenty years later recalled that he had never spoken of marriage. A concerned mother does not forget a detail like this.

Another highlight of his experiences in Switzerland was surely the sense of freedom in the work environment at the Schönholzer woodworking shop in Bottighofen. Indeed, he had this same sense about Switzerland in general and felt ever more drawn to it as circumstances under Hitler weighed ever more heavily upon him. From May 1929 until the fall of that year, Elser rode his bicycle across that border every workday to the shop, where besides master Schönholzer and his son, he was the only employee. He was well acquainted with the work. He focused primarily on home furnishings.With his flexible approach to his work schedule, Elser was not only ahead of his time, he was also revealing a degree of self-confidence not typical for one of his proletarian origins—at the very time that he was becoming more involved with the Communist crowd. If Elser saw himself as a socialist, as he surely did, he was nonetheless also an individualist with a desire for independence and self-reliance and had a great need for freedom. This nonproletarian relationship to his work manifested itself in other positions that he held.

A love for music became an important factor in Elser's maturation process. He had played the flute and the accordion since his school days without benefit of instruction, simply by ear. Later on, when he had finished school, he played only the accordion, performing at small parties. In 1924 in the town of Ochsenberg, located near Königsbronn, he once accompanied dancing lessons on his accordion, but later on he sold the instrument.

In 1926 Elser became acquainted with the Oberrheintal Traditional Dress Club. He joined the group and from a member named Dassler, also a woodworker, he purchased a concert zither for twenty marks. Elser wanted to learn to play the instrument properly, and spared no expense in doing so. He first took a few private lessons from a music teacher at one mark fifty per lesson, then continued his lessons with the chairman of the organization for two marks a lesson. After more than two dozen lessons, he quit—it was a question of money, he said. The recurring periods of unemployment forced him to watch his money carefully.

The weekly meetings of the club took place on Saturdays at the inn Zum Kratzer, which was located at Salmannsweilergasse 13 in the old part of Konstanz near the fish market. Here they practiced music and dancing. When the society offered an evening of entertainment, family members came as well. Elser had no difficulties establishing contacts. Occasionally, when accompanying one of the girls home, he would give her a kiss. The Gestapo was disappointed that they could not extrapolate such encounters into new love affairs.

In 1930, Elser experienced a low point in his life at Lake Constance: For the third time, he became unemployed. In the same year, Herr Rothmund of Meersburg, former owner of the Oberrhein Clock Factory on Fischenzstrasse in Konstanz, started up a new company manufacturing clocks. Early in 1930 he opened the operation in Meersburg in the facility of the master glazier Wilhelm Matthes at Stettener Strasse 2. Rothmund concentrated on mantel clocks and kitchen clocks and had a workforce of eight. Some of them, including Elser, commuted daily by ferry across Lake Constance. Once again he was paid according to the scale of the woodworkers' union. In May of 1932 the company went bankrupt. Instead of his back pay, Elser received several clock mechanisms as a settlement; these provided the basis later on for his private business in Königsbronn. He was later to incorporate two of the devices into his work at the Bürgerbräukeller.

Once again Elser had to look for work. He would have been left completely outside the socioeconomic fabric if it had not been for his connections and his self-reliance; even so, he managed to eke out only a minimal existence. In order to cut back on expenses such as the ferry and room rent, he moved to Meersburg, where he bartered furniture construction or repair for room and board. It was a modest lifestyle, but one to which he had become accustomed at home. He found the first such arrangement for eating, sleeping, and working with the Dreher family on Kunkelgasse, located behind the town hall.

Sooner or later, this formula for getting by would have to play out. At some point Elser would exhaust his circle of friends and he would receive no more orders. The Drehers recommended Elser to a widow named Becker who lived above the Matthes' glazier shop. There were small jobs to do such as repairing and building tables. Food and drink were always provided by the customer. He moved on to three other families who were acquaintances of the Drehers. After the assassination attempt, these families were dragged to the Gestapo and interrogated for weeks and even months. According to the oral record, two of those interrogated were so mistreated that they suffered from the experience for a long time afterward.

It is clear that Elser had a close relationship with the Dreher family. From this period a photograph survives that shows a different Elser from the one known to us through clichés. In the picture, taken at Stadtgraben 5 (a former Catholic rectory, which is now a historic site), there are nine people standing in front of the barn door. On the far left is a Herr Holz and on the far right, his wife. Second from the left is Herr Dreher, next to him his wife. Fourth, sixth, and seventh from the left are three Dutch women who happened to be staying there at the time. Second from the right is the farmhand Josef Kopp, who later became a servant at the Hotel Seehof. In the middle of this cheerful assembly is the future assassin: a harmless man with a smile on his face and a large black shock of hair hanging down the right side of his face—a carefree, rakish hairstyle, one no longer tolerated in the Third Reich and associated with artistic circles, the youth movement, or swing-era young people.