Fritz Lahr

Fritz Lahr (born May 12, 1890 in Salzburg ; † March 27, 1953 in Vienna ) was an Austrian Heimwehr organizer and, for two days in 1938, Managing Mayor of Vienna .

Life

Fritz Lahr, born in Salzburg, lived in Vienna from the age of six. After attending the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt , he was an officer in active service during World War I , most recently as the commander of the Austro-Hungarian Field Artillery Regiment No. 157. After the war he took his leave with the rank of major . From the beginning of 1927 Lahr became politically active in the Vienna Homeland Security , advanced to the position of organization manager and in 1932 under Emil Fey to the deputy regional leader of Vienna. In February 1934 he organized the so-called "Wehrsturm", which intervened in the struggle against the Social Democratic Schutzbund . He was subsequently appointed Vice Mayor of Vienna. At the time of the ban on the Austrian NSDAP , he maintained close relationships with it. So it happened that in the “ subsequent days ” of 1938, on the night of March 11th to 12th, 1938 , Lahr occupied the town hall with about 160 armed men from SA Storm I / 99 “Oberland” and forced the town hall guards to lay down their weapons. The following day, the newly appointed National Socialist Chancellor Arthur Seyß-Inquart commissioned Vice Mayor Lahr to manage the business of the Mayor of Vienna. The Mayor former Richard Schmitz was arrested, interned in the detention house on the Danube Canal and later with the celebrities transport in the Dachau concentration camp abducted. Lahr immediately began to clean up the municipal administration and on March 12th had the Rathausplatz renamed “Adolf-Hitler-Platz”. On March 13th he took part in the “ceremonial welcome” of the first German Wehrmacht units at the Matzleinsdorf freight station . On the same day he was replaced by the National Socialist Hermann Neubacher . An application for membership in the NSDAP was rejected in 1939 with reference to his position in the Heimwehr during the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg period. He died in Vienna in 1953.

literature

• Gerhard Botz: National Socialism in Vienna. Assumption of power, securing rule, radicalization 1938/39. Revised and expanded new edition. Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2008.
• Martin Krist, Albert Lichtblau: National Socialism in Vienna: Victims. Perpetrator. Opponent. Vienna, Studien Verlag, 2017.
• Christian Mertens: Who was Fritz Lahr? Managing Mayor for two days. In: Christian Mertens [ed.]: "We know that this civil service will also do its duty in the new Vienna". The Vienna city administration 1938. Vienna, Metroverlag / Vienna library in the town hall 2018
• Walter Wiltschegg: The Home Guard. An irresistible popular movement? Vienna, Verlag für Geschichte und Politik 1985 (Studies and Sources on Austrian Contemporary History 7), 1985.