Anton Dorfmeister

Anton "Toni" Dorfmeister (born January 21, 1912 in Henndorf , Eisenburg / Vas county; † February 3, 1945 in Cilli , Lower Styria ) was an Austrian politician ( NSDAP ). As district administrator of the Cilli / Celje district and district leader of the Styrian Homeland Federation , he was significantly involved in the Nazi race and national politics in this Lower Styrian region.

Live and act

Childhood and youth

Dorfmeister was born in Henndorf / Ercsenye in the western Hungarian district of St. Gotthard / Szentgotthárd and grew up in neighboring Wallendorf / Lapincsolaszi, where his father worked as a senior teacher. This region between Lafnitz and Raab , located on the German - Hungarian - Slovenian language border, was incorporated into the Jennersdorf district of the newly created Burgenland in December 1921 .

Dorfmeister committed himself to the Nazi movement early on and was a co-founder of the first Hitler Youth group in Burgenland. From June 1932 he was head of the NSDAP's press and propaganda in the Jennersdorf district. During his studies at the University of Vienna , he belonged to the NSD student union and worked for them as a trainer.

After the party ban on June 19, 1933, Dorfmeister continued to work illegally and took an active part in the July putsch in 1934 . In order to avoid imminent arrest, he fled to the German Reich and from 1935 took over the management of the border and foreign department of the Reich Youth Leadership .

After connecting

After the annexation of Austria , Dorfmeister followed the call of the Styrian Gauleiter Sigfried Uiberreither and was entrusted by him with the consolidation and coordination of the entire nationality work in the Gau Styria and the management of the Southeast German Institute in Graz . In addition, he headed the Ribbentrop office in Gau Steiermark, was Gauverband leader in the Volksbund für das Deutschtum Abroad (VDA) and worked as a Volkstumsreferent in the Reich Propaganda Office Styria. In 1939 he was entrusted with the management of the newly created Gaugrenzlandamt and later with the management of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi) in Graz.

After Dorfmeister had completed his military service in a Waffen SS division in 1940 and returned to Graz as SS Rottenführer , he took on tasks in the Hungarian capital Budapest at the beginning of 1941 on behalf of the Foreign Office as a nationality officer at the German embassy .

In Lower Styria

After the occupation of Lower Styria in April 1941, the Styrian Gauleiter Uiberreither put together his task force as head of the civil administration (CdZ). To this end, he appointed a political commissioner for the administration and reorganization of the twelve existing rural and three urban districts. On April 14, 1941, Dorfmeister was assigned the Cilli / Celje district as political commissioner and was also appointed district leader of the Styrian Home Federation on May 10, 1941. After the reorganization of the Lower Styrian administrative districts, his administrative area was expanded to include the newly created district of Cilli on July 1, 1941.

The district of Cilli was the largest administrative district in Lower Styria in terms of area and population and had 143,410 inhabitants on October 31, 1941 with a land area of ​​1812 km², who were distributed over 32,276 households in 33 communities. The municipality of Cilli had 18,190 inhabitants and 4,598 households.

The area of ​​responsibility of the village master, who led the district of Cilli first as political commissioner, then from January 1942 as district administrator, was very extensive and complex. His area of ​​responsibility extended in particular to the two offices:

• Reich administration with the six sub-areas: 1. political, general internal and police matters as well as supervision of the communities, 2. economic affairs, 3. district gendarmerie management, 4. health department, 5. veterinary system, 6. district school authority.
• District administration with the two sub-areas: 1. General and financial issues as well as supply tasks, 2. War economy issues.

From the very beginning, however, the entire work of Dorfmeister was determined by the given national politics , the ultimate goal of which was to achieve a complete Germanization and Nazification of the population in the occupied territories. These included priority: Deportation of nationally conscious Slovenes and opponents of the regime, resettlement of all since 1918 immigrants , resolution of all Slovenian organizations and confiscation of their assets and the removal Slovenian inscriptions.

The first mass arrests were made on April 16, 1941, and on April 29, 1941, Dorfmeister reported at a working meeting:

“Around 300 people in Cilli-Stadt and around 250 people in Cilli-Land were recorded by the arrest. Of 33 clergymen who had been appointed, one was dismissed to maintain the most necessary pastoral activities (applies to Cilli-Stadt). Roughly the same number of clergymen were arrested in the countryside and only the elderly were left free. Around 3,700 so-called Tschitschen were recorded. "

In May 1941, more than 700 people were imprisoned in Cilli and were waiting to be deported. They were interned mainly in the confiscated and converted Capuchin monastery and in the “altn Häfn” (old pot, Slovenian Stari pisker), the city prison. On June 7, 1941, the first deportation train with 300 displaced persons rolled over Cilli to Arandjelovac in Serbia . Two days later on June 9, 1941, 357 patients were picked up from the Neucilli / Novo Celje mental hospital and transferred to Feldhof near Graz. From there, most of the patients were transported to Hartheim near Linz for “special treatment” .

Resistance and Retaliation

With the founding of the district and city committee of the Osvobodilna Fronta (Liberation Front), the OF-Celje on July 6, 1941, the Slovenian resistance against the German occupation forces was formed. Fourteen days later on July 20, 1941, the Celjska četa (Cillier Troop), the first partisan association in the district, was established.

