A Rare Blood Order Recipient Signed Photograph Of Eleonore Baur (Sister Pia)

Black and white, matte finish, illustrating Sister Pia wearing a white cross badge at the neck opening, a religious cross suspended from a chain around her neck, a Blood Order pinned on her right side and a ribbon bar pinned on her left side, signed in black ink "Schwester Pia" and dated "78" (1978) at the upper right vertically along the edge, 98 mm x 147 mm, mounted to a 119 mm x 183 mm white card via four photo corners, near mint. Footnote: Eleonore Baur (September 7, 1885 - May 18, 1981), also known as Sister Pia (Schwester Pia), was a senior Nazi figure and the only woman to have participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. She was born in Kirchdorf, near Bad Aibling, Bavaria. Her mother died when Baur was an infant, and when she was five, Baur moved to Munich with her father and stepmother. It was here that Baur left school at the age of fourteen to work as a Midwife's Assistant. By the age of fifteen, she gave birth to an illegitimate child whose fate is currently unknown. She gave birth on April 17, 1905 in Munich to a second illegitimate son, named Wilhelm, at the age of nineteen, whom she gave up for adoption. Wilhelm Baur later became Commander of the NSDAP-Reichshauptamt (Reich Main Office). Soon afterwards, she moved to Egypt, to work as a Nurse's Assistant at a Cairo hospital. Baur returned to Munich in 1907, calling herself "Sister Pia" and worked for the Roman Catholic charitable order Gelbes Kreuz (Yellow Cross). According to her own statement, she got her title of Sister Pia without ever actually qualifying as a nurse. In 1908 or 1909, she married Ludwig Baur, a mechanical engineer, the marriage ending in divorce after five or six years. Baur served as a nurse in the medical service during the First World War, then assisted the Freikorps Oberland troops during their battle against the Bavarian Soviet Republic and in the Baltic campaign in 1919. After the war, she met Adolf Hitler by chance on a tram in Munich in 1920. Following that meeting, she was involved with the Sterneck Group in founding the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). She was one of the first party members, was an active and fanatic National Socialist from the very first moment and had close connections to important party officials. She admitted to Emil Maurice in 1929 that she had been “violently in love with Hitler.” Since she was four years older than Hitler, no real relationship developed, since Hitler always preferred young and naive women. Baur became one of the most visible Nazi figures in Munich in the spring of 1920 and was arrested on March 11, 1920 for disturbing the peace following an anti-Semitic speech at a women's rally in Munich. Her subsequent acquittal made her a hero of the Nazi movement. She continued to be active in German politics, giving speeches and organizing Nazi-based charitable events. She joined the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei = DAP), a short-lived political party and the forerunner of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), as number 511, on October 14, 1922. In 1923, she married for the second time, a hotel manager named Sponseil, ten years her junior, this marriage also ending in divorce. Baur was the only woman to participate in the Beer Hall Putsch on November 9, 1923, while with her unit, Stab. d. SA-Regiment München 1. Kp.. She was a fervent follower of Adolf Hitler and was the only woman to march with him through the streets of Munich during the Putsch. She was trained as a nurse and tended to the wounded and the dead that day, she herself also receiving minor injuries. Baur received the Blood Order in 1934, number 25, and was one of only two German and fourteen Austrian women to be awarded the party's highest decoration. She later joined the SA becoming the first Brown Shirt sister. Throughout the rise of the Nazis and following their assumption of power in 1933, she remained close to the Nazi leadership and profited a good deal from the close contacts to the Nazi elite. She was invited on numerous excursions and many festivities, including accompanying Hitler on picnic trips. She was promoted under the Nazi regime as the ideal Nazi woman, with the publication "Der Spiegel" calling her "The Nurse of the Nazi Nation", her role in the nascent Nazi party well known. She was known as a fanatical National Socialist who hated Jews and Poles and received a number of awards, including the Silesian Eagle Order, the Silver Medal for Bravery, the Blood Order and the Baltic Cross. In 1934, Baur founded the National Socialist Order of Sisters (Schwesternschaft), becoming its Honorary Chairwoman in 1937. She had a close relationship with SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler and it was due to him, that she was appointed Welfare Sister for the Waffen-SS at Dachau in 1933. The Dachau subcamp at Munich-Schwabing was the first subcamp where concentration camp prisoners were permanently used as a labour force outside the main concentration camp. Unlike most of the later subcamps which were constructed, organized, and managed by the SS Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) and the Dachau camp commandant, this subcamp's construction, administration, and organization was in the hands of Eleonore Baur (AKA Sister Pia). No later than 1934, she obtained permission from Hitler to move freely in the Dachau concentration camp. She was the only woman with this privilege. Allegedly, she had approached the Führer with the request that she wanted to devote herself not only to the SS men, but also to the prisoners and their relatives. Baur played a major role in the construction and administration of Dachau, and while there is no evidence Baur physically harmed prisoners, she was accused of bullying prisoners, staff and neighbours, and forcing prisoners to work on the renovations of the villa Hitler had given her in Oberhaching, near the camp. One prisoner, Erich Essner, was occasionally doing gardening work in her private apartment at 6 Voit Street, Munich, as early as 1934. Other prisoners followed who had to do household tasks. Between 1937 and 1945, she had her house in Munich Oberhaching extensively renovated by concentration camp prisoners. The garden was redesigned and the place was generally cleaned up. A garage was built, together with an enclosed swimming pool and a bunker. The materials for this work came solely from Dachau. It seems she paid for a part of the materials, but she took the biggest part for free. In the workshops of the concentration camp, the prisoners had to produce furniture, wood