Greater Austrian freedom movement

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The Greater Austrian Freedom Movement (GÖFB) was an Austrian resistance group during the National Socialist era , which is attributed to the Catholic-Conservative resistance.

Beginnings

The Greater Austrian Freedom Movement was launched by Jacob Kastelic shortly after the Anschluss , the invasion of Austria by German troops in 1938. The former high-ranking functionary of the corporate state Kastelic sought contact with like-minded people, but also with former political opponents. In building the movement, he was largely supported by the social democratic journalist Johann Schwendenwein and the conservative writer Karl Rössel-Majdan . An executive committee was chaired by Kastelic.

The first meeting took place in November 1938 at Café Wunderer on Hietzinger Bridge . Resistance cells were successively built up and a theoretical argument laid out. The majority of the group's members came from the Christian Socialist camp , supporters of the corporate state, the Heimwehr and the Legitimists .

Via Johann Blumenthal , connections to the former Austrian officer corps and home guard circles could be established, and via Heinrich Hock to journalists' circles. Blumenthal and Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Puchinger also made contact with resistant Cistercian Fathers around Father Gebhard Rath in Wilhering Abbey in Upper Austria .

Attempts were made to establish connections abroad: to legitimist circles in Croatia and Poland and to Christian social groups in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia .

In April 1940 it was possible to establish contact with the Austrian freedom movement around Karl Lederer and the group around Roman Karl Scholz . These three groups had a total of several hundred members.

aims

The aim of the group was to describe a Danube federation including Bavaria . They wanted a state-democratic state with the participation of the House of Habsburg . The group had also drawn up a cabinet list in the event of a successful takeover, according to the Kastelic indictment in 1943. This included Kastelic as Minister of Justice. In general, however, the group proceeded rather theoretically, and so there are hardly any members who are prepared to use violence.

Busting

As early as the summer of 1939, the group was spied on by informants from the SD control center in Vienna. The SD reported the group to the Gestapo . More informers were smuggled into the group. The castle actor and spy Otto Hartmann was in the leadership of the cooperating group around Roman Karl Scholz and passed on information about the GÖFB from joint discussions to the Gestapo. On 22./23. In July 1940 the Gestapo arrested the leading functionaries of the groups. Due to the recklessness of the group (membership cards were issued and contributions collected), it was easy to arrest other members of the resistance movement.

Members and supporters

Web links

literature

  • Annals of the cath. Austrian student association Rhaetia Innsbruck
  • Wear colors - show your colors. 1938-1945. Catholic Corporates in Resistance and Persecution. Austrian Association for Student History (Ed.), Vienna 1988, pp. 106, 107, 133.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b Fritz Molden : The fire in the night . Amalthea, Vienna / Munich 1988, ISBN 3-85002-262-5 , p. 90 f .
  2. ↑ a b c Hans Schafranek : Resistance and betrayal. Gestapo spies in the anti-fascist underground 1938–1945 . Czernin, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-7076-0622-5 , p. 206-208 .
  3. ↑ Hans Schafranek: Resistance and betrayal. Gestapo spies in the anti-fascist underground 1938–1945 . Czernin, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-7076-0622-5 , p. 210 .
  4. ↑ Hans Schafranek: Resistance and betrayal. Gestapo spies in the anti-fascist underground 1938–1945 . Czernin, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-7076-0622-5 , p. 216 .