Now the first sabotage attacks, assaults and thefts of supplies took place, and the farmers were forced to support the underground fighters, if they did not, they were threatened with shooting or their farms being burned down. The German reprisals were just as brutal. The "spiral of violence" began to turn.

On September 4, 1941, the first group execution took place in the Cillier prison courtyard, and ten hostages were shot in retaliation for a partisan attack. On October 26, 1941, a partisan troop attacked the Straussenegg / Štrovsenek Castle near Fraßlau / Braslovče , and the landowner Ivan Čmak, his wife Štefanij and the gardener Johan Bobek were kidnapped as hostages and liquidated in the neighboring forest mountains of the Tschrett / Čret.

The memos from the files of the staff meetings of the Nazi civil administration, which at that time took place every fortnight to three weeks, show that Dorfmeister was always well informed about all events in his district and was significantly involved in the reprisals and crimes against the resistance movement and the population. At the staff meeting on June 29, 1942, Dorfmeister made the following status report:

“In the Cilli district, 105 shootings and 362 arrests took place in the reporting period. 16 bandits were killed in the fight, luckily there were only injuries on our side. The commander of the security police will evacuate the prison in Cilli within the next 14 days. Some of the inmates are transferred to other prisons and some are shot. This will create the space necessary to carry out another major campaign. Documents are available to be able to proceed to the arrest of another 300 - 500 people. "

This announcement was immediately implemented brutally: Without any court rulings, 37 prisoners lost their lives in a group execution in the prison yard of the Stari pisker on July 7, 1942, shortly afterwards on July 22nd another 100 people, including several women, and on July 30th they were again 70 Hostages shot. During the shootings on July 22nd, one of the Gestapo people secretly photographed the process.

death

On the way home from a service meeting on the morning of February 2, 1945 in Gonobitz / Slovenske Konjice , Dorfmeister joined a column of trucks of the 14th SS Police Regiment, which was also on the way to Cilli. The village master's car, driven by his chauffeur, drove in the middle of the column of cars loaded with war material and ammunition. In a lonely valley about 3 km northeast of Sternstein / Stražica (since 1955 Frankolovo), the convoy was attacked and shot at by partisans. The village master was also hit by bullets and seriously wounded. His driver, who was only slightly injured, managed to flee in the car and bring Dorfmeister to the Cillier Hospital. There he died on Saturday, February 3rd, 1945 of a serious head injury.

On February 5, 1945, Dorfmeister was buried in the cemetery of the city of Cilli. In addition to the population and delegations from the military, police and armed forces, a large number of local Nazi celebrities also took part in the pompous funeral ceremonies. Gauleiter and Reich Governor Sigfried Uiberreither gave a pithy speech, which he concluded with the words: "He lived a life worthy of all honor."

Erwin Rösener , who also took part in the funeral, Higher SS and Police Leader in Wehrkreis XVIII, SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS, then arranged that, as "retaliation" for the village master's death, on February 12, 1945 at the site of the assassination one hundred Hostages were hanged. This brutal crime, barely three months before the end of the war, went down in history as the Frankolovo massacre .

Awards

• War Merit Cross (1939) 1st class with swords
• Golden Badge of Honor of the Hitler Youth
• Silver badge of honor of the NSD student union

literature

• Milan Ževart: Hostage shootings in the occupied area of ​​Lower Styria (Spodnja Štajerska) , in: Gerhard Jochem; Georg Seiderer, ed .: disenfranchisement, expulsion, murder . Metropol, Berlin 2005. ISBN 3-936411-65-4 .
• Tone Ferenc: Nemško okupacijo Celja in okolice (German occupation of Celje and the surrounding area) , in: Iz zgodovine Celja 1941–1945 , Celje 2004.
• Tone Kregar: Okupacijsko nasilje na Celjskem (Nazi violence in the Celje area) , in: Iz zgodovine Celja 1941–1945 , Celje 2004.
• Stefan Karner, Hg .: The staff meetings of the Nazi civil administration in Lower Styria 1941–1944 , in: G. Schöpfer; St. Karner, Hg .: Our time story . Vol. 3. Leykam, Graz 1996. ISBN 3-7011-7302-8 .
• Ivan Stopar: Grajske stavbe vzhodni Sloveniji . Vol. 3 Spodnja Savinjska dolina , Založba Park, Ljubljana 1992.
• Newspaper article: Obituary for Anton Dorfmeister in: Marburger Zeitung No. 39, 85th year Marburg-Drau, February 8, 1945.
• Wilhelm Sattler: Lower Styria. A presentation of the population-political and economic fundamentals , in: Helmut Carstanjen, Ed .: Writings of the South-East German Institute Graz , Steirische Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1942.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karner, Staff Meetings, p. 19.
2. ↑ Tschitschen, was at that time a derogatory term for Slovenes who had immigrated from the coastal country that fell to Italy , see: Ćićarija
3. ↑ Ževart, Hostage Shootings, p. 198.
4. ↑ Stopar, Grajske stavbe, Vol. 3, p. 143.
5. ↑ Karner, Staff Meetings, p. 78.
6. ↑ At that time, the commander of the security police was SS-Standartenführer Otto Lurker
7. ^ Newspaper article, Marburger Zeitung, February 8, 1945.