Wilhelm Roser 1905 - 1943

Born 4.7.1905 in Nürnberg
Died 20.1.1943 in Steyr

Biography

Wilhelm ‘Willi’ Roser was the third of the four children of Johann Andreas Roser and Luise Roser, née Manold. His father is listed in the baptismal register of Nuremberg’s St. Peter district as a post office assistant; later he was a customs inspector in Nuremberg. His godfather is listed as Friedrich Wilhelm Mangold, a baker; Wilhelm Roser was named after him. His eldest sister, Berta Roser, married name Heckel, who died in 1957, was listed by Wilhelm in Mauthausen as his relative; the other siblings were Johann, died 1973, and Emil, died 1969. Wilhelm had a protestant christening on 30 July 1905 in Nuremberg’s St. Peter district and was confirmed on 13 April 1919 in Nuremberg’s Church of the Holy Trinity. He attended the Preißler School in Nuremberg. All the available documents list his profession as ‘waiter’.

Wilhelm Roser married Anna Marie, née Krauß, on 20 March 1930 at the Sommersdorf registry office (marriage register 1) and in church on the same day. The married couple’s apartment was located at 50 Breiten Gasse, Nuremberg ‘St. Hubertus’ (the name of the restaurant that Wilhlem and Anna took over as tenants) and had to be given up again already at the end of June 1930.

The couple separated as early as 1 August 1930; Anna filed for divorce and the marriage was dissolved at a hearing on 30 March 1932 due to irretrievable breakdown. Blame was ascribed to Wilhelm Roser, who also acknowledged this. The divorce came into force on 13 April 1932.

The marriage produced one son, Hans Leonhard Roser, born on 7 March 1931. He never saw his father since his mother denied her (ex-)husband access and returned to her home village of Claffheim. Hans Roser later reported to having witnessed an argument between his father and mother one night, but he was only able to hear what was going on.

The reasons that emerge from the files for the swift breakdown of the marriage are that Wilhelm Roser entered the marriage with Anna under false pretences. He had, as she only found out later, seven previous convictions – for theft, embezzlement, falsifying documents and fraud, with the first at the age of 17. It seems another offence was added during the marriage (embezzlement of 20 Reichsmarks), which brought a three-week prison sentence from the Nuremberg district court – from 1 August 1931 – and was (I assume) the reason for the separation. However, the offences did not cease and carried on at the end of August; records indicate a ‘swindle’ involving 30 bottles of white wine. The divorce order states that Wilhelm built up several business debts, ‘hung around’, did not come home at night – taken together these are indicators of a petty criminal whose ‘career’ continued after the separation. In December 1930 he was sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment in the Mannheim state jail; from 1 April 1932 he was incarcerated in the St. Georgen prison in Bayreuth. The divorce order noted that he no longer possessed ‘any moral footing’ and was ‘obviously a reckless person whose prospects of improvement are slim’. However, he was no ‘drunkard’. In 1933 he repeatedly came to police notice in Koblenz, Hof and Neuenmarkt (sic!) for small misdemeanours. There are no records of violence or other attacks. Another place listed is Dessau.

Nothing more is known about what happened to Wilhelm Roser. From information provided by his sister Berta (Nuremberg) and his sisters-in-law Hildegard Roser (Duisburg) and Anneliese Roser (Augsburg) it seems that Wilhelm’s imprisonment in the concentration camp was for ‘spreading poems about Hitler’ and singing satirical songs about Hitler. He was ‘picked up by the police’.

Anna Roser returned to her home village and raised her son Hans alone. She described these years as a time of disgrace and readjustment; she was very exposed. She never recovered from what she considered her shameful marriage to and divorce from Wilhelm and she also couldn’t talk to her son about it. Five years later she married the lumberjack Georg Völklein, with whom she had three more children. He became a revered and beloved father to his stepson but he went missing in action in 1942 during the Russian campaign in Stalingrad.

