August Gänswein was born in Riedern am Wald in the Black Forest on March 23, 1891. The family of ten moved repeatedly in search of work, probably because, as a blacksmith and farmer, it was so difficult for August’s father Otto (August) Gänswein to earn enough to feed them. In 1909 they settled in Constance., where August and his younger brother Gustav founded the Gebrüder Gänswein commercial office in 1912/13. In the 1920s, with agencies in sixty cities, some outside Germany, the company rose to become one of the most successful businesses in the trade. The success would not last, however: in 1925 the Gänswein brothers had to declare bankruptcy and August Gänswein was sentenced to several months in prison for fraud. Likewise in the mid-1920s he lost a foot in a severe tram accident. He moved to Munich—evidently to make a fresh start—and was once again active in the real-estate business. After moving several times, he lived at Müllerstrasse 34.
In the early 1930s, Gänswein came under suspicion of “sodomy.” Starting in 1932, the police interrogated him repeatedly about sexual relations with men. He was arrested on October 6, 1936, evidently on grounds of construction fraud. Soon, however, the focus of the investigation shifted to his alleged homosexuality. The interrogating officer Kappl referred to Gänswein as a “public enemy of the worst kind.” On December 5, 1936, he was committed to the Dachau concentration camp. Within the framework of Operation 14f13—the murder of concentration camp inmates no longer fit for work—, he and 100 other Dachau inmates were taken to the Hartheim killing facility on January 22, 1942. Like everyone else on that “invalid transport,” he was gassed to death immediately on arrival. To conceal his murder, the Dachau II registrar’s office in the Dachau concentration camp issued a death certificate with false information. (text Stefan Dickas, editor C. Fritsche, translation, J. Rosenthal)
