Hans Krenek

Hans Krenek (born March 11, 1903 in Vienna ; † 1966 ) was an Austrian psychologist and educator who, among other things , headed the Viennese municipal educational institution Am Spiegelgrund during the Nazi era from 1942 to 1945 .

Live and act

Training and career before 1938

Hans (actually Johann ) Krenek was born on March 11, 1903 as the son of a worker in Vienna. He attended elementary and community school and then graduated from the state teacher training institute in Vienna, where he graduated in 1922 . As early as 1923, at the age of 20, Krenek joined the Social Democratic Labor Party and was accepted into the service of the City of Vienna through the mediation of the Social Democratic National Councilor Anton Franz Hölzl . He initially worked as an educator in the orphanages Hohe Warte and Gassergasse and completed the educator course, whereupon he was definitely hired as an educator by the City of Vienna in 1927 .

In 1931, Hans Krenek took his secondary school leaving certificate for secondary schools and enrolled at the University of Vienna in the same year to study psychology and philosophy . In February 1938 he completed these studies with the promotion to Doctor of Philosophy ( PhD. ) From. As early as 1931 he was no longer employed as an educator, but in the area of administration and accounting for the City of Vienna. In 1937 he was transferred to the Lainz City Hospital , where he initially worked as a department official and later as a human resources manager. Even before that, namely in 1934, when the SDAP was banned by the Austrofascist new federal government, Krenek seamlessly switched from the Social Democrats to the Fatherland Front and became a party member there.

Worked under National Socialism 1938–1945

Krenek later stated in a questionnaire in 1938 that he had already joined the National Socialist Company Cell Organization (NSBO) in 1934, which was still illegal in Austria at the time . According to his own statements, he became a member of the NSDAP in May 1938 , receiving a number with membership number 6,239,572 that was reserved for so-called old party comrades, i.e. “ old fighters ”. After Austria's "annexation" to the National Socialist German Reich , Hans Krenek was first head of organization and propaganda from March 1938, and from July 1938 to March 1939 cell head of the NSDAP cell at Lainz Hospital.

In 1939 Hans Krenek was appointed acting head of the curative education department of the central children's home of the City of Vienna in Glanzing . On July 25, 1940, he was appointed educational-psychological director of the Viennese municipal youth welfare institution Am Spiegelgrund . He was subordinate to the medical director of the institution, Erwin Jekelius . The medically managed part of the institution, in which the Nazi child euthanasia murders were carried out in the “ children's department ”, was not formally part of Krenek's area of responsibility. At the end of 1942 the institution was divided into the Viennese urban mental hospital for children 'Am Spiegelgrund' and the Viennese urban educational institution 'Am Spiegelgrund' , with the management of the educational institution Hans Krenek being transferred. Krenek had thus become the head of what was then the largest Nazi educational home in Vienna. As such, according to records in the German Federal Archives, in 1942 he was also a member of the Hitler Youth leadership corps .

Krenek himself described his role as head of the Am Spiegelgrund educational institution in an article for the magazine "Archiv für Kinderheilkunde" in 1942 as follows:

"Am Spiegelgrund" welfare institution has the task of instructing all mentally abnormal children and adolescents from infancy to the age of majority after careful observation and examination of their psychological and physical knowledge and abilities after an assessment to the appropriate institution or foster home. In addition, the experience gained is to be collected for later scientific work. [...] All detachment groups, but especially the infant and toddler department, primarily serve the purpose of observation and assessment and also have the task of recording and recording all of the available pupil material from a medical-psychological as well as hereditary and psychiatric point of view for later scientific processing. "

- Hans Krenek : Contribution to the method of recording psychologically problematic children and adolescents. In: Archiv für Kinderheilkunde, 126, 1942, p. 72

In fact, beatings, tortures, threats, insults and humiliations of all kinds were the order of the day for the pupils of the Am Spiegelgrund educational institution.

Rehabilitation after 1945

After the liberation of Austria, Hans Krenek was decommissioned by the City of Vienna on August 11, 1945 due to his membership in the NSDAP as head of the “Am Spiegelgrund” educational institution. In 1945, Krenek obtained approval to postpone registration under the Prohibition Act as an “illegal National Socialist”. In December 1946 it was even able to achieve its complete removal from the registration list. In January 1946, he made a written request to the Mayor of Vienna to resume his duties in the service of the City of Vienna, which was supported by SPÖ Vice Chancellor Adolf Schärf with an enclosed business card. In February 1946, the SPÖ granted him re-entry into the party, expressly emphasizing that Krenek had "been anti-fascist during the Nazi regime". In February 1947 he was granted amnesty by the Federal President on the basis of Section 27 of the National Socialist Act and on March 15, 1948 he was finally accepted back into the service of the City of Vienna as an administrative officer, initially working in various accounting departments in Department 6.

