“It’s amazing,” says Susanne Meinl, looking James in the face. What the historian finds so amazing are the 25-year-old American’s eyes, which he undoubtedly inherited from his great-great-grandfather Erich König. A man who only very few people in Pullach will remember has been lying in a grave in Munich’s southern cemetery for 66 years. James, who like his brother Thomas, who is two years his senior, his father Jeff, born in 1962, and grandpa Walter, born in 1935, only want to be called by their first names, landed at Munich Airport on Wednesday morning and are now sitting in the small conference room of Pullach Town Hall over coffee and cake and chat with Mayor Susanna Millennium, the archivists Erwin Deprosse and Christian Sachse, historian Meinl and representatives of the press about their grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-father, who was definitely an extraordinary personality.
He was an entrepreneur, cinema owner, writer and a highly respected alpinist, sat on the Pullach municipal council for five years after the First World War, and was the first villa owner in Großhesselohe. The only person who got to know him personally from the group was the former archivist and town hall manager Erwin Deprosse, who once summarized the nature of this man in the sentence: “He was a restless talent, tackling a thousand things at the same time, overflowing with activity, always trying new things , at home in a hundred saddles.” Deprosse was still a young man when Erich König first crossed his path as an “old gentleman with a white Garibaldi beard, sparkling eyes, a strong, expressive voice, who walked through Pullach like a hermit from days gone by, hunched over with age”.
It was Susanne Meinl who, in the course of her research on the local history of Pullach, became aware of this busy man and made contact with his descendants in the United States. At first he was afraid she might try to sell him something, remembers 87-year-old Walter with a smile. Thanks to their research, he and his sons and grandchildren now know more about their German roots. Until then, her knowledge of it was limited to old letters. They couldn’t come to the presentation of Meinl’s book “Pullacher Lebenswege. The history of the anti-Semitically persecuted population” four years ago, but now they are happy to have the finished work with a passage about their famous ancestors in their hands and spend a few days there to be able to look around in his adopted home of Pullach.
The Villa Königshorst was the first villa in Großhesselohe.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
Erich König was born on February 3, 1868 in Dessau, the son of a naval officer who died in the war of 1870/71 and the Hungarian court actress Mathilde König, who died only a few days after his birth. He did an apprenticeship at a bank, then always switched to another industry after just two or three years. What distinguished him was his instinct for up-to-date, attractive new lines of business, such as the manufacture of sportswear for the increasingly popular tourism in the Alps, as historian Meinl writes in her book.
With the operation of an increasingly popular cinematography on Hans-Sachs-Straße in Munich and the development of a mobile milk cooling system, he earned enough money to be able to afford a large property in a prime location in Großhesselohe after the turn of the century, on which he In 1903 he had the art nouveau villa “Königshorst” built for himself and his wife Margarete, whom he married in 1898 and with whom he fathered two children: their daughter Inge, born in 1904, an extreme athlete like him, who died at the age of 33, and the Son Frythjoff, born in 1905, who emigrated to America in 1925 and started a family – which now, almost a hundred years later, is looking for clues and was allowed to view his estate in the Munich City Museum on Thursday accompanied by Susanne Meinl.
There are not only stories of new beginnings and successes that can be told about Erich König. His wife Margarete, who came from a Jewish family but converted to Catholic Christianity at the age of 18, fell seriously ill, the family’s financial situation deteriorated after Hitler seized power on January 30, and the Königs came under fire from the Pullach local group leadership of the NSDAP . Margarete König was now considered a Jewess and, according to Meinl’s research, her husband was also initially unable to identify himself as an “Aryan” due to his illegitimate origins, which he had previously modestly concealed from the registration authorities.
In 1937, Erich König took his wife to the Adriatic Sea in Croatia in hopes of recovery, where she died in 1947. From 1941 onwards, her husband was no longer allowed to visit her because his passport had been confiscated. In 1942 he was forced to sell his lifelong dream, the villa “Königshorst”, but was given the right to live in the attic apartment for life. The villa no longer exists today. After the war, Erich König tried in vain to get his belongings back until the 1950s, says his great-grandson Jeff.
Pullach’s mayor Susanna Millennium friend with the American descendants of Erich König and the book by Susanne Meinl, in which a chapter is dedicated to her ancestor.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
He not only inherited his great-great-grandfather’s eyes, but also, together with his brother Thomas, his mountaineering gene, says Thomas. Erich König was a much respected pioneer of alpinism with many first ascents. His work “Empor”, a memorial book for Georg Winkler, who died in an accident on the Weißhorn in 1888, set standards at the time. A cave at the Totenkirchl is named after König. He felt particularly comfortable at the Wilder Kaiser, his last wish to be buried at the Sonneck there was not fulfilled. But he will be visited by his descendants before they fly back to Philadelphia. A visit to the grave in the southern cemetery is part of the programme.