Heinrich Dürmayer

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Heinrich Georg Peter Dürmayer , called Heinz Dürmayer (born April 10, 1905 in Atzgersdorf near Vienna, Austria-Hungary ; † September 22, 2000 in Vienna ) was an Austrian resistance fighter against National Socialism , interbrigadist , prisoner functionary in concentration camps , functionary of the KPÖ, lawyer and police officer.

Life

Studies, political activity and resistance to Austrofascism

Heinrich Dürmayer was the son of master locksmith Peter Dürmayer (1880–1959) and his wife Karoline, née Maliwanek (1880–1938), who later both became members of the NSDAP . After completing his school career, he studied law at the University of Vienna and was awarded a Dr. jur. PhD . During his studies he joined the successful student association Corps Marchia Vienna. This connection was regarded as equal-liberal and also accepted Jewish students as members. He then worked as a lawyer. As a member of the SDAP and the Republican Protection Association , he participated in the February fighting in 1934 , was arrested at short notice and at the end of 1934 a member of the KPÖ . In 1935/36 Dürmayer was imprisoned for 17 months in the Vienna Regional Court and in the Wöllersdorf detention camp for communist activities . His release from prison was linked to the condition that he had to leave Austria. He was expatriated in 1937 and became an Austrian citizen again in 1945.

Interbrigadist, internment and Gestapo detention

After stays in Paris and London , Dürmayer fought from January 1937 in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades on the side of the Republic against the establishment of a dictatorship under Franco . There he was initially a machine gunner in the Chapayev battalion. Most recently he held the post of political commissar as a major in the 35th Division of the Interbrigades. During his time with the International Brigades, he worked as a journalist and wrote reports for front newspapers, among other things.

His wife Renée Dürmayer (1907–1978), née Renate Lelewer, followed him from England in February 1937 to Spain. She worked as a pharmacist in the central pharmacy of the International Brigades in Albacete .

After the defeat of the Republicans, he fled to France , where he was interned in France in February 1939 and held in the Saint-Cyprien, Gurs and Le Vernet camps. After France's defeat in World War II , he was extradited to the " Greater German Reich " on September 4, 1940 , interrogated by the Gestapo in Vienna and recorded by the police. After a year in custody in Vienna, he was again transferred to the Gestapo in Vienna in January 1942.

Prisoner in the Flossenbürg, Auschwitz and Mauthausen concentration camps

In mid-March 1942 Dürmayer was taken from there to the Flossenbürg concentration camp . There he was employed in the quarry for nine months. In the Flossenbürg concentration camp he belonged to the partially organized camp resistance around Karl Fugger .

In January 1944, Dürmayer was transferred from Flossenbürg to the Auschwitz concentration camp , where he was initially employed by the prisoner camp supervision, then in the prisoners' office and later as a Kapo in the SS clothing store. From September 1944 until the evacuation in January 1945 he was the senior camp of the main camp . In this function he inevitably had close contact with the camp celebrities and the camp SS . He was a leading member of the international camp resistance. In the main camp he belonged to the Auschwitz combat group and also used his position as a prisoner function efficiently for this organization. Bruno Baum also names his future Jewish wife Janka (also Judith), block elder in Auschwitz, as active in the camp resistance. Hermann Langbein , like Dürmayer, a political prisoner in Auschwitz, nevertheless reproached him for maintaining too close contact with the so-called criminal prisoners and the SS and thus alienating himself from other prisoners. During the evacuation of Auschwitz concentration camp in January 1945, according to Langbein, Dürmayer is said to have left the camp with other prominent figures in the car of the protective custody camp leader Franz Hößler , which Dürmayer vehemently denied.

Dürmayer was transported from Wodzisław Śląski to Mauthausen concentration camp on January 25, 1945 . As President of the International Committee in Mauthausen concentration camp, he again held a leading position in the camp resistance. After the camp SS had withdrawn from the main camp of Mauthausen by May 3, 1945, the International Camp Committee took over the camp management. The main task of the committee after the camp SS withdrew was to ensure that the prisoners were supplied with food. In the main camp of Mauthausen concentration camp, Dürmayer officially became the last camp elder on May 4, 1945 - one day before the camp was liberated.

On May 16, 1945, shortly after the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp, Dürmayer read the so-called " Mauthausen oath " for the international committee on behalf of all former political Mauthausen prisoners .

After the end of the war

Head of the State Police in Vienna

In September 1945, Dürmayer (seated on the left), as head of the Vienna State Police, interrogates Grabner, who is being guarded by two police officers.

