Gunther Burstyn

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Gunther Burstyn as first lieutenant (1906-12)

Gunther , actually Günther Adolf Burstyn (born July 6, 1879 in Aussee , Styria , † April 15, 1945 in Korneuburg , Lower Austria ) was an Austrian technician and officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army .

Live and act

Model of the motor gun from 1911 in the HGM .
Original size model of Gunther Burstyn's motorized gun in front of the Army History Museum in Vienna, set up on the occasion of the exhibition "Project & Design - Military Innovations from Five Centuries" (June 16 to November 6, 2011).
Model of the Burstyn motorized gun, original photo from the 1930s by General Ludwig von Eimannsberger

Gunther, as the adult who was baptized in Günther always called himself, was one of three sons of the railway commissioner and engineer Adolf Burstyn (1843-1917) and his wife Juliane, née Hoffmann, who was born in Lemberg as a Jew and later converted to Catholic Christianity ( 1844–1931), who worked as a journalist. His brother Werner became a Ministerialrat , the other brother, Walther Burstyn, a well-known professor of electrical engineering .

Entry into the army

In 1895 Gunther Burstyn moved from a Viennese high school to the pioneer cadet school in Hainburg an der Donau . Retired in 1899, he joined the railway and telegraph regiment as a cadet, which was considered the technical elite regiment of the Danube Monarchy.

For on May 1, 1906 Lieutenant promoted, he was the in this regiment on November 1, 1906 Genius Bar at the genius Directorate in Trento allocated. In 1910 he married Gabriele Wagner (1888–1945) and had two children with her. On the occasion of his wedding, Burstyn converted from the Catholic to the Evangelical creed.

As a kk Landwehr genius officer, Burstyn developed armored technology before the First World War, but it was not used at the time: in 1911 he designed the first all -terrain armored car with a rotating turret, his " motorized gun ". The design, which was patented in 1911 and looks more modern than the tanks of World War I , technically represented a milestone in the history of tank technology, but was rejected by Austria-Hungary and the German Reich . (A model of this “Burstyn tank” can be found in the Vienna Army History Museum .) The great tank battle in Cambrai in 1917 was intended to clearly show the serious and decisive consequences of this rejection of the tank weapon.

First World War

During the First World War , Burstyn was mainly used in railway and bridge construction.

1st republic

In the Armed Forces of the First Republic , Major Burstyn was mainly responsible for engineering tasks after his service in the former Army Museum until his retirement in 1933 as general building officer. The retirement hit him deeply, as it made it difficult for him to finance his son's studies.

Second World War

The great breakthrough for his ideas came with the Second World War , which was essentially a "war of the tanks" on the fronts. This gave Burstyn the highest reputation as a pioneer of this defense technology in the Wehrmacht . He now devoted himself to tank tactics, especially anti-tank defense, and developed various locking devices, including the Panzerhöcker as an effective standard anti-tank barrier, which was also widely used after the war, for example on the inner-German border at the time .

Due to the Nuremberg Laws, as the son of a native Jew, Burstyn was at least half- Jewish according to Nazi diction , but was probably classified as an honorary Aryan , since otherwise his work for the Wehrmacht would not have been possible.

On March 31, 1941, due to an intervention by his brother Walther, Burstyn was able to personally present his idea of ​​a tank ferry to Hitler and received the War Merit Cross with Swords First and Second Class (combined with an honorary salary), which was presented to him by Colonel General Heinz Guderian . In December 1941 his son Walther died on the Eastern Front.

In 1944, the Vienna University of Technology awarded honorary doctorates for the first time since 1938, when former US President Herbert Hoover was awarded . The honored Austrians had earned their services before the Nazi regime: Generalbaurat a. D. Gunther Burstyn, aviation pioneer Igo Etrich , automobile designer Hans Ledwinka and railway technician Johann Rihosek .

The academic celebration as part of the “Days of the Vienna Technical University” honored Burstyn, according to the Burstyn biographers Daniela and Ewald Angetter, for his special services to the German warfare.

The information gathered for the award of an honorary doctorate opinion Burstyn is according Angetter, confirmed that his attitude was perfectly to Nazism and he was already a member of the Fatherland Front had supported the Nazi party, so by the district administration Niederdonau no objection to including through the faculty leaders and Reich Minister of Education submitted application regarding the award of an honorary doctorate.

Gunther Burstyn suffered from depression in 1945 , was almost completely blind and was unable to flee to his birthplace Bad Aussee because of a serious illness in his wife and the advancing Soviet troops . On April 15, 1945, he put an end to his life in Korneuburg, a few kilometers north of Vienna , which had just been conquered by the Red Army . His wife was found dead at home on April 20, 1945. Her cause of death was recorded as unknown, probably violent death .

Aftermath

In 1967 the Burstyn barracks with the armored troop school of the Federal Army in Zwölfaxing, Lower Austria, was named after Gunther Burstyn.

In contrast to this, however, according to Angetter, the naming of the square in front of the Korneuburg "Dabbot barracks" after Burstyn failed due to resistance from the population and local politicians.

Awards (as of 1933)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ according to information from the Korneuburg registry office on May 9, 2011
  2. ↑ Angetter: Gunther Burstyn p. 15.
  3. ↑ Angetter: Gunther Burstyn p. 15f.
  4. ↑ a b Angetter: Gunther Burstyn p. 17.
  5. ↑ Angetter: Gunther Burstyn p. 26.
  6. ↑ Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck : The Army History Museum Vienna. The museum and its representative rooms , Salzburg 1981, p. 27
  7. ^ Manfried Rauchsteiner , Manfred Litscher (Ed.): The Army History Museum in Vienna. Graz, Vienna 2000, p. 61
  8. ↑ Angetter: Gunther Burstyn p. 33.
  9. ↑ Helmut W. Malnig: The world's first battle tank. Gunther Burstyn and his "motorized gun". In: Troop Service 3 (2009).
  10. ^ Photo of the presentation in 1941 ( Memento of November 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Angetter: Gunther Burstyn p. 34.
  12. ↑ List of honorary doctorates on the TU Wien website. ( Memento from October 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ Angetter: Gunther Burstyn pp. 70 and 100
  14. ↑ Angetter: Gunther Burstyn p. 105f.
  15. ^ Information from the Korneuburg registry office from May 9, 2011.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Burstyn, Gunther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bursztyn, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian technician and officer in the Austrian Austro-Hungarian Army
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Aussee , Styria
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1945
Place of death Korneuburg , Lower Austria