Anton Plankensteiner

Anton Plankensteiner 1938

Toni Plankensteiner with his wife and children in the inter-war period

Anton ("Toni") Plankensteiner (born March 16, 1890 in Bregenz , † October 30, 1969 in Dornbirn ) was an Austrian politician. He became known as the governor of Vorarlberg in 1938 and 1939 and as district leader in Dornbirn (1939 to 1942) and Neustadt an der Weinstrasse (1942 to 1945).

Live and act

Early years (1890 to 1918)

Anton Plankensteiner was born in Bregenz as the son of the postman Tobias Plankensteiner, who came from a South Tyrolean mountain farming family, and his wife Franziska nee. Auderer born. He grew up in Dornbirn, where he elementary school and secondary school , along with the future Vorarlberg Governor Ernst Winsauer graduated, and in 1909 his final examination took off. From 1909 to 1910 he was a member of the 4th regiment of the Tyrolean Kaiserjäger in Bregenz and Innsbruck .

In 1911, Plankensteiner joined the Dornbirn branch of the bank for Tyrol and Vorarlberg as a bank clerk . This activity was interrupted by his participation in the First World War , in which he fought in Galicia and on the Tyrolean front from 1914 to 1918 . In the mountains on the border with Italy he temporarily commanded a high mountain company, and in 1915 he was assigned to the Association of the German Alpine Corps under Lieutenant General Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen for a few months . He has received several awards for his services on the Dolomite Front, such as the Iron Cross II. Class, the Karl Troop Cross , the Military Merit Medal and the Order of the Iron Crown III. Class (but without elevation to the nobility). Plankensteiner married his girlfriend Maria Luise Meingassner during the war in 1916. From this marriage three sons and one daughter were born.

First Republic and Corporate State (1919 to 1938)

In the post-war period, Plankensteiner was involved in the Heimwehr and in the German national gymnastics club Dornbirn in 1862 . On November 6, 1930 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 364.255) and the SA , after he had previously revealed a Greater German conviction, and became district manager of Dornbirn. After the NSDAP was banned, Plankensteiner was temporarily the party's Gauleiter for Vorarlberg.

As a result of the increasing political radicalization during the time of Austrofascism , Plankensteiner was sent to the Wöllersdorf detention camp for seven months from January to July 1934 . After his return he only worked as a bank clerk without a political function.

Period of National Socialism (1938 to 1945)

Immediately after the "Anschluss" of Austria by the German Reich, Plankensteiner was appointed provisional governor of Vorarlberg on March 12, 1938. On June 7th, the official appointment of the definitive governor by Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick followed. From April 1938 until the end of the Nazi regime in the spring of 1945, Plankensteiner was a member of the German Reichstag for Austria .

Plankensteiner was a fanatical National Socialist who agitated against Jews and advocated the final solution . He described himself “rightly as the soul of the National Socialist movement in Vorarlberg and a legendary fighter”.

As the National Socialist governor, he was without mercy for political opponents. So he arranged for the arrest of the former commandant of the gendarmerie post in Dornbirn, Hugo Lunardon . When his wife asked for clemency for her husband, who was imprisoned in Mauthausen , he said: “The woman has already come five times to complain and whine. But it doesn't hurt him (Lunardon) at all if he sits in there for a few weeks. "

In the first few months after the “Anschluss”, it was not yet clear to the Vorarlberg supporters of National Socialism that Vorarlberg would lose its sovereignty and become part of the Tyrol-Vorarlberg district . In December 1939, three months after the start of the Second World War , the Vorarlberger Landeshauptmannschaft was dissolved by a decree of the Reich Ministry of the Interior . Plankensteiner only retained the function of district leader of Dornbirn. Since he had intervened with other Vorarlberg National Socialists against the connection of Vorarlberg to Tyrol, he fell out of favor with Gauleiter Franz Hofer .

On March 1, 1942, Plankensteiner was transferred to Neustadt an der Weinstrasse in Westmark as district manager . The Gauleiter who was a friend of his and Josef Bürckel, who was responsible for the follow-up vote in Austria, worked here . After the Allies approached , the Gau and Kreisleitung was dissolved in 1945, and Plankensteiner returned to Vorarlberg, where he last defended the district town of Dornbirn as local commander.

Post-war era (1945 to 1969)

After his escape to the Bregenzerwald , Plankensteiner and others were arrested and interned by French troops on May 9, 1945 . In June 1949 he was sentenced to eleven years of more stringent prison by the Innsbruck People's Court , but was pardoned on the same day and released from prison in 1950.

After his release, Plankensteiner worked for a few months on the mediation of Hermann Rhomberg, the co-founder and first exhibition manager of the Dornbirn fair , as a commercial clerk at the fair. From October 1950 he was employed by an iron wholesaler in Dornbirn; In 1956 he retired. He died on October 30, 1969 at the age of 79.

literature

• Wolfgang Weber : Anton Plankensteiner: Against "nigger dances and cinema kitsch". In: Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators - Helpers - Free Riders. Nazi victims from the Lake Constance area. (=  Perpetrator - helper - free rider . Tape 5 ). 1st edition. Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2016, ISBN 978-3-945893-04-3 , pp. 162 ff .
• Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 , p. 469 .
• Franz Maier: Biographical organization manual of the NSDAP and its divisions in the area of ​​today's state of Rhineland-Palatinate . (= Publications of the Parliament's Commission for the History of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate , Volume 28) Hase & Koehler, Mainz 2007, ISBN 3-7758-1407-8 , p. 367 f.

Web links

Commons : Anton Plankensteiner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Anton Plankensteiner in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Color video of the speech at the connection in April 1938

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DÖW, Zl. 11.445