The Nazi who left his fortune to a Highland village
Extraordinary story of the SS officer held in a Scottish prisoner of war camp and a remarkable legacy of kindness by Sam Walker
EVEN well into his 80s, Heinrich Steinmeyer had the unmistakeable posture of a soldier. Tall and upright, he gazed for a long moment at the Perthshire hills, then turned to Joan Carmichael and said: ‘War futile.’
That was in 2009, the last time the former SS man visited the village of Comrie. By then, almost no one there could remember the first time, in September 1944, that he had walked its streets.
But Mr Steinmeyer – once a private in the most reviled military unit in history – certainly remembered it. He had been taken here as a prisoner of war and was frogmarched from the railway station to Cultybraggan, a prisoner of war camp reserved for the most dangerous captives.
There, in grim conditions and on a basic diet, he had languished for the next nine months until the war was over, his nation defeated, his Führer dead.
And yet, as Mr Steinmeyer took in the scenery around the village he first saw aged 19, there was not a hint of resentment in his eyes. Quite the opposite. He seemed to be searching for a way to cement his ties with the place.
Five years later, when he died at the age of 90, it became clear that he had found it. For, astonishingly, the SS soldier who had joined the Hitler Youth at the age of eight had left his entire fortune to the village.
The bequest is believed to be the first of its kind ever made by a PoW to his captors – and completes one of the most remarkable stories of World War 2.
There was no shortage of reasons, certainly, for Mr Steinmeyer to have an element of gratitude towards the Scots. Even before he reached Comrie, the Scottish soldiers who arrested him in Normandy saved his life several times.
There was the mob of French women wielding butcher knives who had tried to kill him as he waited to board a ferry crossing the Seine. His Scottish captors protected him.
Then there was the gang of liberated Polish men who, seeing the distinctive SS-runes insignia on his uniform collar, threatened to slit his throat with their pocket knives.
Shortly after that, at the port of Southampton, Mr Steinmeyer had reason to thank his guards again – as eight murderous Poles converged on him.
WHAT kind of hell, the young soldier must have wondered, was he being taken to in Scotland? There was little reason for optimism. The Cultybraggan camp was patrolled by specially-trained Polish troops – considered at the time far less compassionate than their British counterparts – and the German was under no illusions now as to what the Poles thought of him.
And yet, as he and his convoy of fellow captives were marched through Comrie towards the camp, the most extraordinary scenes greeted them – a welcoming committee. Villagers flung open their windows and shouted hello, children skipped alongside them. It was a sight the German soldier never forgot.
Now, the best part of a lifetime later, he has repaid them in the only tangible way he knew how.
All £384,000 of his estate will go to the village. There was just one condition attached to the bequest. It must benefit the elderly community. Those are the people who were young when he first arrived in the place.
He said in his latter years: ‘I always wanted to pay something back. The people were very kind to us German PoWs. They did not treat us as the enemy. I had so many happy experiences in Scotland.
‘I’ve always had it in my mind. I have no children and I live on my own. I came as a prisoner of war and I left as a friend.’
When he was born in Neustadt, Germany, in 1924, young Heinrich’s family was already in thrall to the Nazi Party’s charismatic leader who promised working-class people such as them wealth and food.
Mr Steinmeyer once recalled: ‘I think that Hitler was good at that time. He fed our stomachs. We were poor boys, from the street.’
As a teenager he worked as an apprentice butcher and was required to attend Hitler Youth meetings twice a week. There, he learned skills such as orienteering and how to use air rifles. His father, Veanhold, had fought in the Great War and encouraged his son to strive for a distinguished military career in the SS.
It did not quite work out that way. Having trained in Poland, he found himself in Normandy on June 6, 1944 – D-Day.
He recalled: ‘Your feelings depended on what type of human being you were. Some were calm, doing their duty, some couldn’t stand it.
‘No one in the SS ever said they were worried. I did my duty. I knew when I volunteered what could happen to me. I had no wife, no kids to worry about.
‘You could only make a war with young men, not married men – children take their heads down. I was a soldier fighting for my country – like any British soldier.’
Just weeks after joining the battle, he encountered advancing Scottish troops at a bridge on the Caen canal in Normandy.
He once remembered: ‘An armoured vehicle approached the manholes where we were hiding. The British soldiers drove from hole to hole, and shouted, “Come out”. If the Germans didn’t react they were shot. I realised the situation was hopeless. I was in a hole with an 18-year-old. We raised our hands and surrendered.
