Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg

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Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg (born February 4, 1885 as Johann Nepomuk Carl Borromäus Josef Maria Freiherr von Zeßner-Spitzenberg-Weinbergen in Dobrichan ; † August 1, 1938 in Dachau concentration camp ) was an Austrian lawyer, professor and victim of the Nazi regime. He was one of the first Austrians to perish in the Dachau concentration camp .

Life

Education and Youth

Hans Karl von Zeßner-Spitzenberg, son of a long -established landowner, grew up in a Roman Catholic family in the Bohemian Dobřičany. His parents were the kk chamberlain and domain owner Heinrich Freiherr von Zeßner-Spitzenberg-Weinbergen (1839-1922) and Henriette geb. Countess Nostitz-Rieneck (1846–1928).

He studied law and received his doctorate from Charles University in Prague in 1909 . From 1910 to 1912 he studied political economy in Berlin and obtained his doctorate in 1912. He had been a member of the KDSt.V. since 1905. Teutonia Friborg in the CV and since 1908 member of the KDSt.V. Ferdinandea Prague in the CV.

He began his professional career as a governor-conception trainee at the Imperial and Royal Lieutenancy in Prague . In the spring of 1913 he became a draftsman and was transferred to the Central Statistical Commission in Vienna . From 1914 to May 1918 he was employed by the district administration in Braunau am Inn . In 1918 Zeßner-Spitzenberg was in the royal-imperial agriculture ministry in Vienna, where he saw the end of the war in autumn 1918.

Career and political engagement

The end of the Habsburg monarchy , the lost First World War and the end of the usual order meant a catastrophe for Zeßner-Spitzenberg. While many of his contemporaries wanted a connection to Germany , this was never an option for Zeßner-Spitzenberg. As a legitimist , he joined a monarchist group around Prince Johannes Liechtenstein, which in 1921 merged with other groups to form the legitimist Reichsbund der Österreicher . In the Reichsbund Zeßner-Spitzenberg was first secretary and later vice-president. In 1923 he initiated an expert opinion that was supposed to examine whether the Habsburg laws were in accordance with Austrian civil law . He also represented his legitimist positions in the Christian Social Party (CSP), in which he belonged to the Vienna regional leadership. He was later also head of the League for the Beatification of Emperor Charles I.

The Social Democratic State Chancellor Karl Renner became aware of him through a constitutional article written by Zeßner and, although he belonged to the CSP, brought him to the State Chancellery (later the Federal Chancellery ) in 1919 , where he stayed for 12 years. Zeßner was active in the constitutional service there and worked temporarily with Hans Kelsen and Adolf Julius Merkl under the direction of Ministerialrat Georg Froehlich .

In 1920 he completed his habilitation with the text “Introduction to the agricultural worker question” at the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (Boku) , initially as a private lecturer, until he was awarded the o.ö. Professor was appointed. He was particularly keen to implement modern agricultural labor law and social insurance in agriculture in Austria and propagated his social ideas, which were based on Christian social teaching .

As early as the 1920s, Zeßner-Spitzenberg was concerned with the idea of ​​the Austrian nation. In 1925, for example, he wrote that, in order not to simply be an Ostmark in the oldest sense of a defensive wall , Austria had to maintain its supranational nature of the Danube monarchy and fulfill a bridging function in the Southeastern European region. Similar views were held by Ernst Karl Winter , Alfred Missong , August Maria Knoll and Wilhelm Schmidt , who founded the “ Austrian Action ” in Zeßner's house in 1926 , which dealt with pan-European theories. The “Austrian Action” soon published an anthology of the same name with lectures by the initiators, in which they formulated an independent awareness of Austria on a legitimist basis. The five initiators were all incorporated into various Catholic associations, but also together were members of the K.Ö.L. Maximiliana Vienna .

In 1933 Zeßner-Spitzenberg was a co-founder of the " Academic Association of Catholic-Austrian Landsmannschaften " (KÖL) and in 1937 a founding member of the K.Ö.L. Ferdinandea of Graz.

At that time, both students and teachers at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences were dominated by German national and increasingly National Socialist ideas. Zeßner-Spitzenberg fought against corresponding agitations, which made him a target of National Socialist terror . After explosives were detonated in front of and in the BOKU in the spring of 1934, a government commissioner was appointed to whom the rector was subordinate. In this tense atmosphere Zeßner took on the role of disciplinary attorney at the university. Since he spoke out against the re-admission of excluded National Socialist students, he became an explicit enemy of these groups.

