The poetry collection Der Anti-Nazi was the reason that the German poet Julius Obermeier was arrested in 1940 in his house in the Venlose Minderbroedersstraat. A copy of the book has now surfaced and that is special, because almost the entire print run was burned by the Nazis.
Obermeier is one of the war victims commemorated during the National Remembrance Day.
book burnings
The Venlo publicist and chronicler Sef Derkx recently received a copy of Der Anti-Nazi through a cousin of Julius Obermeier. Of the 3,000 copies printed, only two remain. Almost the entire print run was burned by the Nazis during the public book burnings.
Derkx donates the book to the municipal archives, where it will be given a place in the Hall of Fame.
Happiest time of his life
Julius Obermeier settled in Venlo with his family in the 1920s. He worked here as an interpreter and teacher. He and his wife had a daughter here. In 1931, even before the Nazis came to power, he wrote the collection Der Anti-Nazi full of poems satirizing the Nazis. He could not have imagined then that his poems would eventually prove fatal to him.
Because he was experiencing the happiest time of his life in Venlo, his cousin thought that the copy of the special book belonged here.
stumbling stone
After he was arrested at his house on Minderbroedersstraat, he ended up via a number of detours and German prisons in a concentration camp in southern Poland where he died in 1942. Now, 80 years later, the stumbling block in front of his former home is a reminder of him.