Anton Bulgari

Anton Bulgari

Anton Bulgari ( word accent : Bulgári ) (born March 4, 1877 in Znaim ; † February 22, 1934 in Linz ) was an Austrian sign painter for the Poschach brewery and a revolutionary. Bulgari was married and had two children. He was the only party to the February struggles of the Republican Defense Corps in Linz am February 22, 1934 to death by the strand sentenced on the same day executed .

February 1934

Place of the event: today's Bulgariplatz in Linz

Bulgarian monument in Linz after the correction of Bulgari's date of birth

Bulgari's grave in the St. Barbara cemetery in Linz

The Roman Catholic painter's assistant Anton Bulgari was a Samaritan worker during the so-called February Uprising among the 200 to 300 members of the Republican Protection Association who had erected a barricade on the morning of February 12 at Polygonplatz in Linz. There was no military fighting here, but there was a fanatical act of violence, whereby it cannot be ruled out that a large amount of beer was served to the brewery workers early in the morning. At 3:45 p.m. a taxi commanded by the armed forces approached with four members of the armed forces and a civilian driver. This Wels patrol from Alpine Jäger Regiment No. 8 was ambushed and 50 to 100 shots from carbines and a machine gun were fired at the taxi or at the men who had fled from it . Three members of the armed forces, namely first lieutenant Heinrich Nader, corporal Karl Eiselsberg and alpine hunter Josef Mangl, were killed, the military man Josef Pötzlberger and the civilian chauffeur Johann Mayr were seriously injured. In addition to the gunshot wounds, Commander Nader had deep head and facial injuries, which the three autopsy doctors identified as a result of exposure to enormous blunt force. No one was injured by the Schutzbund and other people gathered.

In Linz, the security director Hans von Hammerstein imposed the right to stand on February 12, 1934 . Bulgari, Gschwandtner and Schwinghammer were identified as the main participants in the act of violence. During interrogation, Bulgari stated that not he but Gschwandtner have a Staple ( pimples ) embarked on Lieutenant Nader, he himself had fired only a fleeing soldiers or taken with the gun at him. In addition to the murder charge, the defendants were also charged with scavenging corpses, as they had stolen the officer's repeating pistol and his watch.

The three defendants Anton Bulgari, Franz Gschwandtner and Ludwig Schwinghammer were sentenced to death by hanging by a court court under chairman Adolf Bayer , who had traveled from Vienna . The judgments of Gschwandtner and Schwinghammer were converted into lifelong prison after a proposal by the Minister of Justice , while Bulgari's death sentence was carried out on February 22nd in the Linz Regional Court (then Museumstrasse 12). According to reports in the Arbeiter-Zeitung, a former sailor in the Austro-Hungarian Navy named Abele acted as executioner .

Gschwandtner and Schwinghammer were released in 1938 as part of a general amnesty by the National Socialists . The other defendants Ehn, Mißpichler and Fröller were brought before a normal jury.

Bulgari's grave is in the St. Barbara cemetery in Linz (section 16, grave 105); Nader is also buried in this cemetery.

Mementos at the crime scene

The place of the event was the Polygonplatz, which had existed since 1903. This was renamed "Landwehrplatz" in 1934 in honor of the Landwehr Regiment No. 2, which had distinguished itself in the First World War . But it was popularly known as “Murderer's Square”. On November 28, 1934, a memorial stone unveiling for the victims of the executive (Nader, Eiselsberg, Mangl) on Polygonplatz was carried out here on the basis of a resolution in the Upper Austrian state parliament. This memorial was removed by the National Socialists and no longer rebuilt. Instead, the city of Linz renamed the square to Bulgariplatz in 1946. In 1984 a memorial plaque for Bulgari was placed here.

Honors

• 1946 Renaming of the Linz Polygonplatz or Landwehrplatz to "Bulgariplatz"
• Unveiling of a monument at Bulgariplatz 1 in Linz on February 12, 1984 in memory of Anton Bulgari

literature

• Hans von Hammerstein (1981). In the beginning there was the murder: Experiences as district captain of Braunau am Inn and as security director of Upper Austria in the years 1933 and 1934. Munich: Oldenbourg (studies and sources on Austrian contemporary history; vol. 3).
• Harry Slapnicka (1975). Upper Austria - Between the Civil War and the Anschluss (1927–1938). Linz: Upper Austrian state publisher.

See also

• List of people executed under Austrian law from 1933 to 1938

Web links

Commons : Anton Bulgari  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Transcript of a court editor from the stand trial against Bulgari on February 21, 1934

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Harry Slapnicka (1975). Upper Austria - Between the Civil War and the Anschluss (1927–1938). Linz: Oberösterreichischer Landesverlag, p. 137.
2. ^ Roman Sandgruber: In the shadow of the civil war of 1934. In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten , February 7, 2009, website 1663 in the forum OoeGeschichte.at
3. ^ Hans von Hammerstein (1981). In the beginning there was the murder: Experiences as district captain of Braunau am Inn and as security director of Upper Austria in the years 1933 and 1934. Munich: Oldenbourg.
4. ↑ http://www.nachrichten.at/nachrichten/reportage/art57,108479 .
5. ↑ http://www.linz.at/kultur/denkmal/Default.asp?action=denkmaldetail&id=2151  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .