The decision seemed to have been made three years ago. The Free State will no longer extend the lease, at the latest after the year 2024 the quarry at the former Flossenbürg concentration camp in the Upper Palatinate will have to finally cease operations and then be able to be integrated into the concentration camp memorial. In 2018, for example, the state government assured the state parliament’s science committee, which had joined a corresponding petition from Stefan Krapf, a citizen of the river. But quarry operator Wolfgang Baumann is still fighting for a contract extension. He has now met with Krapf in a civil case at the Weiden district court.
The entrepreneur Baumann wants to sue the activist Krapf for 10,000 euros plus legal fees to compensate for untruths and insults and to prevent similar statements in the future, as Baumann himself says. Krapf, on the other hand, interprets the lawsuit as an attempt to intimidate. Baumann wanted to continue operating the quarry in the concentration camp and prevent anyone from getting in his way.
This getting in the way has been the role of Stefan Krapf for a long time. For many years he has been working with great persistence to end the granite mining in the quarry. Because operations there resumed quickly after the Flossenbürg concentration camp was liberated by the Americans in 1945. Granite was soon broken again where at least 30,000 people had been murdered during the Nazi era. Today the machines work in close proximity to the so-called “prisoner wall”, on which many concentration camp inmates had to toil to death. Over the past few years, Kraft has repeatedly pointed out that this wall is partially filled in by today’s granite quarrying and damaged by rocks.
Baumann, on the other hand, rejects all of this and cites reports that were not prepared on his behalf but on that of the responsible authorities. He and his company only took over this quarry in Flossenbürg around 20 years ago, and even at that time, due to the decades of mining, many things were no longer as they were during the concentration camp. Baumann frankly admits that he wants to extend the lease with the state forests beyond 2024. He has to think of his company and his employees, says Baumann, who does not find any of this as “disrespectful” and “undignified” as Krapf does.
Above all, Baumann does not want to be told by Krapf that he is running “a ruthless and state-sponsored overexploitation” in the former concentration camp quarry, that he is damaging the prisoner wall, which is now a listed building, and that he is “like an evil spirit who dominates the place where thousands of concentration camps died – Has prisoners. With his words he violates the dignity of the concentration camp victims, his excavators are like tanks “. Krapf has published all of this on his homepage or emailed it to a very large mailing list that includes several high-ranking organizations and politicians. In his own words, Krapf initially signed a cease and desist declaration that Bauman had sent him “at a weak moment” and sent it back electronically. But he then tore up the original on paper, and that is what matters from his point of view. Because he won’t bow down, says Krapf – especially since he not only sees Baumann’s complaint as an attempt at intimidation, but also reads another threat from the lawyers’ correspondence.
Accordingly, in the event that the Free State does not extend the lease for the quarry after all, “the resulting substantial claims for damages against your client in the range of up to seven figures” would be asserted. Because Baumann attributes the decision of the state government and the science committee mainly to the persistent work of Krapf, on which both sides are even agreed. Kraft only insists that his information is correct and that he can document damage to the prisoner wall in detail, while Baumann relies on the expert opinion. In 2017, Krapf and a French prisoner organization filed a complaint about the damage, but the Weiden public prosecutor’s office closed the case last year.
The civil lawsuit that Baumann is now leading against Krapf is still ongoing. A grace date, as is customary in such proceedings, did not bring an agreement on Monday. According to Krapf, he rejected the judge’s proposal to pay Baumann at least 3,000 euros instead of the 10,000 euros he had asked. He prefers to rely on a judgment. This should take place on August 10th. The Bavarian cabinet last confirmed at the beginning of 2020 that it would end the granite mining and include the site in the memorial.