Fritz Ertl

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Fritz Karl Ertl (born August 31, 1908 in Breitbrunn near Hörsching ; † November 2, 1982 in Linz ) was an Austrian architect and Bauhaus student of Wassili Kandinsky , who was deputy head of the SS central construction management in Auschwitz .

Early years

Fritz Ertl, son of the master builder Josef Ertl († May 21, 1935), after completing his school career, studied first at the Federal College for Building Construction in Salzburg and from 1928 to 1931 at the Bauhaus Dessau and completed his training as a qualified architect. He then worked in his family's construction company. In 1934 he passed the master builder examination.

After Austria was annexed to the German Reich , Ertl joined the NSDAP ( membership number 6.418.769) and the SS (SS number 417.971). Ertl was active in the local NSDAP economic advisory board as a "civil servant".

Second World War

Barrack Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp (2006)

After the beginning of the Second World War , Ertl reported to the Waffen-SS in mid-November 1939 and was stationed in Krakow with the 8th SS-Totenkopf-Standard . From May 27, 1940, Ertl was a member of the SS Auschwitz Construction Office. From the beginning, Ertl headed the building construction department there. As deputy to the site manager of the special construction department for the construction of the Auschwitz prisoner of war camp , Ertl designed the barracks for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , initially planned as a prisoner of war camp , each of which was to be occupied by 550 prisoners. His superior Karl Bischoff corrected this number to 744, with which both “ translated the German equation of Soviet soldier with subhuman into architectural terms”. Ultimately, for cost reasons, prefabricated components for army stables were used in the concentration camp barracks. At the beginning of September, Ertl was temporarily assigned to the administrative office of the SS, which later became the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office. At the beginning of January 1942, Ertl, as a specialist in the SS, became deputy head of the construction management in Auschwitz, now known as the central construction management of the Waffen SS and Auschwitz police . At the same time, Ertl was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS . To plan the crematoria , Ertl chaired a meeting in August 1942, where he euphemistically described the crematoria as “bathing establishments for special campaigns” in the minutes of the meeting.

Ertl left the Auschwitz Central Construction Office at the end of January 1943 and graduated from the SS Pioneer School. From May 1943 he was assigned to the engineer battalion of the SS Cavalry Division and was a member of the staff at the SS military training area in Heidelager . Werner Jothann succeeded him as Bischoff's deputy at the beginning of April 1943 . As the motivation for his decision to be transferred from Auschwitz, Ertl stated after the end of the war : “As early as the end of 1942, when I saw how the camp was developing, I and several other comrades made the decision to report us from Auschwitz. After the defeat of Stalingrad there was a good opportunity to do so. All were examined with regard to their war usefulness. We didn't give up on our investigation and volunteered. As a result, I was transferred to the reserve unit in Dresden on February 3, 1943 ”.

Jean-Claude Pressac tells of a love affair between Ertl and a Polish woman, which he entered into in the winter of 1942 and which later resulted in an illegitimate son. This relationship was frowned upon by his comrades. Only after his lover had been classified as a Volksdeutsche did they get married in August 1943.

From December 1943 front operations followed, first in Russia and from February 1944 in Croatia. According to Hans Schafranek , these operations “very likely included massive war crimes against the civilian population”. On March 19, 1944, he took part in the German occupation of Hungary . According to a later indictment, in mid-May 1944 "in the course of the occupation of Hungary, he was assigned to the office group chief C at the SS-Wirtschafter in Hungary". From mid-August 1944, Ertl was again working under Bischoff at the Construction Inspectorate in Silesia as a construction manager in Breslau and Arnstadt .

post war period

After the end of the war, Ertl was briefly in American captivity . He then worked as a builder in Linz .

Hermann Langbein , who survived Auschwitz , reported members of the central construction management of the Waffen SS and Auschwitz Police, Ertl and Walter Dejaco, in 1961 for their work with the Auschwitz construction management. The trial against Ertl and Dejaco began on January 18, 1972, as the first Auschwitz trial in Austria before the jury court of the Vienna Regional Court . The subject of the proceedings was their participation in the Holocaust through the planning, construction and maintenance of the gas chambers and crematoria of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Dejaco was also accused of having shot or slain twelve concentration camp prisoners between 1940 and 1942.

