Helmut Prasch (folklorist)

H. Prasch in the company of other deserving employees of the Spittaler Heimatmuseum

Helmut Prasch (born September 16, 1910 in Weissenbach an der Triesting , Lower Austria; † December 17, 1996 in Spittal an der Drau , Carinthia) was an Austrian teacher, folklorist and author.

Life

Pre-war period

Helmut Prasch was the only son of the factory director Hans Prasch and his wife Sofie, née Waloschke, who came from Alexanderfeld near Bielitz in Austrian-Silesia . He first attended the elementary and community school in Spittal an der Drau and then from 1926 the Protestant teacher training institute in Oberschützen in Burgenland . In 1930 he completed his training with the teaching examination , the Matura including the maturity clause for high schools and the cantor examination.

Prasch then began his teaching career and taught at the Carinthian elementary schools in Steuerberg , Althofen and Eberstein . From 1932 to 1939 he worked as a senior teacher at the one -class mountain school in Trinity , where he also worked as an organist , choir director , folk dance and amateur play supervisor. At that time, Prasch was already intensively concerned with folklore topics and wrote his first literary works. At that time he also met Walter Tschinkel, who worked at the neighboring elementary school in Steinbichl and with whom he traveled to the language island of Gottschee in the Draubanat ( Yugoslavia ) in 1936 . In 1939 Prasch moved to Schiefling am See , where he headed the elementary school as rector until the outbreak of the Second World War .

Helmut Prasch, who was awarded the so-called Ostmark medal after the annexation of Austria to the German Reich , volunteered for an SS unit after the war began. He took part in the western campaign, was stationed in France and Holland and was then assigned to the occupied Upper Carniola in 1941 as an SS-Untersturmführer as a school representative.

In the Stein ( Kamnik ) district, headed by Hermann Doujak as district administrator since the end of October 1941 , Prasch initially worked as the head of the school department. At that time he wrote his “Handbook for Young Headmasters in Oberkrain”. In this, he demanded an unreserved commitment to National Socialist upbringing: “So we stand resolutely under the swastika flag of our village school, which is often remote from all over the world, and justify the trust placed in us by our Gauleiter to carry out the order of the Führer.” This order read: “This Land is to be made German again. "

However, Prasch was primarily active for the SiPo and SD at the Stein branch. As the commander of a self-protection battalion of the Stein Wehrmannschafts-Standarte, he took part in numerous combat operations against Slovenian resistance groups and in partisan operations in the border area to the province of Ljubljana . On May 22nd and 23rd, 1942, he was wounded twice in the " gang fight " in the extensive forest area around the Jantschberg (Janče, 10 km west of Litija / Littai) .

From 1943 Prasch fought as a scout leader in the SS Panzer Grenadier Reconnaissance Department of the Panzer Division “Das Reich” on the Eastern Front and was temporarily deployed again to fight partisans in the rear front area. On April 20, 1943, Prasch was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer .

After the capitulation of Italy on September 8, 1943 and the occupation of the country by the German Wehrmacht , Prasch was transferred from Russia to the province of Julisch Venetien and appointed head of the SiPo and SD branch in Pola . His office was subordinate to the Commander of the Security Police and the SD in the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone , based in Trieste . In the area of ​​the Pola province, in which, as in the entire operational zone, a bloody partisan and civil war was raging and which was declared a gang fighting area in December 1943, Prasch remained in combat until the end of the war.

In mid-February 1945 he was awarded the gold gang fight badge . One of the last issues of the four-language propaganda magazine “Adria Illustrierte”, which was published in Trieste until April 28, 1945, reported at the time: “The first holder of the golden gang fight badge in the coastal country! After more than a hundred missions, the Reichsführer SS personally awarded SS-Obersturmführer Prasch this high honor. ” And printed a picture of the decorated.

post war period

In 1958, on his initiative, the Spittal an der Drau District Home Museum , today's Museum of Folk Culture, was founded in Spittal an der Drau . Thanks to decades of collecting activities in the is Renaissance -Schloss Porcia housed museum with about 20,000 exhibits from the Oberkärntner room, the fourth largest folk collection in Austria. Prasch was on the road as a teacher in various schools in Carinthia and put on small folklore collections for object lessons. Farms and craftsmen were rattled until the population smiled and said with a smile: “Watch out, everything is clear, there Prasch is on the way.” At the end of the 1950s, modernity came and the farmers scrapped a lot and were happy that someone took the old things.

