Death on the Schauinsland - historical documentation of the English disaster (lecture)

Everyone knows the "English monument" on Schauinsland. Hardly anyone knows the "Eaton memorial stone" and the "parents' plaque" at the entrance to the church in Hofsgrund. But these three memorials have a lot to do with each other: they reflect the different perspectives that followed the disaster on April 17, 1936. The event offers the opportunity to get to know the previously unwritten history of the accident. Bernd Hainmüller uses 25 years of meticulous detailed research to show that the teacher of the English group of students, Kenneth Keast, was pedagogically negligent at the time. He underestimated the weather conditions on the Schauinsland and ignored the warnings from locals about hiking in the middle of the approaching snowstorm. The group got lost several times. When they finally climbed cross-country up the "Kappler Wand" on the Schauinsland in increasingly dense snow, five of the 27 students died of hypothermia and exhaustion. It is only thanks to the courageous intervention of the people of Hofsgrund that the whole group, including the teacher, did not perish that day. Hainmüller dispels the legends about a "sudden natural phenomenon" to which the pupils fell victim and sheds new light on what actually happened on Schauinsland that day. The book recently won the 2nd State Prize for Local History Research in Baden-Württemberg. - Registration required.

Course number: 252109402