57 Facts About Georg Elser

Georg Elser was held as a prisoner for more than five years until he was executed at Dachau concentration camp less than a month before the surrender of Nazi Germany.

Georg Elser was born in Hermaringen, Wurttemberg, to Ludwig Elser and Maria Muller.

Georg Elser's parents married one year after his birth, and Maria moved to Konigsbronn to live with Ludwig on his smallholding.

Georg Elser's father was a timber merchant, while his mother worked on the farm.

Georg Elser attended elementary school in Konigsbronn from 1910 to 1917 and showed ability in drawing, penmanship and mathematics.

Georg Elser's childhood was marred by his father's heavy drinking.

Georg Elser recalled in his interrogation by the Gestapo in 1939 how his father habitually came home late from work drunk.

In 1917, Georg Elser worked for half a year assisting in his father's business.

Georg Elser joined traditional dress and dance groups.

When Georg Elser left Mathilde, he was left with child-support payments that often surpassed his weekly wage.

In 1930, Georg Elser began commuting daily by ferry from Konstanz to work in the small Rothmund clock factory in Meersburg where he made housings for wall and table clocks.

Georg Elser assisted his parents in their work and supplemented his income by making furniture in a home workshop until his father was forced to sell the family property in late 1935.

Georg Elser escaped the grim family situation with music, playing flute, accordion, bass and the zither.

Georg Elser joined the Zither Club in Konigsbronn in early 1933.

At around this time, Georg Elser joined a hiking club where he met Elsa Harlen.

Georg Elser moved to lodge in the Harlens' basement, building kitchen cabinets, kitchen chairs and a doll's house for Elsa.

In 1936, Georg Elser worked with a carpenter named Grupp in Konigsbronn, making desks and installing windows, but soon gave up the job, believing the pay was too low.

Georg Elser began working as a labourer at the Waldenmaier armament factory in Heidenheim, commuting by train or by bike from Konigsbronn.

In 1938, Georg Elser's parents bought half of a double house together with their son Leonhard and his wife.

Georg Elser felt cheated, and was forced to move out of the house, severing ties with his family except for his sister Maria in Stuttgart.

At Waldenmaier, Georg Elser worked in the shipping department and had access to many parts of the plant, including the "special department" where fuses and detonators were produced.

Georg Elser joined the Red Front-Fighters' Association, although he told his interrogators in 1939 that he attended a political assembly no more than three times while a member.

Georg Elser stated that he voted for the Communist Party until 1933, as he considered the KPD the best defender of workers' interests.

Georg Elser met Josef Schurr, a Communist from Schnaitheim, at a Woodworkers Union meeting in Konigsbronn in 1933.

Georg Elser's parents were Protestant, and he attended church with his mother as a child, though his attendance lapsed.

Georg Elser claimed that church attendance and the recitation of the Lord's Prayer calmed him.

Five years later in Dachau concentration camp, SS officer Lechner claimed Georg Elser revealed his motive to him:.

Georg Elser stayed until midnight before going back to his lodging.

Georg Elser continued to work in the Waldenmaier armament factory in Heidenheim and systematically stole explosives, hiding packets of powder in his bedroom.

Georg Elser took a camera with him, a Christmas gift from Maria Schmauder.

Georg Elser had just become unemployed due to an argument with a factory supervisor.

Georg Elser soon became a regular at the Burgerbraukeller restaurant for his evening meal.

Georg Elser purchased extra parts, including sound insulation, from local hardware stores and became friends with the local master woodworker, Brog, who allowed him use of his workshop.

The next day, Georg Elser was transferred by car to Munich Gestapo Headquarters.

Every family member and possible acquaintance of Georg Elser was rounded up for interrogation.

Later, on the basis of his Swabian accent, Georg Elser was identified by a storekeeper as the man to whom he had sold a "sound proofing insulation plate" to deaden the sound of ticking clocks.

Harlen was left in no doubt that Georg Elser was only repeating what his interrogators wanted him to say.

However, she did not help their cause, which was to find some fragment of evidence that Georg Elser had not acted alone.

Georg Elser began to issue detailed directives on the handling of the case to Himmler, Heydrich, and me and gave releases to the press.

Meanwhile a carpenter by the name of Georg Elser had been arrested while trying to escape over the Swiss border.

Georg Elser announced to the press that Elser and the officers of the British Secret Service would be tried together.

The psychologist wrote in his report that Georg Elser was a "fanatic" and had a pathological desire for recognition.

Elsewhere, everyone who might have had contact with Georg Elser was hunted down and interrogated by the Gestapo.

Georg Elser maintained that Elser was "completely uninterested in politics", even though it was in Konstanz that he became friendly with Communists.

Georg Elser never faced a trial for the bombing of the Burgerbraukeller.

At Sachsenhausen, Georg Elser was held in isolation in a T-shaped building reserved for protected prisoners.

Georg Elser wrote later that Elser was allowed regular visits to the camp brothel.

Martin Niemoller was a special inmate in the Sachsenhausen "bunker" and believed the rumours that Georg Elser was an SS man and an agent of Hitler and Himmler.

In early 1945, Georg Elser was transferred to the bunker at Dachau concentration camp.

On 9 April 1945, four weeks before the end of the war in Europe, Georg Elser was shot dead and his fully dressed body immediately burned in the crematorium of Dachau Concentration Camp.

In memory of Johann Georg Elser, who spent his youth in Konigsbronn.

Georg Elser has been the subject of rumours and various conspiracy theories since the Burgerbraukeller bombing.

Many others, like quarry owner Georg Elser Vollmer, building on his dead wife's contribution, weighed in with their version of the truth.

In contrast to the conspirators of the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler, Georg Elser was barely acknowledged in the official commemorative culture of the Federal Republic of Germany until the 1990s.

In 2008, a music venue called Georg Elser Hallen was demolished in Munich.

In 2011, a 17-metre steel sculpture of Georg Elser was unveiled in Berlin, by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth.

The story of Elser is commemorated in the 1989 film Seven Minutes directed by Klaus Maria Brandauer, and the 2015 film 13 Minutes, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.