Johann Georg Elser (4 January 1903 – 9 April 1945) was a German worker who planned and carried out an elaborate assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi leaders on 8 November 1939 at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich (known as the Bürgerbräukeller Bombing).
Elser constructed and placed a bomb near the platform from which Hitler was to deliver a speech.
It did not kill Hitler, who left earlier than expected, but it did kill 8 people and injured 62 others.
Elser was held as a prisoner for more than five years until he was executed at Dachau concentration camp less than a month before the surrender of Nazi Germany.
Georg Elser (the name normally used to refer to him) was born in Hermaringen, Württemberg, to Ludwig Elser and Maria Müller.
His parents married one year after his birth, and Maria moved to Königsbronn to live with Ludwig on his smallholding.
His father was a timber merchant, while his mother worked on the farm.
1904
Georg was often left to care for his five younger siblings: Friederike (born 1904), Maria (born 1906), Ludwig (born 1909), Anna (born 1910) and Leonhard (born 1913).
1910
He attended elementary school in Königsbronn from 1910 to 1917 and showed ability in drawing, penmanship and mathematics.
His childhood was marred by his father's heavy drinking.
1917
In 1917, Elser worked for half a year assisting in his father's business.
Seeking independence, he started an apprenticeship as a lathe operator at the smelter in Königsbronn, but had to quit for health reasons.
1919
Between 1919 and 1922, he was apprenticed to master woodworker Robert Sapper in Königsbronn.
After topping his class at Heidenheim Trade School, he worked in the furniture factory of Paul Rieder in Aalen.
1925
In 1925, he left home to briefly work at the Wachter woodworking company in the small community of Bernried, near Tettnang.
Exploring along Lake Constance on foot, he arrived at Friedrichshafen, where he found employment shaping wooden propellers for the fledgling aircraft-manufacturer Dornier.
In August 1925, a work-friend enticed Elser to go with him to Konstanz to work in a clock factory.
Due to lack of work, the clock factory closed down, was sold, then reopened as the Schuckmann Clock Factory.
Elser was re-employed, but, along with the other employees, he was dismissed when the factory mysteriously burned down after the owner had unsuccessfully tried to sell the failing business.
During this period, Elser shared a room with a Communist co-worker who convinced him to join the Red Front-Fighters League.
He also joined traditional dress and dance groups (Trachtenvereine).
1929
In 1929, he found work with Schönholzer, a small woodworking company in Bottighofen; this required Elser to cross the border daily into Switzerland.
The work ran out within six months, however, and he was let go.
Around this time Elser met a waitress, Mathilde Niedermann.
When she became pregnant, he drove her to Geneva in Switzerland.
Mathilde was found to be in the fourth month of pregnancy, precluding a legal abortion.
The child was born, a boy named Manfred.
When Elser left Mathilde, he was left with child-support payments that often surpassed his weekly wage.
1930
In 1930, Elser began commuting daily by ferry from Konstanz to work in the small Rothmund clock factory in Meersburg where he made housings for wall and table clocks.
At the Kreuzlingen Free Temperance Union he started a friendship with a seamstress, Hilda Lang.
1932
Between May and August 1932, after Rothmund closed down, he lived with several families in Meersburg doing odd carpentry jobs.
In August 1932, Elser returned to Königsbronn after receiving a call for help from his mother.
His alcoholic father, often violent and abusive towards her, was now heavily in debt.
1933
He joined the Zither Club in Königsbronn in early 1933.
At around this time, Elser joined a hiking club where he met Elsa Härlen.
He moved to lodge in the Härlens' basement, building kitchen cabinets, kitchen chairs and a doll's house for Elsa.
1935
Elser assisted his parents in their work and supplemented his income by making furniture in a home workshop until his father was forced to sell the family property in late 1935.
Elser escaped the grim family situation with music, playing flute, accordion, bass and the zither.
1936
Their love affair in the spring of 1936 led to her separation from her husband in 1937 and divorce in 1938.
1939
Elser recalled in his interrogation by the Gestapo in 1939 how his father habitually came home late from work drunk.