Wilhelm Roser was taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp as an ‘S.V.-prisoner’ (‘Sicherungsverwahrungshäftling’ or ‘preventative detention prisoner’). The basis for this was the agreement between Reich Führer of the SS Himmler and Minister of Justice Thierack (September 1942) regarding the transfer of penal prisoners to Mauthausen. According to the death register he died on 20 January 1943 in the Steyr-Münichholz subcamp ‘of epilepsy’. The notification of death sent to his eldest sister Berta by SS Untersturmführer of the Mauthausen concentration camp administration (no name!) claimed the place of death had been the ‘local hospital’.

The letter from the concentration camp led the family to believe that measures had been taken to aid Wilhelm’s recovery: ‘Your brother Wilhelm, when he reported sick, was admitted to the infirmary and given medical treatment. He was granted the best possible treatment and medical care. In spite of all medical efforts it was not possible to overcome the illness. Your brother died without uttering any last wishes. I express my condolences for your loss.’

According to the letter, Wilhelm Roser’s body was ‘cremated at the municipal crematorium’ on 23 January 1943. They offered to send the urn to his sister free of charge as long as she could provide an interment agreement from the local cemetery authorities. According to the Nuremberg cemetery office, the ashes were interred anonymously at Nuremberg’s West Cemetery as part of a larger transport. At the end of March 1943 Berta was sent his clothing from the property store: a hat, a pullover and a shirt. A jacket had ‘had to be destroyed for reasons of hygiene’.

According to information provided by his sisters-in-law, Berta Roser examined his clothing and found traces of blood on it which suggested he had been killed with a shot to the back of the neck. It is now impossible to trace this any further.

Throughout his life, Wilhelm and Anna’s son longed for information about and a connection to his father. After the war he sought contact with his family and was able to research his genealogy. But when, at one time, he wanted to include a picture of his father in a photographic family tree, this nearly caused a break with his mother. Until she died she remained scared that the ‘disgrace’ of his death as a criminal in a concentration camp could damage her son’s chances. Thanks to the support of the local priest, he was the first boy in his village to take the higher school leaving exams.

In a letter to me, his youngest son, when I was wondering what career path to follow, my father Hans Roser explained his choice of profession – protestant priest – and his studies of protestant theology by saying that he wanted to ‘redeem’ his father’s ‘botched life’. Later he spent two terms as a representative of the CSU (Christian Social Union conservative party) in the German federal parliament and – with great passion – in the European parliament. He died in 2005. His wish for some sort of connection to his father never left him, as my mother confirmed. Nevertheless he rarely spoke of it. But he kept all the files. It was only during my research that my mother give me access to them. Until that time we hadn’t known about them.

As children (as far as is known, Wilhelm Roser had four grandchildren) we never learned anything about our grandfather other than that he had died in 1942 in Mauthausen concentration camp as a ‘criminal’.

When I was there I felt in a way that was both moving and a burden that there was a connection. Although I had already visited many other memorial sites, suddenly in Mauthausen it was my own soul at stake. Perhaps this is because I live openly as a homosexual and am legally ‘partnered’. Under National Socialism I would certainly have been imprisoned myself. That a fantasy in my mind tends in this direction, thinking that my grandfather was possibly arrested as a ‘175er’ but deported to Mauthausen as a criminal, haunts me. The research, however, has made it clear that this was not the case. Rather his ‘career’ as a petty criminal, which had begun before the advent of National Socialist rule, was pretty irreversible – and from which there was no escape for my grandfather. The references to him spreading satirical verses about Hitler may well be true – or might spring from a wish to see something heroic in his wretched end.

Regardless of how, the idea of what it must have felt like for that young man, who had nothing left but four pieces of clothing, but a ‘botched life’ – and a son he was never allowed to see – when he was forced to work in the quarry in Mauthausen/Steyr, saddens me to my soul.

It is forever merciless.

 

Traugott Roser

Translation into English: Joanna White

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