1945
After the terrible years of the National Socialist dictatorship, Germany and Europe were unrecognizable. In the final months of the war, US troops reached Zella-Mehlis and camped outside the town. The mayor then sent a delegation of parliamentarians to the Americans to ask for them to be spared. This group was led by Max Anschütz, as he had an extensive knowledge of English. With his arms raised and a white flag, he met the American troops on the Ruppberg. The first result of the mission: two US soldiers took his watch. Nevertheless, negotiations were successful and the Americans marched into Zella-Mehlis without a fight on April 4, 1945 and occupied the town.
Zella-Mehlis was spared destruction like this. You can see the destroyed Zeiss factory in Jena, 1945
Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftangriffe_auf_Jena
Soon after, the course was set for a new future. As Thuringia became part of the Soviet occupation zone after the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Americans had to leave Zella-Mehlis again. However, they did not want to leave the local industrial know-how to the communists. That is why they launched a large-scale evacuation operation on July 1, shortly before the arrival of the Red Army. Among them were names such as the weapons manufacturers ANSCHÜTZ, Walther and Krieghoff - today in the neighborhood of ANSCHÜTZ in the Donautal industrial area in Ulm - as well as the toolmakers Röhm and Schilling and the well-known Zeiss company from Jena.
Dieter Anschütz, who was 15 years old at the time, remembers: "A U.S. military truck pulled up at our apartment in the old factory building where we had just moved back in. We were told to be ready to leave Zella-Mehlis within two hours with Schlegelmilch, our plant manager at the time, and Eberwein, our design engineer, and to be taken to the American occupation zone."
Two days later, on July 03, 1945, the first Soviet soldiers marched into Zella-Mehlis. Rudolf Anschütz, who remained in the town, experienced the exclusively negative effects and sanctions of the now ruling communists after 1945. On March 13, 1946, the complete dismantling of the factory in Zella-Mehlis began and machines and accessories disappeared into the Soviet Union never to be seen again. By the end of December 1947, the dismantling was completed and the existence of the company J. G. ANSCHÜTZ Germaniawaffenwerk AG finally ended with the deletion of the company from the commercial register of Zella-Mehlis on April 12, 1949.
Rudolf Anschütz was conscripted as a forest worker after expropriation and dismantling of the ANSCHÜTZ factory in Zella-Mehlis, around 1946
Max Anschütz and his family were first housed by the Americans together with other evacuated Thuringians in an empty police school in Heidenheim an der Brenz and a few weeks later distributed among the surrounding villages. Thus the family came to Gerstetten on the Swabian Alb to the Eberle family, which had even once been a customer of the Germaniawaffenwerk. During this time, Max Anschütz hired out to friendly farmers as a farmhand and was paid in kind.
Naturally, he could not be satisfied with this and so he moved to Heidenheim with his family. There he made a fresh start by resharpening used razor blades. Together with an old schoolmate who had also settled in Heidenheim, he manufactured wooden tobacco pipes and other smoking utensils under the brand name AGMA. After the currency reform, however, these products quickly became uncompetitive and he switched to trading in women's stockings.
AGMA brand tobacco pipes, ca. 1947
Rudolf Anschütz remained in Zella-Mehlis until 1947, where he had to watch the dismantling of the former family business. He had been conscripted there as a forestry worker in the years after the war. This at least had the advantage that he could escape from the remote forest areas to the West. So he came to Königsbronn (also in the Heidenheim region), where he found accommodation and work in Arthur Schilling's tool factory.
Testimony of Max Keiner on his release from Buchenwald concentration camp by Max and Rudolf Anschütz, August 1946
