August Eigruber

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August Eigruber (1938)
August Eigruber (on the right) with Heinrich Himmler , Mauthausen concentration camp, 1941

August Eigruber (born April 16, 1907 in Steyr ; † May 28, 1947 in Landsberg am Lech ) was an Austrian politician (NSDAP) . He was a member of the Reichstag and Gauleiter of Upper Danube and Governor of Upper Austria .

Life

August Eigruber was the illegitimate son of the general merchant Aloisia Eigruber. After attending primary and secondary school , he completed an apprenticeship as a surveying technician and precision mechanic at the Austrian Federal College for Iron and Steel Processing. Then he worked in his profession.

In November 1922 he joined the National Socialist Workers' Youth of Austria , whose leader he became in 1925. In April 1928 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 83.432), whose district management for Steyr-Land he took over in October 1930. He was also a local district leader.

In 1934, Eigruber was sentenced to several months' imprisonment for his work for the NSDAP, which was banned in Austria, which he spent in the Wöllersdorf works in the Wöllersdorf detention center .

From May 1935, Eigruber was Gau managing director of the now illegal party in Gau Upper Austria and from 1936 took over the entire Gau management. On March 14, 1938, he was appointed governor of the “ Anschluss of Austria ”. Since April 10, 1938, Eigruber also acted as Ministerialrat. From April 1938 to the end of the Nazi regime in the spring of 1945 he sat as an MP for the country Austria in Nazi Reichstag .

Shortly before, in March 1938, Eigruber had joined the SA , where he held the rank of brigade leader . On 22 May 1938 he joined the SS (SS no. 292778) as a banner leader and was established in January 1939, Brigadier , 1940 group leader and in June 1943 for Obergruppenfuehrer transported.

On April 1, 1940, he was appointed Reich Governor of Upper Danube and in November 1942 as Reich Defense Commissioner . In addition, Eigruber was on the supervisory board of Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG .

At the beginning of May 1945 he fled to Kirchdorf an der Krems and subsequently went into hiding. On August 10th he was arrested by a US unit near St. Pankraz in Upper Austria. In the main Mauthausen trial he was sentenced to death and executed on May 28, 1947.

Responsibility for end-stage crimes

The New Free Austria resistance group formed in the town of Freistadt in Mühlviertel in Upper Austria in the spring of 1944 was uncovered by the Gestapo in autumn that year and betrayed under torture. On October 9 and 10, more than 50 men and women were arrested in Freistadt. The People's Court in Linz sentenced ten of the accused to death for treason, eight of whom were shot on May 1, 1945 at the Treffling military training area. The executions were also illegal by the standards of Nazi law because the appeals for clemency had not yet been approved. On that day, three other men and a woman from a Linz resistance group and a woman for looting were executed there. The shootings were carried out at the instigation of Gauleiter Eigruber, who had massively urged the judicial officers to issue the necessary orders.

On April 28, 1945, six men from the Peilstein in Mühlviertel who had cleared away an anti-tank barrier were shot by the Hitler Youth and Volkssturm . The Volkssturm was under the authority of the Gauleiter.

In the course of the so-called Mühlviertel hare hunt , around 500 Soviet prisoners of war who had fled the Mauthausen concentration camp were murdered from February 2 to 4, 1945. In addition to SS units from the concentration camp, which committed the majority of the crimes, SA units and the Volkssturm were also involved, acting on the orders of the Gauleiter.

In April 1945, Eigruber ordered the murder of the 42 Upper Austrians of the “Welser Group” in Mauthausen concentration camp , which was carried out on April 28, 1945.

Attempt to blow up the art treasures stored in Altaussee

On April 10, 1945, the Altaussee salt mine , in which 22,000 works of art were stored, including 6,500 paintings, were given four boxes with the inscription “Caution marble, don't fall!” On behalf of Gauleiter Eigruber.

Group photo after the 500 kg bombs packed in wooden boxes were recovered from the Altaussee salt mine, May 1945

Three days later another four boxes were delivered, allegedly with works of art from the personal possession of the Gauleiter. In fact, however, the boxes contained American 500 kg dud bombs, as the operations manager Otto Högler (1901–1973) and employees recognized. On the evening of May 3, 1945, Högler had obtained permission from Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was nearby , to remove the explosive bombs that had been brought into the mine. He had pointed out that the expected water ingress would destroy the art treasures stored there. The centuries-old livelihoods of the Altaussee would also be lost. At midnight, Eigruber gave the counter-order. The bombs should stay, otherwise he would come to Altaussee and leave those involved hanging. He would also have Kaltenbrunner arrested. At 1:45 a.m. the following day, Högler reached Kaltenbrunner by phone. This was followed by a heated argument, also by telephone, between Kaltenbrunner and Eigruber, in which the latter finally gave in. Eigruber's bombs were removed and the entrance to the saline was blown up in a controlled manner; the art treasures were thus saved. The access was cleared on May 17, 1945, and from June 14, the works of art could be removed from the mine.

Crimes in Mauthausen concentration camp

In the main Mauthausen trial, Eigruber and 60 other accused were indicted before a US military court from the end of March 1946 in the Dachau internment camp . Eigruber did not hold any position in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Nevertheless, "he had been in close contact with the SS camp since 1938", and together with Ernst Kaltenbrunner he "played a decisive role in filling positions in Mauthausen". As the responsible Gauleiter and head of the food office in Upper Austria, he was primarily responsible for the catastrophic food situation of the prisoners. The Schloss Hartheim in which invalid prisoners as part of the action 14f13 gassed were, had been made available by him. At the end of April he ordered the execution of 42 resistance fighters from the "Wels Group", who were gassed on April 28, 1945 in Mauthausen. Eigruber was sentenced to death by hanging on May 13, 1946 for his responsibility for the crimes in the Mauthausen concentration camp and executed on May 28, 1947 in the Landsberg war crimes prison .