carvings, and children's toys for her. Sister Pia never paid the SS for the use of prisoner labour. During her weekly visits in the prisoners' kitchen, she took meat and margarine with her in her official vehicle, for which she also did not pay. The food was supposed to be inferior "dog food", but it was usually good quality meat. She gained the reputation in the camp as someone who "requisitioned anything that was not nailed down". At the beginning, the prisoners were randomly on duty at Sister Pia's home for one or more days per week. They returned each evening to the concentration camp. From 1940, she had a permanent working detail consisting of twelve to fourteen men. At first, these prisoners were also driven to work from the concentration camp every day but later they were accommodated at her place and were brought back to Dachau only on the weekends. Sister Pia was in charge of the detachment. She arranged the duties and set the working hours. She is even alleged to have been involved in choosing the prisoners. The detachment had to work hard, and often on Sundays. Security was provided by SS guards from Dachau. It is said that Sister Pia was sometimes difficult even with these guards, her Buam (boys) and bossed both the prisoners and the guards around. There are no known cases of mistreatment or deaths at this subcamp. Sister Pia herself never actually harmed a prisoner but almost all former prisoners, questioned after the war, have accused her of bullying them. When she was in a bad mood or the prisoners were not working hard enough, she had them, for example, climb down into an outside toilet pit to clean it with a brush. At the same time, she was feared by the prisoners because of the considerable influence she had on the camp leadership. If a prisoner fell into disfavor with her, she did not hesitate to request the camp commandant to punish the prisoner by having him held in the bunker. She threatened a prisoner, Michael Gollackner, saying that he would not leave Dachau alive. He was saved, probably because he was transferred to Sachsenhausen. Hans Biederer, also a prisoner, reported similar mistreatment after having been accused by her. Her behavior was reported to be inconsistent. On one hand, the prisoners said that better than average food was provided at the subcamp. The prisoners ate at one table together with Sister Pia and her employees, a chauffeur and a kitchen assistant. They were even permitted to smoke and they had the possibility to smuggle letters out of the camp and make contact with the outside world. On the other hand, her behavior was unpredictable and her moods were feared. She could quickly turn from being nice to the prisoners, to being the complete opposite. This contradictory nature was revealed when the prisoners were questioned later. There were many positive reports on her. She often stood up for the priest Huber, who said on his deathbed that she was the "Angel of Dachau", because she had done a great deal of good in the concentration camp. Other prisoners have stated that Sister Pia spoke up for their release or financially supported their despairing relatives. In 1943, SS Reichsführer Himmler temporarily banned her from Dachau because it had been alleged that she wanted to smuggle prisoners' letters out of the concentration camp. At the same time, the prisoners of her detachment, her employees, and neighbours describe her as a moody, hysterical, and selfish woman, who unscrupulously used her contacts with the Nazis in power to get what she wanted. She profited from the kitchen, the workshops, and the Dachau laundry, threatened the neighbours with the concentration camp when she could not get her way, and ceaselessly bullied the prisoners. Some witnesses have even suggested that she took prisoners as lovers. The discrepancies can only be explained when one considers the prisoner groups favoured by Sister Pia. As a convinced, fanatical National Socialist, she hated Jews and Poles. Her detachment consisted mainly of political prisoners from Germany and Austria. At Christmas, she regularly presented the prisoners with so-called "Pia Packages", filled with food. At the same time, at Christmas 1938, she had several prisoners whipped. She was present at this mistreatment and stated that she would step in to help the political prisoners but that Jews and foreigners "should die". The date on which the Munich-Schwabing subcamp ceased cannot be exactly identified. The International Tracing Service (ITS) last mentions it in 1942. This date is probably set too early, as several prisoners were still working for Sister Pia in 1944. According to the testimony of victims and witnesses, one of which was Karol Minkner, who was a pastor in the Methodist Church and a prisoner at Dachau, Baur assumed the role of a brothel madam, organized on a train moving across German occupied territory. She recruited women and girls from Poland and Ukraine, who had been captured and then forced to work as prostitutes, giving them alcohol and narcotics, and generally prepared them for the roles as whores. The clients were exclusively officers of the Wehrmacht and SS units. Eleonore Baur (AKA Sister Pia) was first arrested on war crimes charges in May 1945 but shortly thereafter, was released due to "insufficient evidence". Four years later, she appeared before the De-nazification court in Munich in September 1949, the State Prosecutor München II beginning an investigation of her for being involved in the mistreatment and the deaths of prisoners in Dachau. She was categorized as a major criminal and sentenced to ten years at Rebdorf Labour Camp and her personal property and the villa in Oberhaching confiscated. However, the investigations ceased in 1950 because of "insufficient evidence" and she was released from the camp in 1950 for "health reasons". Baur successfully applied for a pension and compensation in 1955, enabling her to return to her house in Oberhaching. She was avoided by her neighbours, guarded by a German shepherd dog and the quarter children shouted "Old Witch" at her. Baur never renounced National Socialism and never lacked self-confidence, once stating, "There is only one Frederick the Great, there is only one Adolf Hitler, and there is only one Sister Pia". She never renounced Hitler, telling "Bild" magazine in 1977, "I have always loved Adolf Hitler and always will. He was a very sweet and wonderful man". Baur died at Oberhaching in 1981, at the age of 95. She was buried in Deisenhofen Cemetery in Oberhaching, her gravestone engraved "Ein Leben für Deutschland" (A Life for Germany), however, the gravestone was removed after complains of the citizens of Oberhaching.