Anton Reinthaller

Anton Reinthaller

Anton Reinthaller (born April 14, 1895 in Mettmach , Upper Austria ; † March 6, 1958 ibid) was an Austrian SS brigade leader , landowner, from 1938 Minister of Agriculture and Forestry in the Seyss-Inquart union , NSDAP - member of the Reichstag and from 1939 to End of the war Undersecretary of State in the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Berlin . He was a founding member and from 1956 until his death the first federal party leader of the FPÖ .

Life

Anton Reinthaller was the son of a farmer and had the same first name as his father. He attended elementary school in his home town and the secondary school in Linz . At the First World War Reinthaller participated as a soldier in the Imperial Army in part and was from June 1916 to June 1918 in Russian captivity. He achieved the rank of first lieutenant in the reserve. After returning to Austria, he studied agriculture and forestry at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. In mid-1922 he graduated with an engineering degree . After graduating, he worked as a forester in Lilienfeld , Attersee and Haus im Ennstal . He also worked as a farmer.

Activities in the time of the authoritarian corporate state

During the First Republic he was first a member of the Landbund and from 1930 a member of the NSDAP in Austria (membership number 83.421), which was declared illegal there in 1933. In the year he joined the party, he was put up as a candidate for the state parliament (Linz constituency); at the time he was a civil servant . Reinthaller took a line that was not emphatically violent in the NSDAP and therefore came into conflict with Theodor Habicht . After the failure of the July coup in 1934, he was interned in the Kaisersteinbruch detention camp. There he befriended Ernst Kaltenbrunner . He then tried to rebuild the NSDAP in Austria (founding of the “National Action” committee); it was to be summarized in 1934 under the title “National Socialist People's Union of Austria” and then to join the Fatherland Front . This "Aktion Reinthaller" became known as the attempt to bring peace between the Austrian NSDAP and the corporate state . This attempt was brought down by the security director of Salzburg and Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg , among others. because the NSDAP continued to distribute subversive leaflets. In other respects, too, these efforts did not find any approval on the part of politics and the security authorities; In a letter dated October 10, 1934, Reinthaller was ordered by the Vienna Federal Police Department under threat of punishment to stop these efforts immediately. Reinthaller was replaced by Hermann Neubacher in the NSDAP and lost his positions in the party in 1937. He continued to be supported by Rudolf Hess and Richard Walther Darré .

Career in the time of National Socialism

Reinthaller (4 from right) at the swearing-in ceremony for the Seyß-Inquart federal government

During the “ Anschluss ” of Austria, on March 11, 1938, he became Minister for Agriculture and Forestry in Arthur Seyß-Inquart's follow -up cabinet . In March 1938 Walther Darré appointed him a member of the Reichsbauernrat .

He was also a member of the Reichstag in April 1938 ; He kept his mandate until the end of the war in May 1945. From May 1938 he held the office of master hunter for Austria . On May 23, 1938, Walter Walther Darré appointed him as his representative for the establishment of the Reichsnährstand in Austria .

On December 29, 1939, Anton Reinthaller was resigned from his position as Minister for Agriculture of the State of Austria by Adolf Hitler and appointed to Berlin as Undersecretary in the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture . In this position he took over the management of Department VII, which included the “Reich Administration for State Property” and “Mining Affairs”. In his inaugural address, he stated: "The essence of the national idea means nothing other than the commitment to belonging to the German people."

It was characteristic of his family environment that his wife Theresia Reinthaller joined the Berlin painter Fritz Wingen , who was visiting Lambach, on December 30, 1939, together with Margarethe von Pausinger (quote from the Gendarmerie protocol: two women who were strictly Nazi ) the gendarmerie denounced because he is said to have said that Germany (will) still get on the dog with the current government . This denunciation meant that Wingen by the Special Court Linz to the " treachery law " as " public enemy was sentenced" to ten months in prison.

In December 1938 he joined the SS (SS No. 292.775). On January 30, 1941, Reinthaller received the honorary rank of SS Brigade Leader . In the SS upper section of the Danube, he was inspector of the SS equestrian system. He was a country farmer's leader and master hunter in the Danube country. He was also the holder of the SS Honorary Angle and the Golden Party Badge of the NSDAP .

End of the war and political career in the Second Republic

At the end of 1945, the commission for the preparation of the war crimes trials put Anton Reinthaller on a list of people who were held responsible for "300 particularly serious war crimes".

In 1949 he was extradited from Germany to Austria by the American military government. After that, he was in custody. On October 23, 1950, a trial began before the Vienna People's Court Senate in which he was accused of “ high treason against the Austrian people and of illegality”. On October 27, he was acquitted of high treason and sentenced to three years in hard prison only for the crime of illegality. Since that sentence had already been served on pre-trial detention, he was released.

In 1952 he was sentenced by the People's Court to 2½ years in prison and loss of property because of his involvement during the National Socialist regime.

