Anton Posset

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Anton Posset

Anton Posset (born September 25, 1941 in Munich , † September 10, 2015 in hallech ) was a German historian and Holocaust researcher.

Posset became known above all beyond the borders of Bavaria through his pioneering work around the Dachau Holocaust satellite camp Landsberg / Kaufering and the preservation of the concentration camp Kaufering VII, today's European Holocaust memorial , and as a critical local researcher. By the international memorial Yad Vashem , he was awarded the Yad Vashem chandeliers for its activities around the memory work.

Life

Anton Posset is studying history and French to be a teacher at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . Traineeships in Lyon and Munich followed . He had his first job in school in 1972 in Gunzenhausen at the Simon-Marius-Gymnasium . In 1975 he moved to the Dominikus-Zimmermann-Gymnasium in Landsberg am Lech . There he began to get involved in German-Jewish reconciliation and to address the history of the 20th century in post-war Germany. At that time, such engagement was subject to considerable social taboos. The term memory work was something completely unknown to large parts of the population.

School competitions and Landsberg citizens' association in the 20th century

It all began with the work of a group of students led by the Bavarian high school teacher who 1983/84 for your research about the concentration camp Kaufering and arms project wood pigeon from the hand of President Karl Carstens the first prize in the student competition German history at the expense of the Federal President received. Anton Posset had previously supervised six student projects in this competition and since 1976 has repeatedly received high prizes at national level. In the same year he founded the association " Landsberg in the 20th Century - Citizens' Association for Research into Landsberg Contemporary History e. V. “, of which he was first chairman for over 30 years until his death. With the help of Alexander Moksel, it was thanks to his commitment and passionate commitment that parts of the property belonging to the Kaufering VII concentration camp were acquired. Under his leadership as chairman of the board, he succeeded in convincing the then Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss of the monument status of the last clay tube accommodation on the former Jewish concentration camp Kaufering VII , so that their preservation was ensured as a goal in the "public interest".

Anton Posset was largely responsible for the further development of the Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th century as well as the restoration and maintenance of the overgrown area of ​​the Kaufering VII concentration camp command. In 1989 he began building the first Holocaust memorial in the Federal Republic, the "European Holocaust Memorial" Erecting the memorial stones of eleven European heads of state and shaping the “path of human rights and human dignity”.

In his active years as a grammar school teacher, he supervised students in fourteen history competitions " German history for the Federal President's Prize " as a tutor . Three of these extensive works were awarded first prize. From 1975 to 1980 he was a member of the scientific advisory board of the “German History Schoolchildren's Competition”, a member of the central jury of the Körber Foundation and established the regional jury of the history competition for Upper Bavaria in Munich.

As an author and member of the editorial board of the publication series “Themed magazines Landsberger Zeitgeschichte”, he made a significant contribution to the success of this magazine series.

As a co-author and teacher, he brought his methodical and didactic experience to the four-volume historical work “Recollecting and Judging - Teaching Units History for Bavaria” ( Ernst Klett Verlag ) for the middle school under the heading of “discovering learning”.

For his commitment to German-Israeli reconciliation and his commitment to the work of remembrance, he was awarded the Yad Vashem chandelier in Jerusalem in 1990, the highest distinction the memorial bestows on a person born later . He showed the exhibition "The End of the Holocaust in Bavaria" in the Diaspora Museum Beit Hatefutsot in Tel Aviv . In front of an audience of 400, he gave a lecture on the Kaufering concentration camp command, which received much attention in the Israeli press. The President of the Israeli Knesset Dov Shilansky , a survivor of the Kaufering concentration camp command, described Anton Posset as someone "who can help Germany from the depths to the path of light. If Germany really regretted something and wanted to make up for what happened, one would have to carry him on your hands. "

In 2000, the team of directors / producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks began working on the ten-part television film " Band of Brothers ". On the basis of the conversations and the images from Anton Posset, a sub-concentration camp was reconstructed for the shooting in England, in which the liberation of the Jewish concentration camp command Kaufering was to be depicted. For this reason, the Kaufering / Landsberg concentration camp command was liberated by the Allied troops in season 9 (“Why we fight”).

