George Weiss, a founding member and longtime president of German Fest, and his wife, Anna, enjoyed attending the Milwaukee festival. To see more photos, visit jsonline.com/photos.com. Credit: family photo

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Young George Weiss stood before the Russian guards and came under scrutiny. Was he Hungarian, as he claimed, or merely wearing the uniform of the Hungarian Army, in order to escape the fate of a German soldier? Could he speak Hungarian? Show us, they said. Give us the Lord's prayer.

And Weiss did:

Mi atyánk, aki a mennyekben vagy, Szenteltessék meg a Te neved. ...

The Lord's Prayer delivered him from a Russian prison camp during World War II, and it led to Weiss wearing the military uniforms of three nations. First came the German uniform, then the Hungarian in a ruse to avoid being sent to labor in coal mines, and later, a U.S. Army uniform after coming to America.

It was the American uniform that he was happiest to wear.

"He was so proud to be an American," his daughter, Susan Eick, said of her father, who built a masonry business and became a founding member of German Fest, including 12 years as president.

Weiss died Friday of natural causes at his Brookfield home. He was 87.

George and his late wife, Anna, grew up in neighboring villages in Hungary. They were both Donauschwaben — people whose Germanic ancestors came to Hungary, Romania or Yugoslavia in the 1700s. They built lives in these countries but maintained their German language and culture.

Weiss' father was born in Hungary of German descent. His mother, also of German descent, was born in Milwaukee but had returned to her native Hungary as a child.

Weiss grew up in the village of Felsonana, where he worked in his youth as a musician (tuba, bass fiddle), a farm laborer and a mail carrier. His father was the village postman. Weiss was working as an apprentice bricklayer when the Germans came in during World War II and he, like the other young Donauschwaben men, was drafted. He was 17.

Weiss was a member of the signal corps when he was captured by the Russians in May 1945 outside Vienna.

In the prison camp, a fence separated the Hungarian prisoners from the Germans. In an exchange over the fence, he met his sixth-grade teacher, a lieutenant in the Hungarian army.

"One day, my teacher said to me, 'You got to come over here to our side. The Germans are being sent to Russia,'" Weiss recalled in a 1981 feature story on how he came to wear the army uniform of three nations.

German prisoners were being sent to work in Russian coal mines. Many never returned.

Weiss' teacher cobbled together a Hungarian uniform for him.

He would still get just one meal a day — soup and bread. "It used to take us 5 or 10 minutes to get up, we were so weak," he once recalled. "We would just black out." But on the Hungarian side of the fence, he'd get two cigarettes besides the daily soup and bread. Weiss didn't smoke. He traded the cigarettes for food.

But the guards were on the lookout for Germans who tried to pass themselves off as Hungarian.

When Weiss' name came up, he was asked to recite the Lord's Prayer in Hungarian.

Many Donauschwaben didn't know it, because religion had been taught to them in German.

"But when I was an apprentice bricklayer, I'd go to villages for a month at a time to build things, so I went to the Hungarian churches," Weiss later recalled. "And I knew it."

Weiss was later released with other Hungarians in September 1945 and went home, but the village remembered those who had left as German soldiers. His mother was able to leave Hungary because she was an American citizen. His father and younger brother eventually got out, but Weiss was held back under a different quota because of his age. He was 21 when he finally joined his family in Milwaukee in July 1949.

In 1951, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was sent to Germany, where he reconnected with his childhood friend, Anna Maria Koller. They married in June 1954 in Milwaukee.

Weiss threw himself into the construction business, with United Mason Contractors Inc. and Weiss Home Builders, doing brickwork at many bowling alleys, businesses and homes. He played sheepshead and joined United Donauschwaben of Milwaukee. He played with the Milwaukee Zither Club and the Johnny Hoffmann Band.

And there was German Fest. Weiss was a founding member who especially enjoyed organizing entertainment, publicity and fundraising.

Weiss worked on German Fest until last year, when he resigned as treasurer for health reasons. German Fest will look for ways to honor him during this year's festival, July 25-27.

His daughter had an idea.

"Go to German Fest and drink and eat and dance," she said. "Have a beer, have a brat and polka. If you want to honor him, that would be the way to go."

Besides his daughter, Weiss is survived by another daughter, Katherine Weiss; two grandsons; and a brother, Henry Weiss.

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Twitter: twitter.com/janueb

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Visitation will be held from 3 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Harder Funeral Home, 18700 W. Capitol Drive, Brookfield, with a prayer service at 7 p.m. Visitation will be held at Friday at Wisconsin Memorial Park Chapel of the Chimes, 13235 W. Capitol Drive, Brookfield, from 10 a.m. until a memorial service at 11 a.m. Memorials to the Wisconsin Lutheran High School Gifted for Praise campaign, 330 N. Glenview Ave., or the Make-A-Wish Foundation, 4742 N. 24th St., Suite 400, Phoenix, AZ 85016-4862, are recommended.