1955 founded Anton Reinthaller together with Friedrich Peter and Emil van clay gel the German national -minded Freedom Party , whose goal was the VdU to give a pronounced German national focus. When the VdU merged with the Freedom Party to form the FPÖ on October 17, 1955, he became its deputy chairman. At the constituent party congress of the FPÖ in the Hotel Weißer Hahn in Vienna on April 7, 1956, Reinthaller was elected as the first federal party leader of the FPÖ; he held this position until his death in 1958. He was then followed by Friedrich Peter at the 3rd regular federal party conference of the FPÖ, which met in Salzburg from September 12 to 14, 1958, and Anton Reinthaller had a political father-son relationship.

literature

• Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Hermagoras-Verlag, Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0578-4 .
• Heinz-Dietmar Schimanko: The Reinthaller case. The criminal proceedings against Anton Reinthaller before the People's Court , Vienna, among others: Böhlau 2019 ISBN 978-3-205-23186-8 .
• Erich Stockhorst : 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . Arndt, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-116-1 (unchanged reprint of the first edition from 1967).

Web links

• Anton Reinthaller in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Anton Reinthaller's voice recording in the online archive of the Austrian Media Library (propaganda speech from 1938)
• Newspaper article about Anton Reinthaller in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andreas Dornheim: Race, Space and Autarky. Expert opinion on the role of the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture in the Nazi era . (PDF) Developed for the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Bamberg 2011.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Graduated engineer. In:  Tages-Post , June 6, 1922, p. 4 (online at ANNO ).
3. ^ ^{A b c} Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 89
4. ^ The National Socialist election candidates for the Linz constituency. In:  Tages-Post , October 18, 1930, p. 11 (online at ANNO ).
5. ↑ The text of the "stage plan" drawn up by Reinthaller can be found in Reichhold, L. (1984). Battle for Austria. The Fatherland Front and its resistance to the Anschluss 1933 - 1938. Published by the DÖW. Vienna: Austrian Federal Publishing House. P. 153 ff.
6. ↑ Ludwig Jedlicka, Rudolf Neck (ed.): From Justizpalast to Heldenplatz. Studies and documentation 1927 to 1938. Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1975, p. 479.
7. ^ The Ministry of Seyss-Inquart. In:  Oesterreichische Kronen-Zeitung. Illustrirtes Tagblatt / Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung / Wiener Kronen-Zeitung , March 12, 1938, p. 1 (online at ANNO ).
8. ^ The pledge of the Austrian peasantry. In:  Bregenzer Tagblatt / Vorarlberger Tagblatt , March 17, 1938, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).
9. ^ Austrian members of the Reichstag. In:  Salzburger Chronik für Stadt und Land / Salzburger Chronik / Salzburger Chronik. Tagblatt with the illustrated supplement “Die Woche im Bild” / Die Woche im Bild. Illustrated entertainment supplement to the “Salzburger Chronik” / Salzburger Chronik. Daily newspaper with the illustrated supplement “Oesterreichische / Österreichische Woche” / Österreichische Woche / Salzburger Zeitung. Tagblatt with the illustrated supplement “Austrian Week” / Salzburger Zeitung , April 15, 1938, p. 9 (online at ANNO ).
10. ^ Introduction of the Reich hunting law in Tyrol. In:  Innsbrucker Nachrichten , May 13, 1938, p. 5 (online at ANNO ).
11. ↑ Reinthaller representative Darrés in Austria. In:  Workers Storm. Kampfblatt der National Socialist Arbeiters Deutschösterreich , May 25, 1938, p. 3 (online at ANNO ).
12. ↑ Reinthaller appointed to Berlin. In:  Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Democratic organ / Neues Wiener Abendblatt. Evening edition of the (") Neue Wiener Tagblatt (") / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Evening edition of the New Wiener Tagblatt / Wiener Mittagsausgabe with Sportblatt / 6 o'clock evening paper / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Neue Freie Presse - Neues Wiener Journal / Neues Wiener Tagblatt , December 30, 1939, p. 4 (online at ANNO ).
13. ↑ State farmer's leader, engineer Reinthaller, department head of the Reich Ministry of Food. In:  Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Democratic organ / Neues Wiener Abendblatt. Evening edition of the (") Neue Wiener Tagblatt (") / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Evening edition of the New Wiener Tagblatt / Wiener Mittagsausgabe with Sportblatt / 6 o'clock evening paper / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Neue Freie Presse - Neues Wiener Journal / Neues Wiener Tagblatt , February 6, 1940, p. 10 (online at ANNO ).
14. ^ The conflict over the honorary citizenship of the Nazi denouncer Margarethe Pausinger ( Memento from 23 August 2011 in the Internet Archive ) The conflict over the honorary citizenship of the Nazi denouncer Margarethe Pausinger.
15. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 475.
16. ^ The war criminals of Austria. In:  Linzer Volksblatt , December 4, 1945, p. 3 (online at ANNO ).
17. ↑ Reinthaller is being delivered. In:  Workers will. Social democratic organ of the Alpine countries / workers will. Organ of the working people of the Alpine countries / workers will. Organ of the working people for Styria and Carinthia / workers will. Organ of the working people for Styria, Carinthia (and Carniola) Neue Zeit. Organ of the Styrian Socialist Party , July 5, 1949, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).
18. ^ Negotiation against engineer Reinthaller. In:  Salzburger Nachrichten. Published by the American armed forces for the Austrian population / Salzburger Nachrichten. Independent democratic daily newspaper , October 19, 1950, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).
19. ↑ Three lawyers in the Reinthaller treason trial. In:  Weltpresse. Independent news and voices from all over the world / world press , October 23, 1950, p. 9 (online at ANNO ).
20. ↑ Reinthaller released. In:  Weltpresse. Independent news and voices from all over the world / world press , October 27, 1950, p. 8 (online at ANNO ).