Hans Geiselberger

Hans Geiselberger (born July 18, 1894 in Neuhaus am Inn ; † 1957 ) was a German printer's owner and publisher.

Career

Hans Geiselberger was born on July 18, 1894 in Neuhaus am Inn. Geiselberger studied economics and medicine at the universities of Munich and Würzburg. On October 28, 1915, he joined the Catholic student fraternity Aenania in Munich.

After participating in the First World War, he joined the family-owned Geiselberger printing company in Altötting , which he later became the owner of. In 1939 he took over the Alfred Coppenrath music publisher .

Until its dissolution in the summer of 1933, he was a member of the Bavarian People's Party and temporarily secretary of its parliamentary group in the Reichstag . Geiselberger was always critical of the NSDAP. The district leader of the NSDAP Schwaegerl in Mühldorf saw in him a political opponent. Geiselberger had also fought with the National Socialists and was taken into "protective custody" for this.

His critical stance was also known to Government Councilor Kehrer, who was in Altötting in 1945 as District Administrator; In any case, he belonged to the circle of level-headed Altötting citizens who, on April 27, 1945, discussed the fate of the Altötting pilgrimage site, with over 5,000 wounded in the hospitals, with the district administrator full of concern. District Administrator Kehrer, as far as he knew, was aware of the efforts of Captain Rupprecht Gernegroß, with whom he was on friendly terms, and of his freedom campaign for Bavaria, which he only hinted at to the participants in the conversation. On April 28, 1945, at 5 o'clock in the morning, Captain Gernegroß occupied the Freimann and Erding transmitters and broadcasted that the Bavarian Freedom Campaign (FAB) had taken over government power; to liberate the Bavarian homeland, everyone should unite. District Administrator Kehrer must have expected the news and went to the District Office at 6 a.m., where he gathered a circle of trustworthy citizens around him until about 8 a.m., including Dr. Hans Geiselberger. The aim was to hand over the pilgrimage and military hospital Altötting to the approaching US troops without a fight and undamaged. Geiselberger undertook to alert the first platoon of the fire brigade, which was then part of the police.

District Administrator Kehrer had 6 National Socialist functionaries who appeared dangerous to him arrested, including the government inspector Karl Schuster, leader of an SA storm. b. V., the local group leader Karl Stubenhofer, the organization leader of the NSDAP Franz Obermaier (participant in the Hitler putsch of 1923) and the second mayor of Neuötting Heinrich Hilleprandt, blood medalist and "old fighter". Mayor Karl Lex committed suicide when he was arrested.

The news of the arrest of the party functionaries also reached officers in a hospital who, under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel and Knight's Cross bearer, including SA Standartenführer Karl Kaehne, formed an officer patrol and moved first to the town hall, then to the district administration. Allegedly, government councilor Kehrer shot himself in the head when the officers appeared in his office in the district administration; he died two days later on April 30, 1945. The chief physician of the hospital to which Kehrer was admitted, however, doubted this representation of the officers, since he could not find any traces of smoke at the point of the bullet. In a first report in November 1947, a good two years later, the Munich forensic doctor Prof. Laves took the view that, according to the firing channel, it must have been a PKK 7.65 mm army pistol that Kehrer did not have; Nine months later, he thought a shot from a Czech pistol with a somewhat smaller caliber (6.35 mm) was possible - Kehrer had owned one. Around the same time at 11 a.m., Gauleiter Giesler had the news spread over the radio that Bavaria's freedom campaign had been crushed. The officers' patrol freed the 6 captured Nazi functionaries shortly after 11 a.m. Under the leadership of the head of organization Obermaier and with the help of SA-Sturmführer Schuster, who had also been released, and the local group leader Stubenhofer, a list was drawn up containing all the people who had entered the district office that morning - at least as far as they had been observed from the detention cell. District manager Fritz Schwaegerl ordered the arrest of 9 citizens on the list from Mühldorf: Mill owner Josef Bruckmayer Administrative inspector Seidel Warehouse manager Hans Riehl Administrator of the Holy Chapel, Msgr. Adalbert Vogl Bookseller Adam Wehnert Former Mayor Gabriel Mayer Writer Heinrich Haug . Scheupl publisher Dr. Hans Geiselberger. After District Manager Schwaegerl had arrived in Altötting, he added the following to the list: Attorney Dr. Gmach builder Irpertinger. Only the first 5 on the list could be arrested between 1pm and 2pm. The others were not found at home. It is not recorded whether they had been warned and were able to avoid arrest using their local knowledge, whether their instinct had warned them or whether they happened to be doing business outside of the home. In addition to the district leader, a group of about 60 SS men from the Trummler combat group had arrived. The district leader organized a kind of court martial that sentenced the five prisoners to death. The sentence was carried out by the SS at around 3:30 p.m. in the courtyard of the district office by shooting. Kreisleiter and SS then moved away again, evidently without looking for the Altoettingers still on the proscription list. The local rulers apparently no longer bothered either. Hans Geiselberger survived; on May 2nd the US troops finally moved into Altötting.

After the end of World War II, in January 1946 the US military government gave him a license to publish the Alt-Neuöttinger Anzeiger and a book publisher. He was co-founder and from March 1946 chairman of the CSU in the Altötting district and a member of the CSU district association of Upper Bavaria. He was a city councilor in Altötting and a member of the district council.

Honors

• 1955: Cross of Merit (Steckkreuz) of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

• Jaromír Balcar, Thomas Schlemmer (Ed.): At the top of the CSU. The governing bodies of the Christian Social Union 1946 to 1955. - Munich, 2007
• Norbert Frei: National Socialist conquest of the provincial press. - German publishing company, 1980

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Geiselberger in the catalog of the German National Library