Heinz Grill

Heinz Grill (born November 7, 1909 in Vienna ; † in May 1983 ibid) was an Austrian historian, archivist, writer and Karl May expert. As an author, he also used the pseudonyms Hans Steinburg and Heinz Wolfhart . At the same time, Heinz Grill is considered to have caused one of the greatest archive scandals of the 20th century.

Career

Heinz Grill was the son of an official at the Vienna Federal Chancellery. He completed a history degree by attending the 37th course of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research 1929–1931. From 1934 he worked in the Archives of the Interior and the Justice. In 1936 he received his doctorate with a historical doctoral thesis. In 1941 he was called up for military service, which he was allowed to do in Vienna from 1942 for health reasons. As a politically unaffected person, he came to the house, court and state archives in 1946 . In the same year, after the death of his mother, who shielded him completely from life, he was finally able to marry. At the house, court and state archives, Grill rose to state archivist first class and even deputy director by 1951.

Archive scandal ("The Grill Affair")

As an archivist, Grill was not paid very well; his monthly income of 1200 shillings was the same as that of a construction laborer, while he had monthly expenses of 3000 shillings. The money was needed, among other things, for the repair of bomb damage to his own apartment, for the financial needs of his wife and mother-in-law, for clothing, theater visits, summer vacations and private doctors. Therefore, since the summer of 1948, Heinz Grill decided to steal first gold and then silver seal caps and lids from documents from the house, court and state archives and sell them to jewelers and metal dealers. The wax seals in the capsules were partially destroyed; in some cases, Grill also stole gold and silver bulls , which were also destroyed by reselling them as raw materials. With a total of around 400 individual items stolen, Grill was able to turn around 1 kg of gold and up to 185 kg of silver into cash. In addition, Grill had smuggled at least eleven particularly valuable gold seal certificates home from the archive in order to remove the gold bulls there. Then he had initially forgotten the documents, before he burned them in 1951 in sudden fear of a house search, so that he not only destroyed seals, but also individual documents.

In addition to these thefts, Grill was guilty of other inaccuracies: he had sent his cousin, the retired archivist Friedrich Wilhelm Antonius, sensitive files from the interwar period that were still blocked for archival use. In addition, Grill had illegally taken home over 400 volumes from various libraries. He had cut out illustrations from valuable library works for his family history (portrait) collection and thereby partially destroyed the books. In the course of 1951, people began to suspect Grill in the house, court and state archives. On September 17, 1951, Grill was arrested by the police in his office. On June 23, 1952, the main trial against Grill, which was accompanied by considerable media interest, began before the Vienna Regional Court.

The assessment of Grill's character puzzled during the process. Witnesses described him as extremely lovable, balanced and absolutely needless, but on the other hand also as unpunctual, lazy, dreamy and a bit solitary. Experts certified Grill that although he was psychopathic and possessed by a pathological passion for collecting, on the other hand he was not mentally ill or incapable of guilt. Grill showed himself to be guilty and described himself as an incorrect official and as unfit; ongoing contact with valuable cultural assets dulled him and left him no longer in awe. When the verdict was announced on June 28, 1952, Grill was sentenced to seven years in prison. The painter Rudolf Hausner , who had helped Grill conceal the stolen precious metal, was sentenced to two years in prison. Grill's appeal against the prison sentence was rejected by the Supreme Court in December 1952.

The Karl May expert

Grill had already dealt intensively with Karl May as a schoolboy and gave a lecture on April 2, 1922 on the tenth anniversary of his death. In 1943 he planned a Karl May encyclopedia together with the Karl May expert Ludwig Patsch, but this plan failed. In 1949 he worked on the exhibition guide for the Karl May exhibition in the Vienna Museum of Ethnology.

Since 1947 Grill planned to write a sequel to the first two volumes of Karl May's Silver Lion Cycle (Collected Works 26/27). Although there is also one by Karl May himself (GW 28/29), it is kept in the style of his symbolic and encrypted autobiographical older work, which led to an inner break in the series of novels. Grill therefore pursued the goal of writing a closing volume for the Silver Lion cycle in the old, non-symbolic style of Karl May's classic adventure stories. A first attempt of this kind had already been made in the 1930s by Otto Eicke , but had not been able to convince the Karl May Verlag. Grill was able to sell his manuscript, entitled Die Schatten des Shah-in-Schah , in September 1950 to Karl May Verlag, which published it only recently, in April 2006. Grill himself wrote in 1947 about his novel to Ludwig Patsch: "Karl Mays in his best times, brisk style, his invigorating dialogues, his childlike humor must be reproduced just as faithfully as his basic Christian attitude to all problems in life". According to reviews, this Grill actually did well in its alternate Karl May sequel; Added to this is the fact that Grill carefully researched historical sources for his novel.

Heinz Grill also submitted several manuscripts to the Karl May Verlag for a possible continuation of the Karl May yearbooks discontinued in 1933, which have remained unpublished to this day: this includes a contribution about the animal figures in Karl May's late work ( Der Smihk und das Karlinchen , 1934), more on May's figure of Hobble Frank as well as May's early village stories and Dessauer anecdotes (1938), a work on the early May manuscript Mensch und Teufel (1939) and an essay on Karl May's late work philosophy ( Rast auf dem Weg nach Dschinnistan to 1938).