The verdict of the Dachau court of April 30, 1947 lists in detail the acts that Eigruber was charged with:

“A witness had heard that he said, referring to some of the captured Russians [what is known as the Mühlviertel hare hunt], 'all these pigs are to be disposed of'. A witness reported that Eigruber was present when 40 Austrians [the Welser group] arrived in autumn 1944; all but one were later executed. Another witness had seen him on 12 to 16 occasions, once on September 7, 1944 when the Austrians were brought to the camp, and once in January 1945 on the night of the arrival of 20 or 22 Anglo-Americans [sic!], which, as is well known in the camp, were later liquidated. The only survivor from the Austrian group who was gassed in late April testified: A few days after their arrival at the camp, Eigruber turned to her, shouting threats and promising harsh treatment. Before and after the gassing, he heard that Eigruber had given the order. Two witnesses confirmed that Eigruber was present when two Americans, one Englishman and nine others were shot in the neck on the night of April 5, 1945. One of the two witnesses testified that immediately before the execution of one of the men, Eigruber had announced the sentence to death in the name of Himmler. "

According to the reasons for the judgment, some of the co-defendants also seriously incriminated Eigruber:

" SS-Obersturmführer Johann Altfuldisch testified that the camp commandant had been under the direct supervision of the accused since February 1945 and that before that he had considerable influence because of his SS rank. SS-Obersturmführer Johannes Grimm confirmed that the accused had inspected various killings and brought prisoners to the killings. SS-Unterscharführer Josef Niedermayer mentioned the shooting of a dozen people, including two Englishmen, five Poles, a Belgian and a Russian, by the defendant and the camp commandant at 4 a.m. in April 1945, both of whom were drunk. SS Oberscharführer Andreas Trum finally testified that Eigruber personally directed the shooting of nine Czechs in the spring of 1943. "

family

August Eigruber was married. The couple had five children. His son Hermann Eigruber became a politician ( FPÖ ).

literature

  • Florian Freund: The Mauthausen Trial. In: Dachauer Hefte 13 - Judgment and Justice ; Ed .: Comité International de Dachau, Brussels 1997
  • Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Hermagoras-Verlag, Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0578-4 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .

Web links

Commons : August Eigruber  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 130
  2. ↑ Data on Janssen-Militaria, SS-Oberstgruppenführer and SS-Obergruppenführer on November 9, 1944
  3. ↑ https://www.land-oberoesterreich.gv.at/13775.htm
  4. ↑ Othmar Rappersberger: The resistance group “New Free Austria” in Freistadt 1944/45 and their fate . In: Freistädter Geschichtsblätter : The fateful year 1945 in Freistadt 2nd part, issue 11, publisher Stadtgemeinde Freistadt, Freistadt 1997, p. 117
  5. ↑ https://www.land-oberoesterreich.gv.at/13775.htm
  6. ↑ Extensive reconstruction of the events in: Theodor Brückler: Endangering and Rescue of Art Treasures: Attempt at a critical reconstruction. In: Eva Frodl-Kraft (Hrsg.): Heritage at risk: Austria's monument protection and preservation of monuments 1918-1945 in the prism of contemporary history. In: Studies on monument protection and preservation. Volume 16. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 1997, 363-378
  7. ^ Günther Haase: Art theft and art protection. Volume I. The documentation. 2008, 403
  8. ^ Haase 2008, 413
  9. ^ Stefan Hördler: Order and Inferno. The concentration camp system in the last year of the war. Göttingen 2015, 428-430; Florian Freund, Bertrand Perz : Mauthausen - main camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 4: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-52964-X , p. 332.
  10. ↑ Florian Freund : The Dachau Mauthausen Trial. In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance. Yearbook 2001 , Vienna 2001, p. 57; Stefan Hördler: 428 u. Note 331
  11. ↑ listed by name online in: 1945: Die Murder der Welser Gruppe. http://ooe.kpoe.at/article.php/20060421181531835
  12. ↑ Stefan Hördler 2015, 428
  13. ^ Translated from the original English text, "Defendant" by "Eigruber", the defendant numbers replaced by names and ranks: Review and Recommendations of the Deputy Judge Advocate for War Crimes: United States of America v. Hans Altfuldisch et al. - Case No. 000.50.5 Original document Mauthausen main trial (PDF; 75 MB) April 30, 1947 (English), pp. 29–30.
  14. ↑ Confirmed by Eigruber in the process: "I also took part in the nightly execution of 10 prisoners of unknown nationality in March or April 1945." In: Florian Freund, 2001, p. 48. Available online: https: //www.doew .at / cms / download / 2sbg8 / mauth_freund.pdf
  15. ^ Eva Frodl-Kraft: Heritage at Risk - Austria's Monument Protection and Preservation of Monuments 1918–1945 in the Prism of Contemporary History. Böhlau, Vienna 1997, p. 363
personal data
SURNAME Eigruber, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (NSDAP), MdR, Gauleiter of Upper Danube and Governor of Upper Austria
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Steyr
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 1947
Place of death Landsberg correctional facility