Peter Potye

Peter Potye (2011)

Peter Potye (born December 1, 1925 in Gertianosch , Kingdom of Romania ) is an Austrian contemporary witness who has documented his environment since his youth using diary entries and thousands of photos.

Childhood and youth

Banatia School in Timisoara, 1939

Potye was born as the son of Banat Swabians in Cărpiniș as the eldest of three sons of the farmers Johann Potye and Elisabeth born. Petri born. After elementary school in the same place, he attended the German boys' school at the Banatia in Timișoara from 1937 to 1941 , where he graduated with the small Matura in June 1941 . When his father was called up for Romanian military service, Peter Potye had to run his parents' farm. In the spring of 1942 he experienced the Temesch flood in Cărpiniș, where he documented the work on the construction of an earth dam to protect the place.

Second World War

As a result of the Waffen-SS Agreement of May 12, 1943 between the Romanian government under Ion Antonescu and the German Reich , all men of German origin who were conscripted into the German armed forces. On July 10, 1943, at the age of 17, Potye was called up for military service with the Waffen-SS together with another 150 young men from Gertianosch and assigned to the SS division "Wiking" . As part of the 9th Company in the 3rd Battalion of the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 9 "Germania" under obersturmführer Kurt Schumacher Potye was established in August 1943 in Ozalj in Croatia for partisan warfare used.

On October 23, 1943, Potye was sent off to attend the vocational school for applicants for the Waffen-SS in Ulm under the direction of SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Borst . In January 1944 he was transferred with the groups VW (administration) and L (agriculture) of the school operation under the direction of SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Mutschler to Neuenburg Castle in Gebweiler in Alsace and in June 1944 to Rufach .

Gebweiler Castle 1944

On September 1, 1944, the company was relocated to Markirch in the Vosges Mountains , where Potye was used to secure the exterior of the Maurice-Lemaire tunnel , which had been confiscated for the armaments industry and converted into a factory for aircraft parts . On September 8, 1944, the east portal of the tunnel was walled up and the company was relocated to Ulm and then on to Vienna on September 30, 1944. On October 17, 1944 , Potye , who had meanwhile been promoted to SS storm man , experienced an air raid on Vienna .

From October 1944 Potye was assigned to the SS-Jagdkommando Südost under the leadership of Otto Skorzeny . With the paratrooper division 502 ( field post number 48927 / R) stationed in Schloss Seebarn in Harmannsdorf , under the direction of SS-Obersturmführer Müller, he received training for special operations. In January 1945, a sniper course followed at the Zeithain military training area in Saxony under the command of SS-Untersturmführer Willscher. On February 11, 1945, the unit was transferred to the Eastern Front. Under the command of SS-Untersturmführer Harry Wabra, the Schwedt bridgehead on the Oder was defended against the advancing Red Army . On the night of March 1, 1945 the bridgehead was cleared by the Schwedt division and the bridge over the Oder was blown up. Potye and his unit were relocated to Harmannsdorf.

On March 28, 1945, the Heltmann-Waldteufel command was relocated to the eastern front in Tepla and Nemsova in north-western Slovakia . From April 15, 1945, the retreat into the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Iglau, annexed in 1939, took place . On May 5, 1945, the unit arrived via Waidhofen an der Thaya and Gföhl to Krems . On May 6, 1945, his unit relocated, just two days before the Soviet Major General Dmitri Dritschkin and the American Major General Reinhart met for a historic handshake on May 8, 1945 in Erlauf , via Melk and Waidhofen an der Ybbs to Göstling . On May 9, 1945 they reached St. Gallen and later Liezen .

American prisoner of war

On May 12, 1945, on instructions from the US military police, Potye was taken to the American reception camp in Uttendorf in the Innviertel . From May 22, 1945 to July 4, 1945, Potye was interned as a former SS member in the Altheim camp in Altheim . From there he was transferred to the barracks of the former Ebensee concentration camp until August 31, 1945 . The period 1 September 1945 to 25 September 1945 spent Potye in the prison camp Steyr , where he will clean-up in the Steyr Works , as well as logging operations in Großraming is classified. On September 26, 1945, all prisoners of war from Romania were transferred to the Wegscheid camp in Linz . From this warehouse, debris removal operations were carried out at the severely damaged Linz main train station . From October 22, 1945 he was assigned to a work detachment in the former SS barracks in Ebelsberg . On April 21, 1946, Potye was transferred to the Haid DP camp and released from prison on April 23, 1946.

Post war and career at Coca-Cola

Potye near Walding on his first delivery trip for Coca-Cola to the Soviet occupation zone in the Mühlviertel

Immediately after his release from captivity, Potye began working as a cook on May 1, 1946 for the United States Forces in Austria in Linz-Ebelsberg . After this unit was dissolved in July 1947, he found a job as a salesman for Coca-Cola in the distribution center at Hörsching Air Base. From here, the American troops in Linz and the surrounding area were supplied with the soft drink. In 1953 the beverage industry Paul Koenig OHG was founded, with which the civil business with Coca-Cola began in Austria. After Potye was granted Austrian citizenship in 1953, in 1954 he carried out the world's first delivery trip of Coca-Cola to the Soviet occupation zone in the upper Mühlviertel over the Nibelungen Bridge . In 1962 Potye moved with his family from Linz-Ebelsberg to Ansfelden / Haid. Potye worked for Coca-Cola until his retirement in 1985, most recently as sales manager.

At the Football World Cup in 1978 in Córdoba , Argentina , Potye was a spectator in the stadium and witnessed the legendary match between Austria and Germany , when Austria beat Germany 3-2. Peter Potye lives in Ansfelden / Haid . He is married and has three children.

Activity as a contemporary witness

In 2011 the municipality of Ansfelden decided to preserve the history of the former DP camp 121 Haid for posterity and to document the historical background of the Haid district. A history association was founded to handle the project, and Peter Potye was a member of the board from the start. In the film Expulsion and New Beginnings about the history of the camp, produced in 2013 as part of the project, Potye has his say as a contemporary witness. The film was presented to the public as part of an exhibition opened in November 2013 on the DP camp in Haid.

On the occasion of the exhibition Divided City, which opened in 2015 . Linz 1945–55 in the Nordico City Museum in Linz , Potye was interviewed as a contemporary witness and exhibits from his private collection were presented.

social commitment

Together with his brother Josef, Peter Potye founded the Help for Gertianosch project in 1990 . In cooperation with the community of Ansfelden they supported the residents of Gertianosch, since after the fall of the Ceausescu regime in 1989, many people in Romania suffered hardship due to the political events.