100 years of Konrad Meyer: From the front to architecture life
100 years of Konrad Meyer: From the front to architecture life
Konrad Meyer, a former soldier, celebrates his 100th year of life in 2025 and looks back on an eventful life. Born in July 1924 in Pasewalk, his way to history started with a degree in architecture, which he could not complete. At the age of 18 he was moved into the Wehrmacht and fought in World War II. Meyer quickly rose to the officer and experienced the horrors of the war up close.
In January 1945, Meyer undertook a private trip from the front back to Pasewalk to get engaged with his fiancee Käthe. But after the engagement he had to go back to the front immediately and only saw her again four years later. On May 8, 1945, his unity revealed the Russians, which for Meyer marked the beginning of a long and arduous time in captivity.
experiences in captivity
The captivity was characterized by violence, hunger and hard work in primitive storage. Meyer hid his engagement ring in his officer hat to protect him from the Russians. In the labor camps, he had to move gas lines from Saratow to Moscow, which became another chapter of his life. In total, around 11 million German soldiers were captured in the Second World War, including around 3.3 million in the Soviet Union, where survival was often considered a daily struggle. Many of them suffered from inadequate food allowance and high disease rates, especially in the first few weeks after the capture, which resulted in a high mortality rate reports Heimiegel1956.de . .
The conditions in the Soviet prisoners of war only improved from 1947/48, but the camp life remained shaped by monotony and hopelessness. Many prisoners were forced to take part in hard work in mines and quarries in the Gulag system, which brought more hardships.
after returning to Germany
in 1949 Meyer was released from captivity and returned to Germany. However, he experienced a disappointing return when his parents rejected him. It was a painful moment in an already traumatized life. In September 1949 he married his fiancee Käthe and began to continue his architectural studies. Meyer had been an architect at the city of Saulgau in the following decades over 30 years and worked on numerous projects.
In the 1950s, he was recruited by the Stasi as an pointed, which gave him great inner conflicts. Fear and distrust shaped his further years in the GDR until he fled to West Berlin in 1954 and his family catched up with. Finally, the family settled in Stuttgart, where Meyer was successful in the architecture industry. His wife Käthe died three years ago, another stroke of fate in his long life.
The stories of prisoners of war like Konrad Meyer illustrated the challenges and suffering, the military and their families during and after the world wars. The archiving of these events is central to keep the memory awake. The Federal Archives, which is responsible for the documentation of captivity in World War II, offers various types of sources, including factual and self-testimonies of former prisoners of war DetailsOrt Pasewalk, Deutschland Quellen