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I wasn’t surprised to read in the museum about how Jews were banned from libraries in Munich in the 1930s as their rights were so comprehensively stripped away from them, but I’m not sure that I’ve actually seen a sign being so clear that they were banned from accessing education in this way. The particular location referenced here was the Deutsches Museum library which is the largest of its type in the country and by 1932, it was known internationally for how it led the way in promoting reading, learning and understanding.

The library doesn’t directly mention on its website about this ban on Jews being able to access the books, but they do note:

“During the Nazi regime, the Deutsches Museum could only maintain its independence by making numerous concessions: Nazi functionaries were elected to the museum’s committees, a “Hall for Motor Vehicles” sponsored by Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler opened in 1938, but above all the library building was used for several propaganda exhibitions, including the inflammatory show “The Eternal Jew”.”

There are some regimes around the world which still attack libraries, hoping that denying education to those they seek to oppress will someone strengthen their own case and position. For anyone who loved books, learning and education it must have been traumatic to see that denied to them.

This painting is one of the items in the “Memory Is” collection which is on display at the museum until May 2026. The painting, by Karoline Wittmann, shows her sister Maria and her sister’s son, Georg. Georg had been born in 1928 and opposed the regime and was sympathetic to the suffering that he saw the Jews were enduring, secretly wearing a Star of David on his undershirt. The museum describes him as a “rebellious spirit” and it’s evident that he wasn’t what the Germans considered to be a well-behaved young man. However, Georg’s father had been killed in Ukraine in 1943 and his mother was required to do wartime labour.

In February 1945, he and a friend entered a bombed out villa in Bogenhausen and got drunk on bottles that they found in the wine cellar. The police arrested them but as there was no space in Munich’s prisons by that time, he was sent to Dachau concentration camp and thrown into Barrack 27. His bereft mother took him food parcels in the attempt to help and protect him, but it’s not thought that they ever got through to him. She and Karoline went to Dachau on 10 April 1945 and the authorities admitted that Georg had died on 3 April 1945 and they claimed he had died of blood poisoning and that he had been cremated, giving his mother some of his ashes. The camp was overrun by typhus and famine at the time, it was likely that this combination is what made Georg unwell.

The friend arrested with Georg survived the war and he later explained that he was actually thrown alive onto a pile of corpses and left to die. There were no crematoria in operation at the time, he was buried in a mass grave and the ashes given to his mother weren’t his. Georg was her only child and his mother suffered terribly until her death in 1984, never allowing any mention of her son. Georg was nicknamed Schorschi by his friends and his death at the age of 16 was just another unnecessary casualty of war, being killed shortly before Dachau was liberated by the Americans on 27 April 1945. What looked liked just a typical painting from the period transpired to have a story behind it which the museum has done well to uncover and to explain to visitors.

Franz Stenzer (9 June 1900 – 22 August 1933) was someone that I hadn’t heard of before visiting this museum and he was featured in a section of individuals who opposed the Nazi regime. He was born in Planegg near Munich, he moved to the city as a teenager, served briefly in the navy at the end of the First World War, then found steady work at the Bahnbetriebswerk in Pasing. Colleagues repeatedly elected him to the works council, and in 1919 he joined the local KPD group, cutting his political teeth in workplace and union battles during the turbulent early Weimar years.

By the mid-1920s Stenzer had risen into the leadership of the KPD’s South Bavarian district. From autumn 1928 to spring 1929 he attended the International Lenin School in Moscow, returned to Munich as a full-time organiser, and was elected to the Pasing city council in 1929. He later edited the party paper Neue Zeitung in Munich and, at the November 1932 election, won a Reichstag seat for the KPD and in 1932 he also joined the party’s Central Committee.

After Hitler came to power Stenzer stayed in Bavaria, working underground to coordinate the KPD’s illegal network and this displeased the new regime. The police could not find him at first and on 19 April 1933 they took his wife Emma (who lived until 1998) hostage, leaving their three young daughters at home. He was seized in Munich on 30 May 1933, taken the next day to the newly established Dachau concentration camp, and singled out as a prominent opponent of the regime. On 22 August 1933 SS men removed him from his cell and murdered him with Nazi newspapers claiming he was shot while trying to escape, a story later disproved by an investigation that established he had been killed with a close-range shot to the back of the head.

Emma Stenzer was released for the funeral, then fled with the children via the Saar and Paris into Soviet exile before returning to Germany after the war. Franz is commemorated among the murdered members of the Reichstag in Berlin, and in Munich in 2023 a memorial sign was installed at his former home on the 90th anniversary of his killing in 2023. In the GDR his name was also given to the substantial ‘RAW Franz Stenzer’ railway works in Berlin-Friedrichshain. The news of his death wasn’t secret and was reported in the British media of the time and it must have been something which caused some concern to a few readers who could foresee what was going to happen. He is significant for many reasons, but not least as the first member of the Reichstag to be murdered by the Nazis.