A friar forced from his order during World War II who later answered the newspaper ad of a German widow seeking a husband to support her and her three children.
A man who ignored implied threats to his safety and organized a youth marching band in his village — a subterfuge to prevent them from being enrolled in Hitler Youth, a Nazi organization that was funneling 17-year-olds directly to the front lines.
Historic bronze church bells buried to prevent them from being melted and turned into ammunition — an act of German resistance that could have led to the deaths of all involved, if the plot had been discovered by the SS.
These are some of the stories told in “The Ragged Edge of Night,” a historical novel by Edmonds-Woodway High School graduate Olivia Hawker.
Perhaps most astounding of all, these stories are true, and they happened to one man.
Hawker’s book is based on the life of Josef “Anton” Starzmann, her husband’s grandfather.
He was forced from his life as a Franciscan friar, although the exact reasons aren’t known.
His order may have been disbanded by the Nazis. Or it may have been caused by him witnessing soldiers forcibly removing physically and developmentally disabled children from the Franciscan school where he taught music — likely to be shipped to their deaths.
“It was a tossup — extermination camps or being hospitalized where they would be euthanized,” said Hawker, who lives in the San Juan Islands. “He just knew once they took them away, they would be killed.”
When Starzmann asked why the children were being taken away, one soldier implied that his wife and daughter would be raped or killed if he didn’t comply with the order.
Hitler initiated the T4 Program to exterminate all physically and intellectually disabled people in 1939.
The soldiers’ raid on the school occurred in 1940 or 1941, Hawker said. It was an act of brutality Starzmann could never rid from his conscience.
“It haunted him for the rest of his life,” she said. “It ate at him forever that he couldn’t save those kids.”
After leaving the Franciscan order and his happy days as a friar, he answered an ad in a Catholic newspaper from Elisabeth Hansjosten Herter, a widow seeking a husband to support herself and her three children. They married in 1941.
Starzmann’s deep hatred of Hitler led him to join the German resistance. The danger this posed was ever-present.
“It was deadly to resist,” Hawker said. “You would absolutely be killed if you were caught.”
One of the most widely known German resistance groups was the White Rose student organization. People were killed on suspicion of being a friend of a White Rose member, she said.
Even in the small farming village in southern Germany where Anton and Elisabeth lived, now known as Wendlingen, there was a person who spied for the government, reporting people he thought weren’t loyal to the Nazis.
Nevertheless, with help from the village mayor and a local priest, they buried the bells of St. Kolumban, the local parish. They were determined to prevent the 600-year-old bells from being melted and turned into war armaments.
When an SS officer ordered with seizing the church bells came to the village and found them missing, Starzmann told him another SS officer had taken them. This act of defiance nearly cost Starzmann his life, Hawker said.
Questions over the disappearance of the church bells caught the attention of the village “spy.” A letter he wrote accused Starzmann, the village’s mayor and the local priest as being traitors, disloyal to the party and calling for their arrest.
The letter was discovered — and the three were saved — because it was found the day after Hitler’s death was announced and the town spy had fled.
Starzmann’s children said they knew their father somehow was linked to a plot to kill Hitler, but the details remain a mystery.
Even after the war ended, it was dangerous to discuss such things in a country with many former SS men and Hitler sympathizers still at large. “So for his safety, he never told anyone,” Hawker said.
Anton and Elisabeth stayed together for the rest of their lives, and remained in the village. He continued to teach music and play the organ, and also became a tailor later in life. He died in 1988. She died in 2002.
Their unlikely match gave birth to two more children. Of their five children, one remained in the village where her parents lived. Another married an American GI who served in Germany. They moved to Seattle, and eventually she convinced four of her siblings to join her in the Puget Sound region, Hawker said.
One of them raised her family in Edmonds. Her son attended Edmonds-Woodway High School, the same school were Hawker was a student. They would later marry.
Hawker’s husband’s relatives told her that after the war, the bells eventually were returned to the church. A parade was held to commemorate the event.