After the liberation, Dürmayer was immediately commissioned in May 1945 by the State Secretary for the Interior of the Provisional Government Renner, the KPÖ leadership member Franz Honner , to set up and manage a new and unencumbered state police. As head of the State Police - formally the State Police Office of the Vienna Federal Police Directorate - he was also responsible for the department for investigating war criminals. In this role, Dürmayer, whose department consisted mainly of communists and so-called unpolluted persons, was able to arrest the former head of the political department in Auschwitz Maximilian Grabner while working in the fields. At the beginning of September 1945 he subjected Grabner to a police interrogation, which was also shown in the newsreel . He also managed to arrest Siegfried Seidl , the former commandant of the Theresienstadt ghetto . After entering the service, Dürmayer had several detention or labor camps set up for former National Socialists, which existed alongside Allied internment camps. He was promoted to senior police officer in 1946.

As an anti-fascist , Dürmayer tried not only to arrest former National Socialists, but also to force communist influence. The Soviet city commanders gave him extensive powers. At times, almost a thousand police officers were under his control. On the basis of the civil service transition law passed in 1945, the recruitment of former concentration camp prisoners and resistance fighters in the civil service was forced. The recruitment criteria for the police service were also lowered, which benefited the mostly unacademic communists. About 90% of the employees of the state police are said to have been members of the KPÖ. The state police under Dürmayer's direction ran the risk of becoming “state within the state” because they “largely eluded the influence of the Vienna Police Department and also called the government's authority into question through actions outside of Austrian law.” From 1947, Dürmayer held the official title real councilor .

An alleged attempt at an explosives attack on the Red Army Heroes' Monument in Vienna ultimately led to Dürmayer's removal. In 1947, two 19-year-old men and a 25-year-old woman were noticed in a Viennese dance hall who wanted to bring about "a political upheaval" in the National Socialist sense and want to join a werewolf group . The state police then put a spy named Herbert on the group, who had explosives stolen from Allied barracks shown in the apartment of a suspect. According to the informer, the suspect is said to have said that there were “so many monuments and other things” that “do not fit in” and that he also mentioned the Russian monument. After his arrest, the accused testified that it was not he, but the informant who suggested using the explosives in an attack on the Russian monument. In the beginning of June 1948, the two male members of the observed group were sentenced to several years imprisonment for being re-employed by the National Socialists. In the opinion of Interior Minister Oskar Helmer , Dürmayer had gone too far with the use of the informers and would have created the assassination plan in order to politically instrumentalize the matter.

At the beginning of September 1947, Dürmayer was released from his post by Interior Minister Helmer in the wake of the beginning of the Cold War . The background to this was Dürmayer's pro-Soviet policy in the Soviet sector and his influential position within the administration, which Helmer viewed as a threat to Austria's democracy. At the same time, Dürmayer was informed of the transfer to Salzburg . However, he did not take up the position in Salzburg and left the police force. Shortly before his dismissal, he had taken important files to the Soviet city command.

Dürmayer took legal action against the 1957 memoirs of Interior Minister Helmer (“50 years of history”) and obtained - at least temporarily - the confiscation of the book. Dürmayer saw himself “wrongly exposed to the contempt of his compatriots” because of the publication, because Helmer Dürmayer et al. a. as a "docile student of the Russian secret police" and accused the state police, which he led at the time, of arbitrary rule. The SPÖ- affiliated political scientist Norbert Leser said later that Dürmayer would “have become a little Beria ” in the event of a communist takeover in Austria .

Lawyer, involvement in victims' associations and witness in Nazi trials

Dürmayer subsequently worked again in his profession as a lawyer, a. a. he became legal advisor to the KPÖ. Later he played "an important role in the handling of east-west trade".

He devoted himself to the creation of the Mauthausen Memorial and in May 1947, after a visit to the site of the former Mauthausen concentration camp, said: “A place that would be a place of consecration in any other country is a dungyard and a potato field . “In January 1998, while still old, Dürmayer and other former Flossenbürg prisoners worked with the then Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber to establish a permanent research and documentation center on the site of the former Flossenbürg concentration camp. In November 1948, Dürmayer became a member of the presidium of the Federal Association of Austrian Resistance Fighters and a victim of fascism . He founded the Association of Former Spain Fighters , was for many years Secretary General of the International Mauthausen Committee and President of the Austrian Association of Democratic Jurists . In March 1947, he testified as a witness in the Warsaw trial against the former camp commandant Rudolf Höß . He also appeared as a witness in June 1964 during the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt .

After the criticism of the former Auschwitz prisoner Hermann Langbein at the secret trial against Imre Nagy and his resignation from the KPÖ, Dürmayer traveled to Poland with the Auschwitz survivor Josef Meisel at the end of the 1950s to get Langbein's removal from his position as General Secretary of the International Auschwitz Committee . Also because Langbein described Dürmayer's role in his publications on concentration camps as not only unproblematic, there was an aversion to Langbein on his part. In 1981, Dürmayer protested in a letter to the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters (KAW) that Langbein's name was mentioned in a publication by Heinz Kühnrich . The KAW finally asked the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED , where the publication was to appear, to refrain from naming the respective names.

