In his speech in front of the former house of the Keller family, Mayor Lutz Wagner traced the history of Jewish life in Königswinter from the first mention in 1146 to the establishment of a Jewish cemetery in the 16th century to persecution during the Third Reich. "Time and again there is news of a Jewish community," Wagner reminds us.

Eli Harnik said the Jewish prayer for the dead after Gabriele Wasser had told the story of the Isaak Keller family (see info box). The Heimatverein Oberdollendorf published the search for traces by of Gabriele Wasser and Eli Harnik in a brochure on the occasion of the laying of the "Stolpersteine" for the Kellers.

After the change of location to the former home of the Klaes family, pastor Georg Kalckert invited people to pray together. This was the first time in Königswinter that a stone was laid here for a man who was persecuted by the Nazis because of his potitical beliefs. The head of the local history society, Peter-Wilhelm Kummerhoff, was able to welcome contemporary witnesses - Else Herhold, daughter of Ludwig Klaes, who talked about her father in the Brückenhof after the ceremony, and Karl Schumacher, who as a neighbour's boy recalled memories and incidentally also wrote them down in a foreword to the booklet "Lyrik aus der Gefängniszelle" (Poetry from the Prison Cell) with poems by Ludwig Klaes.

Else Herhold carefully guarded the originals of the poems and her father's letters; her father had secretly slipped the slips of paper to his wife Anna during their few visits to the prison. They speak of the great pain of not being with his loved ones and the loneliness in the prison cell.

Ludwig Klaes, born in Thomasberg in 1900, was a member of the KPD and a candidate in the municipal elections in 1933. He was taken into protective custody in March 1933 and sentenced to one year in prison in November of that year for distributing leaflets and to five years in prison in another trial in May 1936. He was accused of belonging to the left-wing intellectual group around the Bonn scientist Walter Markov, which countered state propaganda with simple means, distributed information pamphlets and published an underground magazine.

Karl Schumacher recalled: "A black limousine stopped in front of our neighbour's house, three men in long leather coats got out. Else wanted to go into the house, but was not allowed. The men led her father out and drove away with him. In the afternoon we heard that Mr Klaes had been arrested.“

In all those years, his daughter was allowed to visit him in Siegburg prison once - on the occasion of her communion; a poem also bears witness to this. The couple also had two sons, Ludwig and Rudi. When the father was released from prison on 9 November 1940 and walked up Rennenbergstraße, he met a little boy. "Are you ming Rudichen?" he had asked the boy and returned home with him hand in hand. A touching scene, which the two witnesses remembered with emotion.

Karl Schumacher also knew how Ludwig Klaes, who had been employed as a waiter and house servant in large hotels, reported back to the neighbours after his return. "He was upright and unbroken." Daughter Else told how her father had taught her chess, made sure brother Ludwig learned the violin. "During his imprisonment, after forced labour, my father read and learned a lot, English, chess. Actually, he was a socialist," says the now 93-year-old. "Every evening after he returned we children had to read.“

In 1942 Ludwig Klaes was declared "conditionally worthy of military service", and in January 1943 he was called up to a punishment battalion of the notorious 999 punishment division. After training in the Black Forest, his unit was deployed in Greece, then in Russia. His last letter was dated 27 February 1944 from Odessa. "We have heard nothing more from him." He is considered lost.

His wife Anna died in 1985. Son Rudi, who had learned the painter's trade, lived with her, Ludwig studied and became a director at Siemens. Daughter Else had five children, but her dream of becoming a teacher, which a minder sparked in the bright girl, did not come true. The rejection for the entrance examination in 1941 said: "An education is not possible, the father is politically incriminated.“ The Keller family suffered a different fate – they all lost their lives during the Nazi era. Read more in the new booklet of the local history society.

Original text: Roswitha Oschmann

Translation: Mareike Graepel