During his testimony in the trial against the head of the children's neurological clinic “Am Spiegelgrund”, Ernst Illing , Krenek testified in July 1947 that he had never heard of killings in the “children's department” and only found out about them from the newspapers. In contrast to many other Nazi perpetrators at Spiegelgrund, Illing was finally sentenced to death by the Vienna People's Court . Hans Krenek, on the other hand, was accepted into the Association of Social Democratic Academics, Intellectuals, and Artists in 1951 and was appointed to the “Amtsrat” in 1952.

In April 1954, Hans Krenek was transferred to Municipal Department 17 and entrusted with the management of the department for youth welfare institutions. In 1961 he was promoted to "Oberamtsrat" and was entrusted with the management of the city's apprentice homes, which again entitled him to use the title of "Home Director". In 1966, Hans Krenek was to be awarded the Golden Decoration of Honor for services to the Republic of Austria "because of his special professional training, his extensive experience in institutions and his suitability for a leading position" . Although Federal President Franz Jonas had already approved the award, it did not come about because Hans Krenek died shortly before.

literature

Wolfgang Neugebauer , Peter Schwarz: The will to walk upright. Disclosure of the role of the BSA in the social reintegration of former National Socialists . Ed .: Association of social democratic academics, intellectuals and artists . Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7076-0196-X , p. 295-305 .
Herwig Czech: The Spiegelgrund Complex. Pediatrics, curative education, psychiatry and youth welfare under National Socialism . In: Gottfried Biewer, Michelle Proyer (Ed.): Disability and Society. A university contribution to the commemorative year 2018 . Vienna 2019, p. 88 , footnote 14 (available as Open Access publication on the website of the University Library of the University of Vienna ).

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Wolfgang Neugebauer , Peter Schwarz: The will to walk upright. Disclosure of the role of the BSA in the social reintegration of former National Socialists . Ed .: Association of social democratic academics, intellectuals and artists . Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7076-0196-X , p. 295-305 .
↑ Eberhard Gabriel, Wolfgang Neugebauer : From forced sterilization to murder (= On the history of Nazi euthanasia in Vienna . Volume 2 ). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-205-99325-4 , p. 170 .
^ Susanne Mende: The Viennese sanatorium and nursing home Am Steinhof in the time of the Nazi regime in Austria . In: Eberhard Gabriel, Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds.): NS-Euthanasie in Wien (= On the history of NS-euthanasia in Vienna . Volume 1 ). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2000, ISBN 978-3-205-98951-6 , pp. 64-70 .
↑ Peter Malina: In the safety net of the Nazi "education". Child and youth “welfare” on the “Spiegelgrund” . In: Eberhard Gabriel, Wolfgang Neugebauer (ed.): From forced sterilization to murder (= On the history of Nazi euthanasia in Vienna . Volume 2 ). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-205-99325-4 , p. 77-98 .
↑ Christa Zöchling : Education camp thinking . In: Profile . November 15, 2011, accessed February 15, 2019 .

↑ Herwig Czech: The Spiegelgrund Complex. Pediatrics, curative education, psychiatry and youth welfare under National Socialism . In: Gottfried Biewer, Michelle Proyer (Ed.): Disability and Society. A university contribution to the commemorative year 2018 . Vienna 2019, p. 88 , footnote 14 (available as Open Access publication on the website of the University Library of the University of Vienna ).

personal data
SURNAME	Krenek, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Krenek, Johann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian psychologist and Nazi perpetrator
DATE OF BIRTH	March 11, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH	Vienna
DATE OF DEATH	1966

[Der_Wille_zum_aufrechten_Gang-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Wolfgang Neugebauer , Peter Schwarz: The will to walk upright. Disclosure of the role of the BSA in the social reintegration of former National Socialists . Ed .: Association of social democratic academics, intellectuals and artists . Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7076-0196-X , p. 295-305 .

[2] Eberhard Gabriel, Wolfgang Neugebauer : From forced sterilization to murder (= On the history of Nazi euthanasia in Vienna . Volume 2 ). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-205-99325-4 , p. 170 .

[Mende_in_NS-Euthanasie_in_Wien-3] Susanne Mende: The Viennese sanatorium and nursing home Am Steinhof in the time of the Nazi regime in Austria . In: Eberhard Gabriel, Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds.): NS-Euthanasie in Wien (= On the history of NS-euthanasia in Vienna . Volume 1 ). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2000, ISBN 978-3-205-98951-6 , pp. 64-70 .

[4] Peter Malina: In the safety net of the Nazi "education". Child and youth “welfare” on the “Spiegelgrund” . In: Eberhard Gabriel, Wolfgang Neugebauer (ed.): From forced sterilization to murder (= On the history of Nazi euthanasia in Vienna . Volume 2 ). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-205-99325-4 , p. 77-98 .

[5] Christa Zöchling : Education camp thinking . In: Profile . November 15, 2011, accessed February 15, 2019 .

[6] Herwig Czech: The Spiegelgrund Complex. Pediatrics, curative education, psychiatry and youth welfare under National Socialism . In: Gottfried Biewer, Michelle Proyer (Ed.): Disability and Society. A university contribution to the commemorative year 2018 . Vienna 2019, p. 88 , footnote 14 (available as Open Access publication on the website of the University Library of the University of Vienna ).