For Hans Rosengold, the long-time chairman of the Jewish community in Regensburg, Bad Kissingen was only a brief episode, albeit one that was not unimportant for his professional career.

He was born in Regensburg on October 30, 1923, the son of the banker Adolf Niedermaier (spelling sometimes also Niedermeier) and his wife Therese née Mann.

The marriage was obviously not permanent and Therese married in 2nd marriage Max Rosengold, who was managing director and successor of the „Gebrüder Manes“ and ran a renowned textile business in Goliathstraße in Regensburg. Hans then took the name Rosengold from his stepfather.

Hans Rosengold initially enjoyed a carefree childhood and, like his fathers, was extremely enthusiastic about sports. He recalls: "Both my fathers, Adolf Niedermeier and Max Rosengold, were very interested in sports, from swimming to skiing to rowing. Above all, they were enthusiastic fans of the Jahn Regensburg soccer club, which was very successful at the time, as was the young Hans, who was actually in the stadium for every home game of the Jahn team from 1929 to 1934 (cf. Wolfgang Otto, Träume, Tränen, Triumphe - 100 Jahre Jahn-Fußball, pp. 36 - 38).

After elementary school and transfer to the Oberrealschule, the family moved to Munich, where Hans had to leave school in 1937 after the fourth grade because of his Jewish background. This meant that he was denied the opportunity to complete higher schooling in Germany, and his mother sent the then 14-year-old boy to Bad Kissingen to train as a cook in a renowned hotel.

Hans Rosengold moved to the Franconian spa town in April 1938 and learned the art of cooking at the Apolant Hotel and Sanatorium on Menzelstrasse. At that time, the Apolant Sanatorium was one of the most modern and luxurious sanatoriums for internal diseases and diet cures. Training as an apprentice cook at such an address was certainly a good start for Hans Rosengold's subsequent career as a gourmet chef. However, the Apolant Sanatorium was denied a concession after the end of the spa season, so Hans Rosengold was unable to continue his apprenticeship there in 1939. At the end of September 1938, he moved back to Munich and then continued his cooking apprenticeship in Berlin's Grunewald.

In October 1939, Hans Rosengold fled the Nazi regime with his mother. In Trieste they boarded the Italian "Ocetania" and a few weeks later reached Buenos Aires, which became their place of refuge for a long time. 

Therese Rosengold's husband Max did not want to leave Germany. He probably lived in Berlin-Wilmersdorf during the war years and was imprisoned in the Berlin-Alexanderplatz police prison in 1942, where he was murdered on June 10, 1942. Hans Rosengold's biological father Adolf Niedermaier was also a victim of the Shoa; already after the November pogrom in 1938 he was imprisoned for several weeks in the Dachau concentration camp. In April 1942 he was deported from Munich to the Piaski Ghetto and murdered there.

Hans Rosengold and his mother lived in Buenos Aires until 1955, where the young émigré became a successful gourmet chef and hotelier, "which brought [him] the dubious honor of being allowed to attend a meeting with Evita Perón, the shady wife of the authoritarian Argentine President Juan Perón" (cf. Mittelbayerische, Hans Rosengold is dead, 04/17/2011).

Juan Perón's dictatorship, but above all probably the urging of his mother, who was very homesick for her Bavarian homeland in Argentina, finally persuaded Hans Rosengold to return to Germany. From 1949 on, he commuted between Buenos Aires and Regensburg until both finally returned to the city on the Danube, where Hans Rosengold took over his stepfather's textile business and established the Carlson clothing company.

Hans Rosengold also played an active role in the Regensburg Jewish community, becoming its chairman for many years in 1963. He was regarded as a moral authority and, as a mediator and reconciler, left his mark on the dialogue between Jews and Christians in his home town.

A highlight of this commitment was certainly his role as host during the Pope's visit in 2006, when Pope Benedict XVI visited his brother Georg Ratzinger in Regensburg, who lived directly opposite the Jewish community center. There, Rosengold, then 83, organized the catering for the pope's 15-member escort for lunch and was delighted to chat with the pope's private secretary.

Hans Rosengold and Holocaust survivor Otto Schwerdt were the bridge builders in the Christian-Jewish dialogue of the postwar period, who also worked tirelessly to establish a culture of remembrance in their city, even though the city of Regensburg, for a long time, was rather reluctant.

Hans Rosengold died in April 2011, at the age of 87. His widow and daughter live in Israel today.