Anton composed a song commemorating the church bells and their history. The work, called “Bell Song,” is performed annually in the German village where they lived.
“They still sing the song and have a memorial ceremony to remember Anton, the mayor and priest who all played a part in resisting,” Hawker said.
In 2017, with help from Google’s online translation service, Hawker interpreted the lyrics, working to keep some of the rhyme and rhythm of the German verses as it was translated into English.
Hawker said she hopes that readers come to know more about the German resistance from the book, and that it can help inspire people when they’re feeling frightened or helpless to remain true to their ideals.
She calls her book the story of an ordinary person “who fought back against some of the worst impulses of the human heart.”
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486; salyer@heraldnet.com.
‘Bell Song’
This song, written by Josef “Anton” Starzmann, commemorates the church bells at St. Kolumban in Germany.
Early in the morning, the brazen bell will ring.
At noontime hour we hear her call, sweetly echoing.
And in the weary evening, we hear her soft behest:
“Remember your Creator before you go to rest.”
On Sunday morning, bold she cries, “Give God what God is due,
So that the Father’s blessings will come again to you!”
Every day her song reminds the mighty and the meek
That God, who made the Earth and sky, is here for us to seek.
Day by day, in every hour and season of the year,
The bell inspires hearts to praise and fills us with good cheer.
She greets the newest baby with her pealing, glad and bright,
When he is carried to the church for baptism’s first rite.
Her joyful chant ascends the clouds to Heaven up above:
“Let the children come to me, and learn the Savior’s love.”
The bell rings out when two young hearts are bound in wedded bliss,
And seal their sacred marriage with ring and vow and kiss.
Whatever blessing, beautiful and blithesome, Heaven brings,
The sound of God’s love echoes in the joyful song she sings.
And even in our darkest hour, she’s faithful in her call —
In need and danger, her sharp voice alerts us, one and all.
When storm and tempest threaten, when men cower in their homes,
She calls through cloud and thunder in her broad, consoling tones.
When fires rage, when waters rise, when hearts are cold with fear,
It is the bell who summons aid, from friends both far and near.
And when a soul departs from Earth, and flies to Heaven’s lee,
She sings our loved ones gently to a sweet eternity.
In joy and grief, in rest and need, at home or far abroad,
The bell rings out a sense and song of a true and loving God.
And in these days of sorrow, in our bleak extremity,
Let the bell’s song bring us peace, we pray — peace and unity!
Author took a different path to writing success
“The Ragged Edge of Night” is the 15th book of historical fiction written by Olivia Hawker, one of 36 books she’s published under various pen names, including Libbie Hawker.
The San Juan Island author is a 1998 graduate of Edmonds-Woodway High School, which she credits for helping lay the foundation for her writing career.
At the time, the school was experimenting with arts-based education — a typical curriculum save for the teaching of science and math, which was taught with artistic applications, Hawker said.
Even as a high school student, Hawker said she knew she wanted to be a writer. But being able to immerse herself in the curriculum “allowed me to view it as a career, not a hobby.”
Hawker said she didn’t attend college because she didn’t have the money to do so, and she couldn’t guarantee that going into debt for a degree would get her any closer to being a professional writer.
So she took a variety of jobs — among them dog training, working as a zookeeper in Seattle and Tacoma, and data entry — while writing part-time.
In 2008, when she was 28, she began to seriously consider making the leap to writing full time. Six years later, she was doing so.
By 2014, she had published six books and was approached by Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing.
Some 50,000 copies of “The Ragged Edge of Night” have been bought in hardback, trade paperback and e-book editions, Hawker said.
“The Ragged Edge of Night”
By Olivia Hawker
Lake Union Publishing. 329 pages. $11.99.
Washington North Coast Magazine
This article is featured in the spring issue of Washington North Coast Magazine, a supplement of The Daily Herald. Explore Snohomish and Island counties with each quarterly magazine. Each issue is $3.99. Subscribe to receive all four editions for $14 per year. Call 425-339-3200 or go to www.washingtonnorthcoast.com for more information.
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