Franz Brandl (Chief of Police)

Franz Brandl (born April 14, 1875 in Vienna ; † March 15, 1953 ibid) was an Austrian police lawyer and writer in the service of changing regimes.

Service in the monarchy

The son from a middle-class civil servant family studied law at the University of Vienna , graduated with a doctorate and joined the kk police force in 1898 . As a supervisory body at political gatherings, Brandl had the opportunity to get to know their actors up close. Later, as an employee and from 1918 head of the state police , Brandl accompanied high-ranking personalities such as the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand on trips.

Transition to the republic

In the fall of 1918 Brandl described the transition from monarchy to the republican state of German Austria in a diary that was evaluated by historical research.

Among other things, he noted:

• October 21: We receive instructions to some Czech and Slovenian MPs who would contact us [...] to issue passports for Switzerland . […] The German-Austrian National Council will be constituted this afternoon . In view of the general situation, the entire guard was put on standby [...] (meaning the security guard , the uniformed police).
• October 28: […] The mood against the imperial couple is the worst imaginable in Austria. [...]
• October 29th: [...] crowds march across the Ringstrasse with the cry: “We want the Republic! Down with Habsburg ! "
• October 30: […] Some windows rattle in the streets. The police go to work, ride attacks and arrest. Soon it will be quiet again. […] Suddenly two thousand men are wildest mob in front of the Roßauerkaserne , where the garrison arrest is located, and storm. [...] when the guard succeeds in pushing the people away [...] It took until after midnight for the police, who were exhausted today, to bring order back into the streets without military help.
• October 31: The northern railway freight station is pillaged. The guard proceeds with saber and revolver [...] The guard has a difficult time; it is numerically too weak and fragmented; because half the city is on its feet, and soon there, now there, there are riots [...]
• November 1st: The security guard works hard because it still wears the badge of the old state […] […] three members of the State Council […] appeared and took […] Schober […] on oath and duty for the State Council.

From the republic to the corporate state

For a long time Brandl acted as the "right hand man" of Police President Johann Schober. After his death, Brandl himself was Vienna Police Commissioner for almost six months, from October 1932 to March 16, 1933, and was then forced into retirement because he was not compliant enough to the dictatorial ambitions of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss and did not clearly take his side ( Brandl was in office as President of Interpol until 1934).

Dollfuss, who started becoming a corporate state on March 5, 1933 , resented Brandl especially two incidents on March 15, 1933:

• Brandl announced a home guard meeting in the former Bohemian court chancellery on Judenplatz in Vienna to the social democratic mayor Karl Seitz and sent out vehicles to keep the assembled home guardians in check if necessary. At best, the Heimwehr should secure Dollfuss' legal coup.
• When Dollfuss on 15 March 1933 arranged closure and Parliament any possible evacuation to prevent a National Council meeting (see " Self-dissolution of parliament ") followed Brandl the head of the police operation the written command, which he had himself demanded of Dollfuss. The police officer passed this document on to the (Greater German) President Sepp Straffner , who had wanted to chair the meeting that had been prevented. Straffner used this piece of evidence to file a criminal complaint against Dollfuss.

The German national, but only moderately anti-Semitic-minded Brandl ostentatiously joined the Austrian NSDAP on March 25, 1933 and was then visited demonstratively in his official apartment by its Gauleiter , the Viennese councilor Alfred Frauenfeld , in party uniform. From the mid-1930s, Brandl was a prominent “illegal” (ie a member of the NSDAP, which was then banned in Austria); In 1938 the Nazi regime made him President of the DDSG .

In 1945 he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for high treason .

Writers, works

Brandl was not without literary talent: his memoirs "Kaiser, Politiker und Menschen", published in 1936, contain concise and sometimes idiosyncratic portraits of personalities such as Karl Lueger , Victor Adler , Franz Schuhmeier and Georg von Schönerer . In his old age, Brandl mainly published novels and in 1952 (together with Heinrich Klier ) received a novel prize from the Donauland book club .

• Emperors, politicians and people. Memories of a Viennese police chief . Johannes Günther, Leipzig / Vienna 1936. Was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone after the end of the Second World War .
• State trials. Two millennia of judgment in the service of power . Günther, Leipzig / Vienna 1936
• Vienna Symphony. Composed by a criminalist . Kühne, Wall near Vienna 1937
• An empire falls apart. A family novel from the last decades of the Danube Monarchy . Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1952
• The villa of Tiberius . Novel. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1953
• Tiberius on Capri . Novel. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1955
• The broken word . Historical novel. Book club Donauland, Vienna 1956

literature

• Wilhelm Kosch , Carl Ludwig Lang, Konrad Feilchenfeldt (eds.): German Literature Lexicon. Biographical-bibliographical manual. Volume 3: Blaas - Braunfels. KG Saur, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-908255-03-1 , p. 557.
• Franz A. Pichler: Police officer P. A loyal servant of his unfaithful state. Wiener Polizeidienst 1901 - 38th publisher for social criticism , Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-900351-32-5 (therein numerous references to Brandl)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rudolf Neck (Ed.): Austria in 1918. Reports and documents , R. Ouldenburg Verlag, Munich 1968, pp. 69, 88, 91, 96, 113, 125, 135.
2. ^ Resignation of Police President Brandl. In:  Neue Freie Presse , March 17, 1933, p. 1 (online at ANNO ).
3. ↑ On the resignation of Brandl, cf. " Neue Freie Presse " and other Viennese daily newspapers of March 17, 1933, especially the Nazi organ Deutschösterreichische Tages-Zeitung , which published a reference to the "Heimwehr putsch" feared by Brandl
4. ↑ Cf. Walter Wiltschegg: The Home Guard: An Irresistible People's Movement? , Vienna 1985, S 221. On March 15, 1933, Heimwehr leader Starhemberg had ordered hundreds of his people there, which fueled rumors of a coup.
5. ↑ Engelbert Steinwender: From the city guard to the security guard. Viennese police stations and their time , Volume 2: Ständestaat, Greater German Reich, Occupation , Weishaupt Verlag, Graz 1992, ISBN 3-900310-85-8 , p. 22
6. ↑ Cf. Peter Mahner, Walter Mentzel (eds.): Protocols of the Council of Ministers of the Second Republic, Cabinet Figl I, p. 263.
7. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-b.html