Headquarters Vienna
The Gaugefechtsstand Wien , also known colloquially as the Schirach bunker after Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach , was in the 16th district of Vienna .
history
The command post was built in 1940 on Gallitzinberg (Wilhelminenberg), which belongs to the northern Vienna Woods , at 388 m above sea level (see city center: 172 m) near the later Johann-Staud-Straße as the center of the Ostmark aerial warning system. After the first bombings, the command post was laid underground from 1942 to 1945 according to plans by master builder Hans Edelmoser .
The bunker was cleared on April 4, 1945 after the Red Army penetrating the city from the west had reached the Vienna suburb of Hütteldorf , 2.5 km away . Half a year later, the access to the tunnel was blown up.
On January 3, 1946, the Vienna City Hall correspondence reported that, according to the City Councilor for Finance, Karl Honay, the account for the establishment of the Gaugefechtsstelle was available. The construction work cost 374,240.88 Reichsmarks , but invoices are still outstanding. It is not known whether these were received later and whether they were paid by the Vienna city administration (or another authority of the Second Republic).
After 1989 the owner, the City of Vienna's Forestry Office, permanently concreted over all entrances. This means that a tour and further exploration of the partially dilapidated underground rooms are excluded.
In 2004 the Viennese journalist Alexander Haide published the book Der Schirach Bunker . For the first time, construction plans were published and various legends surrounding the bunker ruins were dissolved. Photos from the 1980s show the destroyed interior of the bunker. In addition, the author interviewed two contemporary witnesses who served in the Gau command post in 1944 and 1945. The excavation of the bunker suggested by Haide was not tackled. According to research, there is at least one room in the bunker, the existence, function and current condition of which are unclear, as the access was blown up shortly after the war, according to Haide.
construction
The bunker consisted of a tunnel between the main and emergency exits with a length of about 100 meters. To the east of this tunnel was the actual command post in a two-storey bunker about 16.5 m long, 5 m wide and 5 m high.
On the upper floor were the rooms for the transmission of messages (telephone exchange, telex), in the basement the rooms of the Gauleiter and the command post, from where an air raid alarm with the dreaded “cuckoo” was located. which was unmistakably heard on the Reichsender Wien.
literature
- Alfred Schiemer: In Ottakring's footsteps. Historical forays between the Gürtel and Gallitzinberg. Manz Verlag, Vienna 1999–2001, ISBN 3-900799-26-1 , pp. 159–162.
- Alexander Haide: The Schirach bunker. andor Verlag, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-200-00108-9 .
- Renato Schirer: The Schirach bunker . The establishment of a bomb-proof and underground command post for the Vienna Gauleitung of the NSDAP. Wiener Geschichtsblätter ( ISSN 0043-5317 ) number 62 (2), 2007, pp. 33-66.
Web links
- Schirachbunker in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
- The remains of the Schirach bunker on Wilhelminenberg Video on wien.at
- Gaubefehlstand Wien-Ottakring (archive.org) ( Memento from July 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- Gallitzinberg headquarters
- Vienna - The Nazi bunker in Gallitzinberg , in: Die Presse November 7, 2009.
Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 14 ″ N , 16 ° 16 ′ 1 ″ E
Individual evidence
- ↑ The "cuckoo" - pre-warning of air raids on cities and air raid siren. 1944/45 Austrian Media Library, Audiovisual Archive Technical Museum Vienna. Retrieved November 4, 2019.