Off to the Archives!

As part of the “Off to the Archives!” event series, the TUM Archives regularly offers public tours. Every first Wednesday of the month at 5:00 p.m., you have the opportunity to gain new insights into the archive holdings and the history of TUM – you are cordially invited! The next tour on November 5 is dedicated to Korbinian Aigner.

Aigner was a Catholic priest who courageously opposed the Nazi regime. In 1939, he was denounced, arrested and initially sent to prison and later to the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. There he had to do forced labor in the notorious "herb garden", an SS experimental facility. But between the barracks, he found the courage to grow new apple varieties and smuggle the seedlings out of the camp despite the great danger.

In April 1945, Aigner was able to escape during one of the last death marches. He remained in his home village of Hohenbercha in the district of Freising until his death in 1966. There, using simple means, he created postcard-sized watercolors of the apple and pear varieties known at the time. In his will, he bequeathed around 900 of these fruit variety pictures to the Institute of Fruit Growing at the Technical University of Munich; today they are kept in the TUM archive. His pictures have attracted worldwide attention, especially since their presentation at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel in 2012, which was followed by numerous international exhibitions in Bolzano, Chur, New York, Warsaw and Zurich.

After the tour, we invite you to taste Korbinian's apples.

Admission is free for everyone.