City Mayor

A bizarre period of Hanns Heinen’s life was his time spent as Mayor of the small town of Kreuztal-Eisenbach, which is situated between Kempten and Isny in the dark heart of the Allgäu amid the Adelegg massif. The village was inhabited by mountain farmers, glassmakers and lumberjacks. At the time, the remote settlement was only accessible via an untarred road. The village itself was located at the intersection of four small valleys and consisted of only a few houses, a small hunting lodge known as Haus Tanne, a small church, an inn called Gasthof zum Kreuz, a school and a small post office. There were many farms dotted around the area and a sawmill. A policeman was also stationed in the village. Prior to the war, the local economy was based on tourism, forestry and agriculture. The great age of glassmaking had already passed. The hunting lodge Haus Tanne was converted into a lung sanatorium that was an offshoot of a clinic in Isny.

Hanns Heinen’s wife Erna Heinen-Steinhoff had already been evacuated to Kreuztal with her children at the beginning of the 1940s. For the first few years, she still spent the winters in Solingen, but was living in Kreuztal all year round from 1943. Hanns visited his family regularly and opted to stay in Kreuztal permanently from the end of 1944. The warrant for his arrest which had been sent to Kreuztal was burned before his very eyes by the postmistress in the post office’s oven.

When the Allies took control of Kreuztal, the military government installed Hanns Heinen as Mayor. At the time, Kreuztal was overrun with refugees. The problems were immense, and the responsibility was enormous. Despite this, he did not shirk his responsibility and was always on the move between Kempten and Isny, Leutkirch and Wangen in his special service vehicle - a bicycle.

Ultimately, he would only remain in office for a matter of months. He passed the role of Mayor on to the local farmer and resistance fighter Kargus in July of 1945. He then assumed the role of municipal secretary for a period of time. Nevertheless, the family were keen to return to Solingen as quickly as possible, and so Hanns Heinen left Kreuztal in the autumn of 1945 and returned to Solingen, which had been badly destroyed in the war. Erwin Bowien went with the family.