Heinrich Steinitz

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Heinrich Steinitz (* the 30th August 1879 in Bielsko , Austrian Silesia ; † October 1942 in the Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a Viennese lawyer and writer in the First Republic in Austria .

Heinrich Steinitz (around 1910)

Life

Heinrich Steinitz, son of an assimilated Jewish doctor, studied law at the University of Vienna from 1897 . In March 1902 he was promoted to Dr. jur. doctorate , in 1910 he passed the bar exam. He then worked for a short time as a judge and then as a lawyer.

During the First World War , he was taken prisoner by Russia on the Eastern Front in 1916 . From this he was able to flee via Sweden in 1918.

After returning home, he became a member of the Social Democratic Workers 'Party of Austria and a member of the Reich Workers' Council . Steinitz wrote poems, texts for mass festivals and choral works and wrote a Kleist story. In 1933 he was a member of the Association of Socialist Writers . In 1936, in Tilman Riemenschneider during the German Peasants 'War , he dealt with the sculptor and carver Tilman Riemenschneider from the 1525 Peasants' War . The book could only appear in Nazi Germany under the pseudonym Karl Heinrich Stein because of the Nuremberg race laws .

During the Schutzbund trial in 1935 and, above all, at the socialist trial in 1936, he became the most important legal advisor to the labor movement, defending Bruno Kreisky and Karl Hans Sailer, among others . He argued that the goals of the Austrian social democracy, unchanged since 1889, could not suddenly turn into high treason . Despite being monitored by the Austro-Fascist regime, his villa in Hietzing became a meeting place for socialist resistance.

Immediately after the annexation of Austria by the National Socialist German Reich , Steinitz was arrested by the Gestapo on March 14, 1938 and deported to the Dachau concentration camp on April 2, 1938 . In October 1942 he was deported via Buchenwald concentration camp to Auschwitz, where he was murdered after a few days, as he seemed unable to work because of his age. His last words to his fellow inmate Benedikt Kautsky were: "Who knows what I'll save".

A community building in Hietzing, Vienna's 13th district, Auhofstrasse 6, was named "Steinitzhof" after him in 1955. A plaque attached there honors him as “the lawyer for many persecuted people”. Steinitz's estate is in the Vienna Library in the City Hall and in the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance .

family

On December 23, 1910, Steinitz married Meta Wurmfeld (1890–1974) with whom he had a son and three daughters. Meta Steinitz ran a workers' library in Hietzing until 1934, was able to flee to Switzerland in 1938 and, after returning in 1947, worked for the Wiener Städtische Bücherei . The children were also able to flee from the Holocaust . Steinitz's mother Hermine was deported at the age of 84 and perished.

Fonts (selection)

  • Value or material contribution. An investigation. Anzengruber Leipzig / Vienna 1919.
  • Aldermen and jurors. An introduction to Austrian criminal law and criminal proceedings. Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Vienna 1929.
  • Social housing law. Reprint from the journal for social law . No. 4, July 1929. Volume 1, pp. 238-250.
  • Tilman Riemenschneider in the German Peasants' War. Story of an attitude of mind. Reichner, Vienna / Leipzig / Zurich 1936.
  • Eckart Früh (ed.): Sonnets of a prisoner in Buchenwald. Free and Franko, Vienna 1988.

literature

  • Christina Pal: Heinrich Steinitz. Lawyer and poet. A biography. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-85476-179-1 (also dissertation at the University of Vienna 2004).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Herbert Exenberger: Dr. Heinrich Steinitz. Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance , last accessed on March 7, 2019.
  2. ↑ Herbert Exenberger (Ed.): As if the world was on fire. An anthology of murdered socialist writers. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-85476-037-X , p. 276.
  3. ↑ Michael Krassnitzer: Resistance in Hietzing. The fight for freedom 1934–1938 and 1938–1945 using the example of a Viennese district. Edition Volkshochschule, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-900799-58-X , p. 53.
  4. ↑ a b c Heinrich Steinitz. In: dasrotewien.at - Web dictionary of the Viennese social democracy. SPÖ Vienna (Ed.)
  5. ↑ Manfred Marschalek: The Vienna Socialist Trial 1936. In: Karl R. Stadler (Ed.): Socialist Trials, Political Justice in Austria 1870-1936. Europa-Verlag, Vienna / Munich / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-203-50948-2 , pp. 429-490, here p. 478.
  6. ↑ Jacques Hannak: Men and Deeds. On the history of the Austrian labor movement. Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Vienna 1963, p. 69.
  7. ↑ Jacques Hannak: Men and Deeds. On the history of the Austrian labor movement. Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Vienna 1963, p. 70.
  8. ↑ Christina Pal: Heinrich Steinitz. Lawyer and poet. A biography. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-85476-179-1 , p. 163.
  9. ↑ Herbert Exenberger (Ed.): As if the world was on fire. An anthology of murdered socialist writers. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2000, p. 274.
  10. ↑ Renate Obadalek: women in labor and public library system. Honor, Passion, and Persecution. In: Ilse Korotin (Ed.): Austrian librarians on the run. Persecuted, suppressed, forgotten? Praesens, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7069-0408-7 , pp. 141–168, here: pp. 153ff; and review of the book (PDF; 95 kB) by Christine Kanzler in DÖW Mitteilungen 184, December 2007, p. 8f.
  11. ^ Entry on Heinrich Steinitz in the Herbert Exenberger archive of the Theodor Kramer Society , last accessed on March 7, 2019.
    Steinitz, Dr. Karl Heinrich. Report by Heinrich Steinitz's son of the same name, last accessed on March 7, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Steinitz, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielitz
DATE OF DEATH October 1942
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp