Ferdinand Friedensbacher

Ferdinand Friedensbacher
nation	Austria
birthday	December 5, 1911
place of birth	Kitzbuhel ,  Austria-Hungary
job	Upholsterer, police officer, ski instructor
date of death	January 7, 1987
Place of death	Innsbruck ,  Austria
Career
discipline	Downhill , slalom , combination ski jumping
society	Kitzbühel Ski Club

Ferdinand "Ferdl" Friedensbacher (born December 5, 1911 in Kitzbühel , Austria-Hungary , † January 7, 1987 in Innsbruck , Austria ) was an Austrian ski racer and ski jumper . In 1931 he went down in history as the first winner of the Hahnenkamm run . In 1970 he had to answer for a homicide committed in Crete during the Second World War .

biography

Ferdinand Friedensbacher was born in Kitzbühel in 1911 and grew up as the only child of a dairymaid in the neighboring community of Jochberg . He completed an apprenticeship as an upholsterer and saddler with the Kitzbühel master Josef Stanger, but then only found temporary jobs.

Athletic career

In his childhood and youth, Friedensbacher learned not only to ski but also to ski jumping and took part in the Austrian and Tyrolean academic championships as early as 1924, where he finished fifth. In 1928 he managed a 24-meter set on the Schattbergschanze as part of the Kitzbühel youth ski day . In the same year he won the inaugural competition in Innsbruck in class II, in 1929 he joined the Kitzbüheler Ski Club (KSC). He celebrated his greatest career success on March 28, 1931, when he won the first Hahnenkamm run , which was insignificant at the time . He needed a time of 4: 34.12 minutes; of the 26 runners who started, only nine reached the finish. As in the following three years, the route led from the Ehrenbachhöhe over the Fleck to Kirchberg and over two fences, as Friedensbacher recalled in 1985 in a conversation with the Tyrolean daily newspaper .

After that, Friedensbacher mainly achieved victories in ski jumping. In 1934, for example, he won the opening competition on the ski jump in Aurach near Kitzbühel . After the Second World War he continued his sporting career and won, among other things, the Hahnenkamm competition in 1947, which is no longer held today. In 1948 he emerged victorious from the national competitions in St. Johann in Tirol and Fieberbrunn and was crowned Kitzbühel club champion. Up until old age he took part in the club championships as a ski racer, the last time in 1984. Both KSC and ÖSV awarded him decorations for his services to the sport.

Career as a police officer and during the Nazi era

Just one month after his downhill victory, Friedensbacher joined the armed forces and served in the Tyrolean hunter regiment . After four years as a soldier, he was transferred to the Innsbruck Gendarmerie , for which he spent his probationary period at the Hungerburg branch from January 1936 . After the “ Anschluss ” in 1938, the suburb was incorporated and Friedensbacher's position became obsolete, whereupon he found accommodation with the Innsbruck Criminal Police. He was called up to the tracing department and was soon promoted to assistant commissioner. Because of his excellent reputation as a winter sports enthusiast, his superiors refused to switch to the normal police force. In July 1939 he was transferred to Gestapo Division II, Sub-Division C, and was entrusted with monitoring and questioning religious groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses . Friedensbacher received honors for exceptional achievements, including two mentions for bravery, once for the arrest of a criminal while serving as a gendarme, and once for saving two people from drowning.

After the beginning of the war, Friedensbacher was called up in Group 611 of the Secret Field Police (GFP) in Hanover in November 1939 . In 1940 his group came to work in the Netherlands , Belgium and France . After the Balkan campaign in April 1941, the High Command sent Group 611 to Athens . Friedensbacher himself arrived a few weeks later because he had sustained an injury in a train accident in Transylvania and had to be treated in the Vienna Military Hospital. Following the conquest of Crete the GFP group 611 replaced in Chania the Sicherheitsdienst . Field Police Secretary Friedensbacher was supposed to set up posts in the southern and eastern parts of the island after the withdrawal of the Italian troops in the summer of 1943. He finally moved into an outpost in Agios Nikolaos with three auxiliary police officers, two drivers and an interpreter, and took care of the arrest and questioning of suspicious people. In the late summer of 1944, the group returned to mainland Greece.

In April 1945, Friedensbacher was finally sent to his home province of Tyrol as a non-commissioned officer in order to find a retreat for his unit. When he learned that the border was closed and US troops were on the way, he left the army and joined in Kitzbuehel using the relative resistance of Max Werner at. His tasks were to find hiding places and provide food for the US paratroopers .