Even after the crackdown on the Prague Spring , he remained a staunch member of the Communist Party and commented on this in a letter in 1969: “... I didn't join the KPÖ in 1934 to fight for bourgeois democracy, for bourgeois, so-called freedoms such as freedom of expression , Freedom of assembly and association, freedom of the press - no, I wanted the dictatorship! Our dictatorship [...] There are regions and situations where you have to apply methods that do not correspond to an ideal worldview, but are necessary to secure a happy, humanistic future. I reject the equation of hard methods on our side and that of our enemies as false, demagogic, un-Marxist and undialectical. "

More than 50 years after his resignation, Dürmayer was re-admitted to the Marchia student union in November 1988.

Since 1945 he was married to Janka, née Kahan (1919–2013). The couple had a daughter in 1946, who later became a lawyer Evelyn Dürmayer.

Dürmayer has received several awards, including a. with the Polish Spanish Fighter Medal and the Hans Beimler Medal .

Dürmayer died on September 22, 2000 and was buried on October 2, 2000 in the Vienna Central Cemetery .

literature

  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Vol. 1: Politics, economy, public life . Saur, Munich, 1999 (= 1980), DNB 955870380 , p. 140.
  • Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz. Ullstein, Frankfurt 1980 ISBN 3-54833014-2 .
  • Winfried R. Garscha: The role of the security executive in denazification: files and gaps in files . In: Walter Schuster & Wolfgang Weber: Denazification in regional comparison . Archive of the City of Linz 2004 (pdf; 73 kB)
  • Hans-Peter Klausch: On the anti-fascist resistance struggle of the German, Austrian and Soviet communists in the Flossenbürg concentration camp from 1940-1945. Library u. Information system of the Univ. Oldenburg, Oldenburg 1990, ISBN 3-8142-0240-6 . (pdf)
  • Bruno Baum : Resistance in Auschwitz. (in all editions, passim; "Heinz") VVN , Berlin 1949 a. ö.
  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
  • The fictional assassination attempt . In: Der Spiegel . No. 2 , 1958 ( online ).
  • Edgar Schütz: Austrian Journalists and Publicists in the Spanish Civil War 1936 - 1939. Media Policy and Press of the International Brigades , Series: Österreichische Kulturforschung, Volume 20, LIT Verlag, Berlin-Münster-Vienna-Zurich-London 2016, ISBN 978-3-643- 50759-4 , pp. 370f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933 , Volume 1: Politics, Economy, Public Life , Munich 1980, p. 140
  2. ↑ a b Martin Haidinger : Where have the left virtues gone? . Guest commentary in: Wiener Zeitung , edition of January 30, 2008 (accessed November 15, 2013)
  3. ^ A b c Edgar Schütz: Austrian Journalists and Publicists in the Spanish Civil War 1936 - 1939 , Berlin-Münster-Vienna-Zurich-London 2016, p. 370f.
  4. ↑ a b c Dürmayer, Heinrich Dr. on www.doew.at
  5. ↑ Renée Lugschitz: Spain fighters; Foreign women in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 . LIT Verlag 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-50404-3 , p. 49
  6. ↑ Dürmayer, Renée, Mag. On http://www.doew.at
  7. ↑ Hans-Peter Klausch: Resistance in Flossenbürg: On the anti-fascist resistance struggle of the German, Austrian and Soviet communists in the Flossenbürg concentration camp 1940-1945 , Oldenburg 1990, p. 28f. and 89.
  8. ↑ Raphael Gross , Werner Renz (ed.): The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963-1965). Annotated source edition , Scientific Series of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Volume 1, Campus, Frankfurt 2013, ISBN 978-3-593-39960-7 , p. 409
  9. ^ A b Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt 1980, pp. 286f.
  10. ↑ Bruno Baum: Resistance in Auschwitz. , Berlin 1949, p. 25; 1962, p. 80. Baum dedicates his own comprehensive section to him: 1949, p. 52f., 1962: p. 103f.
  11. ↑ Central Party Archives of the KPÖ, letter from Heinrich Dürmayer to Europa-Verlag regarding "People in Auschwitz" by Hermann Langbein, November 14, 1972.
  12. ↑ a b The Auschwitz Trial - Witness Heinrich Dürmayer at www.auschwitz-prozess-frankfurt.de
  13. ↑ Ulrich Herbert , Karin Orth , Christoph Dieckmann : The National Socialist Concentration Camps: Development and Structure. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 1998. ISBN 3-89244-289-4 , p. 211
  14. ↑ Florian Freund , Bertram Perz: Mauthausen - main camp . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 4: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-52964-X , p. 328.
