MIND THE MEMORY GAP

When the Nazi dictatorship came to an end, forced laborers made up a quarter of Munich’s population. In the district of Neuaubing they even outnumbered the local inhabitants. Of the many camps that once existed in Neuaubing, only the building substance of the Reichsbahn camp has been preserved. Currently, an official memorial site is being created there that is due to open in 2025 as a branch of the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism. Besides the Reichsbahn, the Dornier-Werke also used forced labor in Neuaubing. The aircraft manufacturer exploited the labor of at least 2000 people from France, Italy, and other countries as well as prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp in its Neuaubing factory.1 From 1940 to 1945 the laborers were were held in several camps near the production facilities and employed to make fighter planes for the Wehrmacht. After World War II Dornier continued to expand and was later taken over by Daimler, EADS, and Airbus. The Neuaubing site of the Dornier-Werke was closed in 1995.

[1] See Paul-Moritz Rabe, Das RAW-Lager Neuaubing und seine Insassen, in Winfried Nerdinger (ed.), Zwangsarbeit in München. Das Lager der Reichsbahn in Neuaubing, Berlin 2018, p. 132.

In 1940 the Nazi regime installed an armaments center known as the “aviation research institute” in the Munich suburb of Ottobrunn.[2] Military research and production continue to take place on this same site today. Alongside Siemens and iABG, the research consortium also includes the Airbus Group, the largest arms company in Germany, which took over the military aviation and space technology from the Dornier-Werke. Since 2012, universities such as Munich’s Technical University have become involved, turning the site into a campus named for Ludwig Bölkow. Under the Nazis the engineer Bölkow worked on developing arms technology for the Wehrmacht. In 1943 he played a key role in the construction of the fighter bomber Messerschmitt Me 262, which Nazi propaganda described as a superweapon.[3] The foundations and cellars of a labor camp created to build the “aviation research institute” can be found in the immediate vicinity of the campus named after him seventy years later. In 2018 the site was sold to a private buyer whose declared aim was to destroy the building substance.[4] The Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments stated in writing, however, that there was some justification for classifying it as an archaeological monument. Nevertheless, in agreement with Munich district administration and the local urban planning committee, it let the remains of the building to be demolished. While the Ludwig-Bölkow Campus is having its Nazi history privately disposed of, the State of Bavaria is establishing its space program “Bavaria One” on the very same site.

[2] See Martin Wolf, Im Zwang für das Reich, in Stefan Plöchinger, Jürgen Bauer, Martin Wolf, Birgit Schrötter (eds.), Verdrängt? Vergessen? Verarbeitet?, Ottobrunn 1995; 3rd edition, 2001, pp. 19–22.
[3] See Mathias Schulenburg, Vom Düsenjet zur Solarpanele, Deutschlandfunk, June 30, 2012, Link
[accessed Dec. 7, 2021].
[4] See Franz Wanner, Bereinigung I-II, in Stephanie Weber (ed.), Foes at the Edge of the Frame, Berlin 2020, pp. 40–47.