After the revelations about the composer Paul Winter’s high-ranking Nazi past, the consequences are being discussed in his birthplace Neuburg an der Donau. On Tuesday, Mayor Bernhard Gmehling (CSU) announced to the city council that he would first have Winter’s biography examined again by a historian. The local branch of the Greens had previously called for “a reassessment of his honorary citizenship and the naming of the street as well as the naming of the Paul Winter Secondary School”. The CSU also wanted to rethink how to deal with Winter, who has so far been honored in a variety of ways in Neuburg.
Last week, research by the long-time district administrator Manfred Veit became public, which demonstrated that Winter had a central position as a general in the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW). “Hitler’s desired orders and instructions received the final editorial treatment from him,” writes Veit. As head of the OKW Central Office, Winter is said to have been involved in drawing up criminal orders such as the “Commissioner’s Order”, which stipulated the murder of Soviet officers in violation of international law. He is also said to have been the “right-hand man” of OKW boss Wilhelm Keitel, who was executed as one of 24 major Nazi war criminals. Keitel emphatically praised Winter’s achievements in a 1944 assessment: “Unwavering National Socialist.”
After the reports about Winter’s involvement with the Nazis, Neuburg’s mayor Gmehling and district administrator Peter von der Grün (independent) announced that the serious allegations would be examined. The city council and district council should deal with the case. For decades, the composer, who was born in Neuburg, Upper Bavaria, in 1894, was considered the city’s “big son” and was honored with honorary citizenship, street naming, school names and memorial plaques. First information about Winter’s role as a Wehrmacht general and Nazi music propagandist – for example, as the creator of the 1936 Olympic fanfare – no one paid any attention in 2016.
The ministry did not conduct its own research into the namesake
The local politicians also announced a letter to Bavaria’s Minister of Education Anna Stolz (Free Voters). After all, as part of a systematic review of all Bavarian school names ten years ago, the ministry classified the name of the Paul Winter School as “not contaminated by Nazism” and therefore did not recommend renaming it. In response to SZ’s request, the Ministry of Culture stated that this assessment was based “on the basis of the state of knowledge at the time”. The ministry did not conduct its own archival research into the namesake. A spokeswoman said it was expressly pointed out “that new findings could trigger a new assessment.”
Even when critical information about Winter’s Nazi position had long been publicly available, the Ministry of Culture responded to a citizen’s query last year, “that the namesake Paul Winter took an affirmative stance towards National Socialism during the years of the Nazi regime, but there is no evidence of any involvement in Nazi crimes.” Instead, the ministry pointed out “Paul Winter’s clearly positive role in the post-war period.”
Will the Ministry of Culture now revise its assessment and recommend renaming the Neuburg secondary school? They say cautiously that they don’t want to pre-empt the debate. They are in favor of a democratic discourse on site, “which could then possibly result in an application for the school name to be withdrawn.”
In response to an SZ inquiry last week, school principal Christian Aschenbrenner said that the new findings were currently being intensively discussed. “There are a lot of conversations taking place.” It remained unclear whether he thinks a renaming is necessary. At least in one place they have already distanced themselves from the problematic namesake: a celebratory post on Paul Winter’s 130th birthday from January has disappeared from the school homepage.