  15. ↑ Florian Freund, Bertram Perz: Mauthausen - main camp . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 4, Munich 2006, p. 332.
  16. ↑ Mauthausen oath - in full at: Regional Association of Upper Austria of Antifascists, Resistance Fighters and Victims of Fascism (KZ-Verband / VdA OÖ)
  17. ↑ Werner Sabitzer: 60 years after the end of the war - difficult new beginning . In: Public Security - The Ministry of the Interior's magazine , May / June 2005, pp. 73–75 (pdf; 213 kB)
  18. ↑ Winfried R. Garscha: The role of the security executive in denazification: files and gaps. In: Walter Schuster, Wolfgang Weber (ed.): Denazification in regional comparison: the attempt to take stock (= historical yearbook of the city of Linz 2002 ). Archive of the City of Linz , Linz 2004, ISBN 3-900388-55-5 , pp. 551ff.
  19. ↑ Kurt Hacker: In the service of the public. In: Franz Danimann ; Hugo Pepper (Ed.): Austria in April '45 , Europaverlag, Vienna, Munich, Zurich, 1985, pp. 173–176. Printed in: auschwitz information, 67th edition, January 2005, University of Linz, Institute for Social and Economic History, Johannes Kepler (pdf; 82 kB)
  20. ^ Austria. Council of Ministers, Peter Mähner, Walter Mentzel: Minutes of the Council of Ministers of the Second Republic: July 17, 1946 to November 19, 1946 , Verlag Österreich, 2005, p. 57
  21. ↑ a b Directory of KPÖ members in the Vienna police at www.klahrgesellschaft.at
  22. ↑ a b c Erwin A. Schmidl: Austria in the early Cold War 1945-1958: Spione, Partisans, War Plans , Böhlau Verlag Vienna, 2000, ISBN 978-3-205-992165 , p. 108f.
  23. ↑ With hammer and sickle in the state police Die Presse , July 13, 2012
  24. ↑ Andreas Huber: Denazification and backlash. Students 1945-1950 . In: Andreas Huber, Katharina Kniefacz, Alexander Krysl, manes Weisskichner: University and discipline: Members of the University of Vienna and National Socialism , LIT-Verlag, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-643-50265-0 , p. 223
  25. ^ Rudolf Jerabek: Kriminalgeschichte - girl murder and assassinations . In: Public Safety, Edition 1/2006, p. 38
  26. ↑ Christoph Franceschini, Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, Thomas Wegener Friis: Espionage among friends. Partner service relations and western education of the organization Gehlen and the BND , Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86153-946-9 , p. 123
  27. ↑ The fictitious assassination attempt . In: Der Spiegel , issue 2 of January 8, 1958, p. 31f.
  28. ↑ Norbert readers: The fear of social democracy before the return of the monarchy . in: Clemens Aigner et al .: The Habsburg trauma. The difficult relationship between the Republic of Austria and your history . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 2014 ISBN 978-3-205-78917-8 , pp. 51, 60, here p. 58
  29. ↑ Quoted in: Bertrand Perz: The Mauthausen Memorial from 1945 to the present . StudienVerlag, Innsbruck 2006, ISBN 978-3-7065-4025-4 , p. 64.
  30. ↑ The future of the memorial ( Memento of October 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  31. ↑ Volker Koop : Rudolf Höß. The commandant of Auschwitz. A biography. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22353-3 , p. 10
  32. ^ Brigitte Bailer , Bertrand Perz , Heidemarie Uhl : The Austrian memorial in the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. History of origin and redesign . In: Dirk Rupnow , Heidemarie Uhl (Hrsg.): Exhibiting contemporary history in Austria. Museums - memorials - exhibitions , Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78531-6 , p. 161
  33. ↑ Simone Barck : Antifa-Geschichte (n): a literary search for traces in the GDR in the 1950s and 1960s , Böhlau Verlag, Cologne a. Weimar 2003, ISBN 3412138029 , p. 112
  34. ^ Dürmayer on March 19, 1969 in a letter to Gustl Herrnstadt. Quoted from: Edgar Schütz: Austrian journalists and publicists in the Spanish Civil War 1936 - 1939 , Berlin-Münster-Vienna-Zurich-London 2016, p. 370f.
  35. ↑ Search for the deceased on http://www.friedhoefewien.at
personal data
SURNAME Dürmayer, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dürmayer, Heinrich Georg Peter (full name); Dürmayer, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer, police officer, functionary (KPÖ) and concentration camp prisoner
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Atzgersdorf near Vienna
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 2000
Place of death Vienna