In 2009, as 1st Chairman of the 20th Century Citizens' Association Landsberg, he transfers the European Holocaust Memorial to the newly established European Holocaust Memorial Foundation, of which he was Honorary President and Vice President until his death.

In 2011, he researched the circumstances of the Reichspogromnacht in Landsberg in 1938 and asked for so-called stumbling blocks to be placed in the footpath in front of the former homes in front of the former homes of the five Jewish families who were expelled from the city of Landsberg on November 9, 1938 , as a reminder of their suffering.

Through his discovery of the inscription “Fusée Céramique” on a clay tube, he worked out the architectural significance of the clay tube structures on the former concentration camp , which go back to the French architect Jacques Couëlle and were made in France.

Interviews with contemporary witnesses - Oral tradition - Oral history

In his many interviews with contemporary witnesses, he gathered a lot of information. He interviewed a large number of survivors from the concentration camps around Landsberg. Probably the best known among them was the neurologist and founder of logotherapy Viktor Frankl .

With this information and with the help of historical documents from various archives, the history of their family members or their graves could be explained or reconstructed to some descendants of concentration camp survivors, especially in the 1990s.

Through his efforts and the pooling of information, the engineer Walter Groos was included in the list of the Righteous Among the Nations from Germany in Yad Vashem .

Anton Posset thus became an important contemporary witness himself over the years. For this reason, an interview of several hours was recorded with him during a visit to Yad Vashem.

Private

Anton Posset was married to the artist Hélène Posset-Navarro. They have two sons together.

Dealing with memory work

Posset was highly valued internationally for his voluntary remembrance work. In 1988 Joseph Rovan proposed Anton Posset to the Federal President for his exemplary commitment to commemorating the Federal Cross of Merit. This proposal found the support of the then German Federal President, but was rejected by the then Bavarian Prime Minister Max Streibl.

Conflicts in the area of ​​tension between full-time and honorary positions

Posset has long been criticized locally. Among other things, he was transferred to another school twice as a teacher. Horst Casper rated dealing with Anton Posset as a real model case for bullying in school and the most handy way to get a committed teacher down. There was a cyclical course on different levels. Colleagues and superiors ride around on "business incidents". Right-wing students and those who are clearly encouraged by the dwindling reputation of the teacher attacked by the school administration can attack the teacher, even insulting them to the point of deep humiliation, without the school principal seeing any reason to act. Then there is the level of the parents, shaped by the family experiences of the Landsberg citizens through the decades, to whom all of this appears to be "nest pollution"

There were two predominant opinions in Landsberg about the actual reasons for this criticism:

  • One side was convinced that his voluntary work was undesirable for certain people. Therefore, attempts have been made to "discredit him by downgrading his performance as a teacher, accusing him of breach of duty, even trying to prove that he is a psychopath without saying so directly." This started with a video that was in the frame was created by Posset's voluntary memorial work. In this film it was reported, among other things, that Posset's school director at the time was formerly “used as a young soldier to transport prisoners”. After this section of the film became known, “the chicane on duty” began for Posset. From then on he was systematically marginalized and bullied as a "nest polluter". The award of the Federal Cross of Merit to Posset was also prevented due to massive interventions by local opponents. It was only at the beginning of the 21st century that his work of remembrance was later accepted by society in the local area.
  • The other side emphasized that “Mr Posset's extracurricular involvement was never the subject of complaints,” but rather his full-time teaching as a teacher. It was the case that Posset "neglected the subject matter" - in favor of statements relating to his voluntary work. “Not only in history, also in German and French” “almost two thirds of the teaching time” would have fallen victim to this topic. Mr. Posset used his “fool's freedom” in his full-time work to talk about his problems with voluntary work and the “expansion of his personal 'enmities'”. For his pupils a successful further study of these subjects was prevented because the “knowledge of the previous school years was not sufficient”, which raised doubts about Anton Posset's previously confirmed pedagogical and didactic skills.