In 1933/34, in contrast to his companion Ernst Winter, he stood behind the new authoritarian regime from the start . With the beginning of Kurt Schuschnigg's chancellorship , he became one of the contact persons between Otto von Habsburg, who he knew personally, and the Federal Chancellor. In the spring of 1934 he was a member of a commission that was supposed to prepare the modalities for the repeal of the Habsburg laws. In November 1934 he was appointed to the Federal Culture Council as a representative of parents and upbringing, a preparatory body for federal legislation set up in accordance with the May constitution . He gave the lecture “on ideological and civic education”, which was introduced in 1935, not only at BOKU, but also at the University of World Trade and, from 1937, at the Technical University of Vienna . When, in February 1937, the legitimist groups were to be incorporated into the Fatherland Front via the newly established “Tradition Department”, Zeßner-Spitzenberg was entrusted with the management of the department.

Arrest and death

Registration card of Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg as a prisoner in the National Socialist concentration camp Dachau

Shortly after the “Anschluss” of Austria , he was arrested by the Gestapo on March 18 . During the Gestapo imprisonment in Vienna from March to July 15, 1938, he wrote a life report for the Gestapo with the frank confession: "I have always been hostile to National Socialism in Austria ..."

On July 15, 1938, Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg was taken to the Dachau concentration camp. While he was being transported there, he was kicked in the abdomen by an SS man with the heel of his boot. When the camp commandant from Dachau asked whether he knew why he had come to this place, Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg replied: “Because I believe in God and in a Christian Austria under the leadership of the House of Habsburg, the only salvation for them I see the independence and independence of my fatherland ”. As a prisoner in Penal Block XV, his legs were badly swollen and he had a high fever and had to do heavy work with heavy stones in great heat until he collapsed. On July 31, 1938, he was taken to the infirmary, where he died on August 1, 1938.

Private

Memorial plaque on the Kaasgrabenkirche
Zeßner-Spitzenberg-Park

He met his wife Elisabeth in 1913 on a pilgrimage to Lourdes . The marriage had six children.

Beatification process

Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg is considered to be the "first Austrian Catholic martyr of the Nazi era". According to information from the Archdiocese of Vienna on August 8, 2019, a beatification process has not been initiated despite statements to the contrary.

Recognition and commemoration

  • In 1977 Manfried Welan , one of his successors on the chair at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences , initiated the Hans-Karl-Zessner-Spitzenberg Prize for work in the field of agricultural and environmental law , awarded by the Austrian Society for Agricultural and Environmental Law .
  • The Zessner-Spitzenberg-Haus , a cooperative residential complex in Vienna's 14th district in Vienna, Satzberggasse 17, was named after Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg .
  • A memorial plaque for him has been attached to the outer wall of the Kaasgraben Church in Vienna since 2005 (previously there was a memorial plaque for him in the crypt of the Kaasgrabenkirche, which was converted into a parish hall in 1969).
  • On June 17, 2019, the park in front of the Kaasgraben Church was renamed Zeßner-Spitzenberg-Park .

literature

  • Manfried Welan , Peter Wiltsche: Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg. A biography. Platform Johannes Martinek Verlag, Perchtoldsdorf 2020, ISBN 978-3-9504500-7-1 .
  • Pius Zeßner-Spitzenberg: Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg. A life of faith. Self-published, Vienna 2003.
  • Manfried Welan , Helmut Wohnout : Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg - one of the first dead Austrians in Dachau . In: DÖW (ed.): Research on National Socialism and its aftermath in Austria. Festschrift for Brigitte Bailer . Vienna 2012, p. 21–41 ( article online on the DÖW website [PDF; 226 kB ]).
  • Resistance and persecution in the CV, manuscript, society for student history and student tradition ev, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-922485-01-4 .
  • Ildefons M. Fux : For Christ and Austria. Association Perfectae Caritatis, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-9501402-0-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfried Welan and Peter Wiltsche: Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg. A biography. Platform Johannes Martinek Verlag, Perchtoldsdorf 2020, ISBN 978-3-9504500-7-1 , p. 143.
  2. ^ Johann Werfring: The life of a battered agricultural lawyer. In: Wiener Zeitung of August 12, 2020, p. 22.
  3. ↑ Zessner-Spitzenberg-Haus on geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at
  4. ↑ Manfried Welan and Peter Wiltsche: Hans Karl Zeßner-Spitzenberg. A biography. Platform Johannes Martinek Verlag, Perchtoldsdorf 2020, ISBN 978-3-9504500-7-1 , pp. 119f.
  5. ^ Sebastian Ecker: Name of the Zeßner-Spitzenberg-Park. In: oecv.at . June 3, 2019, accessed June 18, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Zeßner-Spitzenberg, Karl Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zeßner-Spitzenberg, Karl Hans Freiherr von; Zeßner-Spitzenberg, Karl Hans von; Zessner-Spitzenberg, Karl Hans Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Dobrichan , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1938
Place of death Dachau concentration camp