Imprisonment and life after

Heinz Grill was stripped of his doctorate in May 1953, almost a year after the guilty verdict. After several requests for clemency, he was released from prison in December 1955. The material damage to be repaired by Grill (the art-historical damage could not be quantified at all) was set at 500,000 schillings in 1955 (not counting the 8,000 schillings, at which the value of Grill's 2000 volumes of private library was estimated, which is already in the house, courtyard and the State Archives). For many years after his release from prison, however, he could not find a permanent job and was therefore unable to make any payment. For this purpose, Grill worked as a freelance writer and published, partly under the pseudonym Heinz Wolfhart, popular scientific historical books (see below under “Works”). As a Karl May expert, on the other hand, he no longer seems to have worked; after 1952 there is no evidence of any correspondence between him and the Karl-May-Verlag.

In 2009 the Vienna Library in the City Hall bought part of Heinz Grill's family estate.

Published works

Under the name Heinz Grill :

• The family history sources of the house, court and state archives . In: Yearbook Adler 3/2 (1947–1950), pp. 19–24.
• Karl May and the racial madness . In: Karl May exhibition of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna (April 1, 1949 to September 30, 1949), Vienna: Self-published by the Museum für Völkerkunde, 1949.
• The oldest “Turcica” of the house, court and state archives . In: Communications from the Austrian State Archives (MÖStA) 3 (1950), pp. 127–142.
• The Babenbergers: 270 years of Babenberger in Austria . Innsbruck, Vienna, Munich: Tyrolia, 1977. 128 pp. ISBN 3-7022-1262-0
• Maximilian I and his time . Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1977. 152 pp. ISBN 3-7022-1285-X .
• The shadows of the Shah-In-Shah. Alternative continuation of Karl May's travel story “In the realm of the silver lion”. Radebeul: Karl-May-Verlag , 2006. 510 pp. ISBN 3-7802-0176-3 .

Under the pseudonym Hans Steinburg :

• The desert rider. An adventurous story from Arabia . With 11 illustrations by Ernst Schrom. Vienna, Heidelberg: Ueberreuter 1950. 262 S. Reprint Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1970.

Under the pseudonym Heinz Wolfhart :

• Philip of Swabia. Ruler without empire . Graz: Styria, 1962. 329 pp.
• Don Juan de Austria. The winner of Lepanto . Graz u. a .: Styria, 1965. 514 pp.
• The world of the knightly orders . Vienna: Schroll 1978. 172 pp.

Remarks

1. ↑ On the life data cf. [1]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 20 kB). Heinz Grill was buried on May 20, 1983 in the Ottakringer Friedhof in Vienna.  
2. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 373
3. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 373, Lorenz p. 495
4. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 373
5. ↑ Lorenz p. 495
6. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 373
7. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 377
8. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 373
9. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 377
10. ↑ See the figures in Hochedlinger / Just p. 375
11. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 376
12. ↑ According to Hochedlinger / Just p. 375 f. These were: Confirmations of the Habsburg house privileges from 1442 August 10, 1453 January 6 (Latin: copy), 1530 September 8, 1599 July 31, 1613 January 31, 1623 January 12, 1729 December 7, power of attorney from Charles III. of Spain for Joseph I from 1707 August12, confirmation from Charles IV on the acquisition of Tyrol by Rudolf IV from 1364 February 8 (Latin version), Maria Theresa's family document from 1753 June 13 and a certificate from Charles V on the succession in the duchy Geldern from 1549 Nov. 3. Grill himself denied that he was responsible for the disappearance of the documents from 1364, 1442 and 1453.
13. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 378 f.
14. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 377 f.
15. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 374
16. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 381
17. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 374 and 377
18. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 383 f.
19. ^ Hochedlinger / Just p. 387 with note 56 and p. 383
20. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 384
21. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 385
22. ↑ Lorenz p. 495
23. ↑ Lorenz p. 496
24. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 373
25. ↑ Lorenz pp. 493-495
26. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 376
27. ↑ Lorenz p. 505
28. ↑ Thomas Harbach: Review of Heinz Grill, Die Schatten des Schah-in-Schah, online here .
29. ↑ Lorenz p. 495 f. and 499
30. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 387
31. ↑ Hochedlinger / Just p. 387
32. ↑ Lorenz p. 497
33. ↑ Directory of the estate (PDF; 20 kB)

literature

• Michael Hochedlinger and Thomas Just: "These thefts are unique in the history of all archives in the world". The Grill Affair 1951-1953. A contribution to the personal history of the house, court and state archives between the 1st and 2nd republic . In: Communications from the Austrian Institute for Historical Research . Volume 113, 2005, pp. 362-388.
• Christoph F. Lorenz: The "other" shadows. In the matter of Heinz Grill and Karl Mays “In the realm of the Silver Lion”. In: Heinz Grill: The Shadows of the Shah-In-Shah . Karl-May-Verlag, Radebeul 2006, pp. 493–501.

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinz Grill in the catalog of the German National Library