Station: [106] The Pädagogium

M: "Mögglingen Pädagogium – on a beautiful site in the Rems Valley, a 6-class secondary school which includes the Lindenhof accommodation for boarders. State final examination providing a secondary school leaving certificate, (...), known for its excellent catering; admission from year ten onwards."

F: A small newspaper ad published in 1928. At the time, the impressive building on today's Bahnhofstrasse housed a private secondary school, run by one Martin J.C. Preston from Düsseldorf. He called himself the head master and dubbed his school the "Pädagogium".

M: "Diligence, order and irreproachable moral conduct are the highest commandment, and I do not tolerate obstinate idlers ... my pupils shall not go on to become dissolute louts."

F: But from 1927, the school increasingly found itself in financial difficulty. Three years later, the dream was finally over, and the school was shut down. Over the following years, the building changed hands several times – and became increasingly derelict. But in all those years, one thing never changed: the name Pädagogium.

M: The building was originally erected by the local stationmaster, August Betz. That was in 1907. Betz wanted to open a school for transport officials, where young men were to be trained for junior administrative roles on the railway.

F: There was demand for railway staff. The line from Cannstatt to Wasseralfingen had been opened in 1861. The reason it went to Wasseralfingen was because one of the most important state-owned ironworks was based there. The line was equipped with an electric telegraph, and there was a series of lineman's cottages about a kilometre apart.

M: The most famous (or infamous) graduate of this school for transport officials was a certain Adolf Barthelmäs.

F: He was born on the 21st of May 1900 in Schrozberg near Ellwangen. From 1914 to 1917, he attended the school for transport officials in Mögglingen, then graduated, and subsequently had a career with the German Reichsbahn. In 1937, he joined the Nazi party, and, beginning in October 1939, ran the freight handling department at the railway station in ... Auschwitz.

M: Among other things, Barthelmäs was responsible for inbound goods wagons, which included forwarding them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He himself stated he had never been present "during unloading". But he was very well aware how many people were in the arriving goods wagons, what the conditions were like, and that they had been crammed in there for days: without a toilet, without food, without water. 

F: When he was questioned in 1967, he curtly declared that he'd had "no interest personally" in what had happened to those people. According to current research, 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz. 1.1 million of them died.

M: And Adolf Barthelmäs? He later worked in the goods handling department at Nuremberg station. A completely ordinary post-war German career.
 
Fotos: © Jürgen Bahnmayer