"From the outset, their construction activities were geared towards the short-term vegetation of the prisoners, and represented a mockery of the elementary principles of construction technology. That the accused were very well aware that the barracks they had built without windows and adequate ventilation, lying close to one another, did not offer sufficient living space for people, you can see from their efforts to improve the barracks intended for the watchdogs and cows by appropriate ventilation in order to ensure that the animals are kept healthy. "

- From the indictment of June 18, 1971 against Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl before the Vienna Regional Court

The trial against Ertl and Dejaco ended on March 10, 1972 with an acquittal, since Dejaco and Ertl were not the "intellectual authors" of the gas chambers. In the media, Ertl and Dejaco were dubbed “builders of mass murder ” and at least the verdict against Dejaco was sometimes scandalized. However, the process only played a minor role in the media and met with little audience interest.

literature

  • Niels Gutschow: mania for order. Architects plan in the "Germanized East" 1939–1945. Gütersloh 2001, ISBN 3-7643-6390-8 .
  • Adina Seeger: From the Bauhaus to Auschwitz. Fritz Ertl (1908 to 1982): Bauhaus student in Dessau, employee of the Auschwitz construction management, accused in the Vienna Auschwitz trial - stations and contexts of a career between modernism and National Socialism. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2013.
  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
  • Hans Schafranek : An unknown group of Nazi perpetrators: Biographical sketches of Austrian members of the 8th SS-Totenkopf-Standarte (1939–1941) . In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (ed.): Täter. Austrian Actors in National Socialism , Vienna 2014 (= yearbook 2014), pp. 79–105. (pdf)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/kultur/ein-kandinsky-schueler-baute-auschwitz
  2. ^ Niels Gutschow : Ordnungswahn. Architects plan in the "Germanized East" 1939–1945. Gütersloh 2001, p. 186.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Roland Stimpel: Architects in Auschwitz. Low point in architectural history . In: Deutsches Architektenblatt. 2011.
  4. ^ A b Hans Schafranek: An unknown group of Nazi perpetrators: Biographical sketches of Austrian members of the 8th SS-Totenkopf-Standarte (1939–1941) . In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (ed.): Täter. Austrian Actors in National Socialism , Vienna 2014, p. 97
  5. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons. Frankfurt / M. 2013, p. 110
  6. ^ A b c Hans Schafranek: An unknown group of Nazi perpetrators: Biographical sketches of Austrian members of the 8th SS-Totenkopf-Standarte (1939–1941) . In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (ed.): Täter. Austrian Actors in National Socialism , Vienna 2014, p. 98
  7. ^ Niels Gutschow: Ordnungswahn. Architects plan in the "Germanized East" 1939–1945. Gütersloh 2001, p. 78.
  8. ^ Niels Gutschow: Ordnungswahn. Architects plan in the "Germanized East" 1939–1945. Gütersloh 2001, p. 132.
  9. ^ Niels Gutschow: Ordnungswahn. Architects plan in the "Germanized East" 1939–1945. Gütersloh 2001, p. 140.
  10. ↑ Quoted in: Hermann Langbein : Menschen in Auschwitz ; Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Vienna: Ullstein, 1980, ISBN 3-548-33014-2 , p. 477.
  11. ^ Jean-Claude Pressac: The crematoria of Auschwitz - The technique of genocide. New edition Munich / Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-12193-4 , pp. 177f.
  12. ^ A b Hans Schafranek: An unknown group of Nazi perpetrators: Biographical sketches of Austrian members of the 8th SS-Totenkopf-Standarte (1939–1941) . In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (ed.): Täter. Austrian Actors in National Socialism , Vienna 2014, p. 99
  13. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons. Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 110
  14. ^ Jean-Claude Pressac: The Auschwitz Crematoria ... p. 180.
  15. ↑ Holocaust and war crimes in court. Auschwitz concentration camp: The Austrians were the worst on www.orf.at
  16. ^ Austrian Auschwitz Trials - Trial against Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl (January 18 - March 10, 1972).
  17. ↑ Quoted in: Justice and Memory. 10/2005, Vienna 2005, p. 24.
  18. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons. Frankfurt / M. 2013, p. 89, p. 110
  19. ^ Trials of Austrian juries (1955-1975). - LG Vienna Vr 3806/64: DEJACO Walter (born 1909), master builder [and] ERTL Fritz (born 1908), master builder. In: Justice and Memory. 12/2006, Vienna 2006, p. 20. (PDF; 712 kB)
  20. ^ Press coverage of the trial against Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl. The reporting of selected newspapers on the 1st Vienna Auschwitz Trial (1972). on: nachkriegsjustiz.at
personal data
SURNAME Ertl, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ertl, Fritz Karl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian architect
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Breitbrunn near Hörsching
DATE OF DEATH 2nd November 1982
Place of death Linz