Ferdinand Obenfeldner

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Ferdinand Obenfeldner (born January 19, 1917 in Lienz , † December 22, 2009 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian politician of the SPÖ . He was Deputy Mayor of Innsbruck from 1962 to 1985 and headed the Tyrolean regional health insurance fund for 39 years . At the time of National Socialism he was, among other things, a Gestapo officer.

Life

Obenfeldner grew up as the son of a worker for the Austrian Federal Railways in an environment of the labor movement and was a trained businessman. In April 1934, after the February uprisings , he joined the Revolutionary Socialists . In 1935 he started as a professional soldier in the Austrian Armed Forces due to a lack of work .

After the "Anschluss" of Austria in 1938, he was accepted as a sergeant in the Wehrmacht and in June 1938 transferred to the Gestapo , for which he worked as an officer in the personnel department. Even if Obenfeldner himself emphasized the administrative aspects of his employment after he became aware of his position in the Gestapo, he was involved in the arrest of the Jewish department store owner Richard Schwarz, who was seriously injured in the night of the pogrom, during the November pogrom . In 1939 he became a member of the NSDAP and applied for admission to the SS . In 1940 he volunteered for the army and was in the 5th Mountain Division of the Wehrmacht during the entire war years . With this he was stationed in Greece, Italy and Russia and ended up in 1945 in the vicinity of Turin in American captivity. In August 1945 he returned to Tyrol from captivity and was pardoned on August 13, 1947, according to his own statements, which have now been refuted, as “less burdened”.

Immediately after his return in September 1945, Obenfeldner found a job in the secretariat of the SPÖ Tirol and in 1946 was regional chairman of the Socialist Youth . In 1946, after misrepresenting his membership in the NSDAP, he found a job with the Tyrolean Health Insurance Fund, of which he was director between 1951 and 1980. In 1950 he entered the Innsbruck municipal council for the SPÖ, in November 1956 he became a city councilor and from November 1962 vice mayor. He was to hold this office until March 1985, and in this function was the city's construction and traffic officer. From 1968 to 1975 he was also a member of the Tyrolean state parliament .

In 1955 and 1957 there were two criminal proceedings against Oberfeldner before the regional court. He was accused of having been involved in the procedural execution of two Polish forced laborers in the Kirchbichl forced labor camp in September 1940 while working as a Gestapo personnel officer . Both proceedings were discontinued in 1958.

Although his involvement in the Nazi regime was already known in the 1950s, it was not until 2007 that the media discussed it more broadly than the chairman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center , Efraim Zuroff , Herwig van Staa and Hilde Zach because of their participation in the celebrations at Obenfeldner's 90. Birthday asked to resign.

Awards

literature

  • Christian Mathies: “Always on the side of democracy”? Reflections on the controversy surrounding Ferdinand Obenfeldner's Nazi past . In: Gaismair yearbook 2008. On the trail . Studienverlag, 2008, p. 42–50 ( gaismair-gesellschaft.at [PDF; accessed December 14, 2015]).
  • Wolfgang Neugebauer, Peter Schwarz: The will to walk upright. Disclosure of the role of the BSA in the social reintegration of former National Socialists . Czernin Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-3-7076-0196-1 , p. 151-160 .

Individual evidence

  1. Ferdinand Obenfeldner died. In: ORF Tirol. December 22, 2009, accessed December 14, 2015 .
  2. Obenfeldner defends himself. In: ORF Tirol. March 19, 2007, accessed December 14, 2015 .
  3. a b c group of perpetrators. (No longer available online.) In: Places of the November pogrom 1938 in Innsbruck. Archived from the original on December 11, 2011 ; accessed on December 14, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.novemberpogrom1938.at
  4. a b 1st business meeting of the City Council of Innsbruck on January 21, 2010. Accessed on December 15, 2015 .