Hans Landauer

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Hans Landauer (born April 19, 1921 in Oberwaltersdorf ; † July 19, 2014 there ) was an Austrian fighter in Spain , a survivor of the Dachau concentration camp and a historian of the Spanish Civil War .

Live and act

childhood

Landauer came from a social democratic family. His grandfather was mayor of Oberwaltersdorf until the Social Democratic Workers' Party in Austria was banned in 1934 . Even as a child, Landauer was a member of the Rote Falken , the social democratic youth organization founded in 1925. When he was thirteen years old, he took on courier services for his grandfather in order to distribute the opposition press produced in Brno and smuggled to Austria ( Arbeiter-Zeitung , Die Rote Fahne ). Landauer described this task as "growing into the anti-fascist struggle".

Spanish Civil War

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 , Landauer decided to support the Spanish Popular Front . On June 19, 1937, he ran away from home to fight in the ranks of the International Brigades in Spain at the age of only 16 . He took the train to France , where his contact wanted to send him home because of his young age, even when Landauer claimed to be 18 years old. Only when Landauer indicated that he would surely be questioned in Austria and that he could reveal something about the transport organization by being beaten, was he allowed to continue his journey to Spain. There he fought in the machine gun company of the Austrian battalion February 12th in the XI. International Brigade and in the Special Battalion of the 35th Division. He was wounded at Mediana on September 4, 1937, and from October 6, 1937 he was treated for typhoid fever in the hospitals of Tarragona , Reus and Valls . After the withdrawal of the International Brigades on September 24, 1938, he stayed in Bisaura de Ter (currently Sant Quirze de Besora , Catalonia), where he reported for the so-called second mission, in which German and Austrian volunteers helped the advance of Franco troops wanted to delay. Landauer crossed the border with France on February 9, 1939.

Dachau concentration camp

In France, Landauer was interned in the Saint-Cyprien , Gurs and Argelès-sur-Mer camps with Spanish refugees, members of the Republican People's Army and international volunteers . In November 1940 he was arrested in Paris . After being transferred to the Roßauerlände prison in Vienna, which was popularly known as "Liesl" because of its location on the Elisabeth Promenade (today the Police Detention Center Vienna Rossauer Lände ), where he was "at the disposal of the Gestapo ", he was imprisoned on June 6, 1941 the Dachau concentration camp - a fate that met a total of 384 Austrian fighters in Spain. Thanks to the solidarity of the camp, he was assigned to the art-forming department of the Allach Porcelain Factory, where living and working conditions were comparatively favorable. He made particular merits in looking after republican Spaniards who were transferred from the Mauthausen concentration camp to Dachau. After the liberation on April 29, 1945, he started his journey home to Austria.

post war period

After his return, Landauer worked as a police officer in the Lower Austria Security Directorate, then at the Vienna Criminal Police Office (18th department in the Federal Ministry of the Interior). He resigned from the KPÖ in 1949. After all, he worked as a member of the UN police contingent in Cyprus and as a security officer at the Austrian embassy in Beirut . Since 1983 he has worked for the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance , in which he has created an extensive archive of the 1,400 Austrian fighters in Spain with a detective flair. Since 1991 he has been chairman of the "Association of Austrian Volunteers in the Spanish Republic 1936-1939 and the Friends of Democratic Spain".

His birthplace and parents' house at Trumauerstraße 36 is now in the fifth generation of the family and Hans Landauer last lived in Oberwaltersdorf. He was married to the Oberwaltersdorfer elementary school director Mrs. OSR Hermine Landauer and during his lifetime became the father of four children, as well as 8 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.

Hans Landauer died on July 19, 2014 in close family circle in his home town of Oberwaltersdorf.

Trivia

Hans Landauer is the main character in the novel Aasplatz - A Presumption of Innocence by Manfred Wieninger . As a criminal district inspector for the Ministry of the Interior, he investigates the massacres of Hungarian Jews that took place in 1945 in the course of the construction of the south-east wall in Jennersdorf in southern Burgenland .

Honors

literature

  • Hans Landauer, Erich Hackl : Album Gurs. A find from the Austrian resistance . Deuticke Verlag, Vienna 2002.
  • Hans Landauer in collaboration with Erich Hackl : Lexicon of the Austrian fighters in Spain 1936–1939 . Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft , Vienna 2003. (Improved and enlarged new edition 2008)
  • Manfred Wieninger: AASPLATZ - A presumption of innocence. Verlag Residenz, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-7017-1692-0 .
  • Dagmar Goldbeck: Hans Landauer . In: Günter Benser , Dagmar Goldbeck, Anja Kruke (eds.): Preserve, spread, enlighten. Archivists, librarians and collectors of the sources of the German-speaking labor movement. Supplement . Bonn 2017, ISBN 978-3-95861-591-5 , pp. 72-79. Online (PDF, 2.7 MB)

Movie

  • The Spanish fighter. Hans Landauer - Against Fascism and Forgetting. Director: Wolfgang Rest . Austria 2006
  • Last hope Spain. Logs of an odyssey. Direction: Karin Helml and Hermann Peseckas . Austria 2006
  • “We fought for Spain” - from Ottakring to the Ebro . Director: Tom Matzek . Austria 1998
  • Hafner's paradise . Documentary, Germany, 2007, director: Günter Schwaiger. The film contains Landauer's encounter with the former SS man Paul Hafner .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Landauer: The last Spanish fighter from Austria is dead. In: derstandard.at . July 21, 2014.
  2. ↑ List of persons of KPÖ members in the Vienna police. In: klahrgesellschaft.at . July 21, 2017, accessed on November 15, 2019 (PDF; 132 kB).
  3. ^ Südostwall section Südburgenland: The Jennersdorf massacre. In: regiowiki.at . Retrieved April 2, 2018.
  4. ↑ Thanks to resistance fighters. In: The New Reminder Call . Volume 30, No. 6 June 1977 (online at ANNO ).
  5. ↑ Municipal housing named after Hans Landauer. In: doew.at . Retrieved November 15, 2019.
  6. ^ Hans Landauer - Against fascism and forgetting. ( Memento from April 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Wolfgang Rest: Film. "The Spanish fighter". Hans Landauer - against fascism and oblivion . 2006, (TV) 3sat
personal data
SURNAME Landauer, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian freedom fighter
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberwaltersdorf
DATE OF DEATH 19th July 2014
Place of death Oberwaltersdorf