Alfred Fenz

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Image of the tombstone in the Vienna Central Cemetery, group 40

Alfred Fenz (born on February 22, 1920 in Vienna ; died on November 2, 1943 in Vienna) was an Austrian electrical engineer and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime . He was sentenced to death by the Nazi judiciary and executed with the guillotine in the Vienna Regional Court .

Life

Fenz was a leading functionary of the Communist Youth Association of Austria (KJVÖ), which was illegal from 1934 onwards, and was a member of the resistance group The Soldiers ' Council, which tried to convince numerous combatants from the front of the lack of meaningfulness of the war and the barbaric nature of the Nazi regime in pamphlets and soldiers' letters . According to Maria Szécsi , Karl R. Stadler , Walter Göhring and Eduard Rabofsky , this group was one of the “most extensive organizations of the Austrian resistance”.

Alfred Fenz was arrested on April 23, 1942 and identified by the Vienna Gestapo , and sentenced to death by the People's Court on September 25, 1943 for “preparing for high treason ” . During his interrogations by the Vienna Gestapo, Fenz explicitly protected the suspect Christian Broda , who later became Austria's Minister of Justice, by emphasizing that he had been excluded from the KJVÖ and that “therefore no cooperation with him was desired”. Presumably only through this statement (and an equally exonerating one from Alfred Rabofsky ) Broda barely survived the Nazi regime.

Fenz was on November 2, 1943 at the Vienna Regional Court by the guillotine executed. Together with Fenz, five other members of the resistance group were murdered by the Nazi regime on the same day: the student Elfriede Hartmann , the tailor's assistant Felix Imre , the student and soldier Walter Kämpf , the post office clerk Leopoldine Kovarik and the commercial clerk Friedrich Mastny . The age of all six of the soldiers' council executed that day ranged from 22 to 25 years.

The reasons for the judgment read:

"As a leading functionary of the Communist Youth Association in Vienna and the surrounding area, the defendant Fenz has organizationally and agitationally promoted communist high treason up to and including the level of organization and agitation by means of recruiting members, participating in numerous meetings with leading functionaries of the KJV and with his subordinate foreign local leaders, as well as by continuously distributing publications Prepared in 1942. He also has by participating in the preparation of sabotage attacks and by corresponding requests to the foreign local group leaders subordinate to him as well as by disseminating numerous leaflets with the request to reduce the workload, finally by collecting field post addresses for the purpose of sending a document that degrades the armed forces to members of the armed forces and Preparing for such a dispatch tries to make the Wehrmacht unfit to fulfill its duty to protect the German Reich and to paralyze and undermine the will of the German people to defend themselves. He is therefore sentenced to death and the loss of civil rights for life. He also has to bear the costs of the proceedings. "

- People's Court : Death sentence against Alfred Fenz, September 25, 1943

Commemoration

The name of Alfred Fenz can be found on the plaque in the former execution room of the Vienna Regional Court . He is buried in the shaft graves of group 40 (row 25 / grave 191) of the Vienna Central Cemetery .

literature

  • Alfred Klahr Society : On the History of the Communist Youth Association 1918–1945 , accessed on May 16, 2015
  • Wolfgang Neugebauer : The Austrian Resistance 1938-1945, Edition Steinbauer, 2008, 91 [1]
  • Tidl, Marie: The Red Students. Documents and memories 1938–1945 . Vienna 1976
  • Willi Weinert: “You can put me out, but not the fire”: a guide through the grove of honor of Group 40 at the Vienna Central Cemetery for the executed resistance fighters . Verlag Alfred-Klahr-Ges., 2005, p. 80 / p. 153 [2]

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Maria Wirth : Christian Broda , Vienna: V&R unipress GmbH 2011, pp. 99–116.
  2. ^ Post-War Justice , accessed April 4, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Fenz, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian electrical engineer and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 1943
Place of death Vienna