1970 murder charges

While the German and Greek judiciary were investigating the war crimes committed by the Secret Field Police in Greece, they also became aware of Ferdinand Friedensbacher. After the Athens Higher Regional Court initially declared that it was not responsible for the persecution of German military personnel in 1964, he left the German proceedings in the same year as an Austrian citizen residing in Austria. The prosecution of Innsbruck was responsible for the prosecution . Friedensbacher was accused of having shot the 30-year-old pharmacist and partisan Joseph Sakkadakis during his stay in Agios Nikolaos . The indictment of October 30, 1970 makes it clear that this was not part of his remit:

“The tasks of the Secret Field Police included in particular the protection of the fighting troops against espionage and sabotage and the fulfillment of criminal police duties within the troops of the field army. The Secret Field Police did not have to carry out any political tasks, and the execution of executions was also not part of their task area. "

During intensive interviews in 1969 and 1970, the former police officer admitted to the Innsbruck authorities that he had acted illegally when the Greek was shot and justified this with his inexperience. According to his own statement, he counted to three with the help of the interpreter and then pulled the trigger when he had not received the requested information. The indictment charged the accused with a war crime and was murder . The trial took place on December 9, 1970 and lasted only five hours. Friedensbacher admitted a violation of martial law, but insisted on his "moral right". The jury found that, given the circumstances, the defendant did not act on "baser motives" and without "cruelty" and agreed to manslaughter . Because the 20-year limitation period under the StGB had already expired, the proceedings ended with an acquittal. An annulment complaint by the StA was unsuccessful.

The national press reacted differently to the judgment. While the Salzburger Nachrichten tried to justify the acquittal with a report on the cruelty of the Greek partisans, the Arbeiter-Zeitung wrote of an unpunished “cold-blooded murder”. According to the historian Winfried Garscha , Friedensbacher's acquittal is part of a long series of wrong decisions made by the Austrian post-war justice system when assessing Nazi crimes. The fact that neither the judiciary nor politicians were ready to question the judgment is another example of the stubborn rejection of Austria's co-responsibility for National Socialism.

According to recent findings, Friedensbacher was involved in the Viannos massacre , but it is not known what role he might have played in it.

Private life

At the end of the 1930s, Friedensbacher met his future wife while working as a criminal investigator in Innsbruck. She gave birth to twins, who died shortly after birth. Two years later he had a son. After the end of the war, he worked as a gendarme for a few months and, after a short job with the Kitzbühel municipality, moved back to Innsbruck with his family. In 1947 he passed the ski instructor examination and worked in Kitzbühel before taking over the management of the Jochberg Ski School in 1955. In the summer months he resumed his learned craft as an upholsterer. The legal proceedings led him to give up his property in Jochberg and the post of ski school director and finally to move back to the state capital.

On January 7, 1987, Friedensbacher died one month after his 75th birthday in Innsbruck. Five days later he was buried at the Westfriedhof with great sympathy from the Kitzbühel Ski Club, led by standard bearer Christian Pravda .

Achievements and Awards

• 1931: 1st place on the Hahnenkamm run
• 1933: KSC Sports Badge of Honor in silver
• 1947: 1st place in the Hahnenkamm jump
• 1948: 1st place in national competitions in St. Johann in Tirol and Fieberbrunn

Web links

• Ferdinand Friedensbacher on the website of the Kitzbühel Ski Club

annotation

1. ↑ The biographical text of Winfried Garscha is based on the police files and interrogations by the examining magistrate from 1969 and 1970. A copy of the court file ( LG Innsbruck 19 Vr 415/70) is archived in the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance under number 21221.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} commemorating Ferdinand Friedensbacher. In: Kitzbüheler Anzeiger , edition of January 31, 1987, p. 10. Online , accessed on March 7, 2020.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Winfried R. Garscha : The Tyrolian Downhill Racer as War Criminal. In: Günter Bischof , Fritz Plasser & Eva Maltschnig (editor): Austrian Lives. In: Contemporary Austrian Studies Volume 21, UNO Press / Innsbruck University Press 2012, pp. 311–317. Online , accessed March 7, 2020.
3. ↑ The silent birth of a myth. Kitzbüheler Anzeiger, January 24, 2019, accessed on March 7, 2020 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b} Ferdinand Friedensbacher. Kitzbühel Ski Club, accessed on March 7, 2020 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Winfried R. Garscha: A military police officer before the Innsbruck jury (1970). Central Austrian Research Center for Post-War Justice, November 2003, accessed on March 7, 2020 . 
6. ↑ LG Innsbruck 19 Vr 415/70, No. 11 (interrogation by Ferdinand Friedensbacher, Innsbruck, March 17, 1970), Copy to:. DÖW 21221/4.
7. ↑ LG Innsbruck 19 Vr 415/70, No. 24 (determination of the jury, December 9, 1970), Copy to:. DÖW 21221/15.
8. ^ Sabine Loitfellner: Society and Justice - Development of the legal basis, public echo and political disputes about the punishment of Nazi crimes in Austria. Interim Report 2001. Online , accessed March 7, 2020.
9. ^ Antonio J. Muñoz: The German Secret Field Police in Greece, 1941-1944. McFarland & Company, Jefferson 2018, ISBN 978-1-4766-6784-3 , p. 84 (English).