Posset's personal file in the Bavarian Ministry of Culture has grown to several thousand pages over the years.

Awards

  • 1990 Yad-Vashem Leuchter for his lived memory work
  • 2000 Honorary member of the 103rd Infantry Division of the Allied US Forces (liberator of the Kaufering VII concentration camp)
  • 2009 Étoile Civique d'Or for his services to international understanding and moral courage
  • 2010 Honorary President of the European Holocaust Memorial Foundation eV

Publications

Books

  • Remembering and Judging I - 7th class history for Bavaria, Klett Verlag, 1st edition, 1982, ISBN 3-1241310-0-2 .
  • Remembering and Judging II - 8th class history for Bavaria, Klett Verlag, 1st edition, 1982, ISBN 3-1241320-0-9 .
  • Remembering and Judging III - 9th class history for Bavaria, Klett Verlag, 1st edition, 1983, ISBN 3-1241330-0-5 .
  • Remembering and Judging IV - 10th class history for Bavaria, Verlag Klett, 1st edition, 1984, ISBN 3-1241340-0-1 .
  • "Le voyage de Nuremberg - Sur les traces du 3ème Reich"; G. Verneret, J. Bader, A. Posset; Lyon; Goethe Institute, Bleu du ciel; 2014.

Magazines

  • Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th Century: From Hitler's fortress imprisonment to War Crimes Prison N ° 1: The Landsberg Prison in the Mirror of History 1993, ISBN 3-9803775-0-4 .
  • Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th Century: Death March and Liberation - Landsberg in April 1945: The End of the Holocaust in Bavaria, 1993, ISBN 3-9803775-1-2 .
  • Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th Century: The National Socialist Place of Pilgrimage "Landsberg: 1933 - 1937:" The Hitler City "becomes the" City of Youth "1993, ISBN 3-9803775-2-0 .
  • Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th Century: The Kaufering Concentration Camp Command 1944/45: The annihilation of the Jews in the "Ringeltaube" armaments project 1993, ISBN 3-9803775-3-9 .
  • Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th Century: The Landsberg SS Labor Camp 1944/45: French resistance fighters in the German concentration camp, 1995, ISBN 3-9803775-4-7 .
  • Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th Century: Landsberg 1945–1950: The Jewish New Beginning after the Shoah - The future emanated from the Landsberg DP camp, 1996, ISBN 3-9803775-5-5 .

Web links

Sources / individual references

  1. ^ Federal Agency for Civic Education - Memorials for National Socialism; http://www.bpb.de/system/files/pdf/5JOYKJ.pdf
  2. ↑ http://www.buergervereinigung-landsberg.de/umganggeschichte/stadtlandsberg/Posset/BriefStrauss.pdf
  3. ↑ http://www.buergervereinigung-landsberg.de/publikation/publikation.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.buergervereinigung-landsberg.org/hebraic/press/buergervereinigung/chronik.shtml
  5. ↑ http://www.buergervereinigung-landsberg.de/umganggeschichte/stadtlandsberg/Posset/PossetRovan.pdf
  6. ↑ a b Horst Kasper: Mobbing in school . Accepting problems - resolving conflicts. 2nd Edition. Beltz, 1998, ISBN 978-3-407-25204-3 .
  7. ↑ a b c d http://www.buergervereinigung-landsberg.de/umganggeschichte/schulen/mobbingaffaere.htm >
  8. ^ Story of the Landsberg Commemorative Plaque. "103d Infantry Division of WWII Association; http://103divwwii.usm.edu/assets/story-of-the-103d-commemorative-plaque.pdf
  9. ↑ Le voyage de Nuremberg "Sur les traces du 3ème Reich ( Memento from October 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ^ Exhibition on the book in Lyon from November 20, 2014 to January 17, 2015 and homepage with list of publications by co-author G. Verneret
personal data
SURNAME Posset, Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian, high school teacher and Holocaust researcher
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 2015
Place of death Halbch