The Krakauers at the Parsonage in Köngen


  • 1st Picture for document
    Magnifier

The parsonage in Köngen in Neckartal must have been an especially hospitable home in the day of Pastor Eugen Stöffler and his wife Johanna. While on the run; Max Krakauer and his wife Ines found lodging there a total of three times, from August 9 to 23 and from October 4 to 10, 1943 as well as on October 13, 1944. Krakauer described the two as exceptionally likeable:


Pastor Stöffler was a man with a cheerful composure that nothing could ruffle, not even the prospect of landing in a concentration camp for sheltering Jews – and we were not the first in his house. No situation was so dangerous that he was unable to play it down, at least to us, even though he sometimes may have thought otherwise personally.


And his wife – one of the noblest figures in the community of the merciful through which we traveled. A woman with an ailing heart about which she did not want to know or hear anything, though, a disposition with no end to its goodness, and an unsurpassable empathy for other people’s fates and troubles. And there were apparently always guests in distress in the parsonage in Köngen. The more there were whom she took care of, the kinder she became; we never saw this wonderful woman lose her temper (Krakauer, Lichter, 84).


Source / title


  • © Photo: Franz Träger, Köngen

Related topics