‘Next we had to empty our pockets and I had two apples in mine. The Scottish soldier had a look at them and gave them back to me. He said, “You will need them”.
‘Such friendliness was a surprise, but it is in the British nature. It was so much better than being told to lie in a filthy foxhole – and to die there.’
His war ended in that moment. But something else began – an affinity with Scotland.
He was transferred to Cultybraggan, a bleak place with a harsh regime where long hours were spent gardening or playing cards to relieve the boredom.
BUT Mr Steinmeyer never forgot the snow-covered hills overlooking the camp – or the children who came to play near the fences and make friends with the PoWs.
One legend touted for years by the late George Carson, a wellknown Comrie figure, was that
his mother, Mamie, had broken Mr Steinmeyer out of the camp to take him to the cinema for the first time.
Whatever the truth, it was clear a lasting bond was forming.
The attachment between the SS Panzer soldier and the 2,000 villagers became so strong that, for the rest of his life, he never forgot the people who treated him with kindness, returning several times in the years that followed.
Comrie resident Joan Carmichael, 75, a great grandmother and member of the legacy committee which will decide how the bequest is spent, said: ‘He found he was treated with a great amount of humanity when he came out of the camp, which is something I don’t think he was expecting, and something that clearly stayed with him for the rest of his life.
‘So much so that he decided to leave his legacy to the elderly community here. He wasn’t judged by his uniform, but as a human being, a man like any other.
‘The whole village used to turn out to watch the PoWs get off the train because they used to sing as they marched. It was a spectacle for the community.’
She added: ‘His experience here changed him. He was only 19 at that point and had been involved in heavy fighting, so I think the serenity of his surrounding affected him deeply.’
At the end of the war, Mr Steinmeyer was sent to a camp in Ladybank, Fife, before moving to Stranraer, Wigtownshire, where he worked on a farm along with 30 other former PoWs. During that time he made several pilgrimages back to Comrie and became a wellknown face there.
With a house in Stranraer and a Scottish girlfriend, he had planned to stay in Britain for good but, in 1970, was forced to return to Germany to look after his mother, Lena.
He recalled: ‘When I returned to Germany years later I still found it extremely difficult to believe what people wrote and said about the atrocities [against the Jews]. I felt it was possible something might have happened, but I couldn’t envisage the full extent of it.’
He moved to Bremen and built a house with the money he had earned working in Scotland. He said later: ‘It was in Scotland that I earned the money to build my house, so it is only right that it goes back to Scotland when I die.’
That money is now with the legacy committee in Comrie awaiting their decisions.
The final proposals will not be decided until May, but a string of potential projects have already been put on the table.
They include installing a loop system for the hard of hearing at the historic White Church community centre, a respite centre for carers, charging points for electric buggies, a fund to support a local branch of the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and a public bus to take elderly residents to the shops.
Local butcher and Steinmeyer Legacy interim group chairman Murray Lauchlan, 53, said: ‘Mr Steinmeyer recognised that the people who helped him and showed him respect at the time he was here would be older by the time he died and it’s them he wanted to help.
‘So we want to use it for a wide variety of tangible projects – so that the money will still be helping people many years down the line – and not on small things like giving someone £100 to have a nice weekend away.
‘It’s important to us that the money is not frittered away.’
HE added: ‘Once the consultation process has been completed, the 12 to 15 people in the legacy group will sit down and decide how the people of the village want to spend the money.’
Few may have recognised the former soldier as he walked down the main street of the village in 2009, but he recognised plenty.
There is still a bank on a corner on the main street and the familyrun butchers is still under the same ownership.
And even the camp itself, now part of a heritage trail funded by the National Lottery, has not changed much. Hut 38, where he slept, still stands – rusty but solid.
Mrs Carmichael recalled: ‘When he came back in 2009 I saw him looking round about him, standing in the old camp. He spent a while just taking it all in and reflecting on his time there. Then he turned to me and said “war futile”.
‘He also spent time with George Carson. I think their friendship came about by the troops coming from the camp to get fuel and supplies from the village.’
There was one more stipulation in divorcee Mr Steinmeyer’s will. His ashes were to be scattered on the hills around Comrie.
The stunning landscape beyond the razor-wire fence of that PoW camp had never left him. Now he will never leave it.