His many initiatives in the area of ​​folklore include a. the arsenic show hut in the Pöllatal , the 1st Carinthian fishing museum in Seeboden, the investigation of the glassblowing village Tscherniheim or the 1st Carinthian handicraft museum in Baldramsdorf . He not only communicated his broad knowledge of Upper Carinthian folklore via museum design and relevant literature, but also gave many event-related lectures, wrote in various local media, designed radio broadcasts and supported various projects, which is why a broad-based index of keywords is still missing today.

Awards

Pre-war period

• Medal in memory of March 13, 1938
• Iron Cross 2nd and 1st class
• War Merit Cross 2nd class with swords
• Panzer Badge
• Wounded badge
• Gang war badge in gold (February 1945)

post war period

• Honorary citizen of the city of Spittal an der Drau (1976)
• Honorary member of the Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Deutschland e. V. (1979)
• Georg Graber Medal (1986)

Works

• Work schedule for the holiday assignment of the Carinthian Educators' Union in the occupied areas of Krain from July 14th to August 24th 1941 , (above) 1941.
• The task. A handbook for young school principals in Oberkrain , Stein, 1943.
• Bergkerle , Deutscher Volksverlag, Munich, 1944.
• Der Bergschreck , European publisher, 1955.
• The creative farmer, tools, tools and wooden machines in the Carinthian Oberland , Spittal an der Drau, 1963.
• A folklore of Upper Carinthia , Spittal an der Drau, 1965.
• Rural folklore of Carinthia , in: History of Carinthian agriculture and rural folklore , Klagenfurt, 1966. (Together with Karl Dinklage , Konrad Erker and Franz Koschier).
• To the Möll. Folklore of a Carinthian valley , Spittal an der Drau, 1968.
• A folklore of Upper Carinthia , Spittal an der Drau, 1970.
• Forest glass from Upper Carinthia, 1621–1879. Tscherniheim glassworks , self-published by the Spittal-Drau District Home Museum, 1971. Excerpts (PDF; 11.3 MB)
• Drops of blood from the cam. Karfunkel, Grenate - rural mining on the Millstätter Alpe and the Allmandin jewelry , Spittal an der Drau, 1972.
• From Lurnfeld to the Tiroler Tor. Popular life between Teurnia and Aguntum , Spittal an der Drau, 1974.
• The Burgstaller vom Purckhstall: Chronicle of a Carinthian farming family , Spittal an der Drau, 1975.
• The lake and area valley. People and landscape between lakes and nocks , Spittal an der Drau, 1976.
• Work and stuff. The history and existence of the Spittal-Drau District Home Museum and its facilities with an outline of the town history of Teurnia and Spittal , Spittal an der Drau, 1978.
• The Lieser, Malta, Pöllatal. Windows into the past and future , Spittal an der Drau, 1980.
• Fifty years of the city of Spittal. Festschrift for the anniversary of the town elevation , Spittal an der Drau, 1980. (Together with Erich Nussbaumer and Helmut Rieder).
• Guide through and around the Ortenburg-Porcia Castle in Spittal, Drau , Spittal an der Drau, 1984. (Together with Hartmut Prasch).

literature

• Tone Ferenc: Sources on the National Socialist policy of denationalization in Slovenia 1941–1945. Viri o nacistični raznarodovalni politiki v Sloveniji 1941–1945 , Založba Obzorja, Maribor, 1980.
• Gottscheer Landsmannschaft (ed.): 650 years of Gottschee, Festbuch 1980 , self-published by GL in Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, 1980.
• Michael Wedekind: National Socialist Occupation and Annexation Policy in Northern Italy 1943 to 1945 , R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, 2003. ISBN 3-486-56650-4 .
• Stefan Karner - Janez Stergar (Ed.): Carinthia and Slovenia - "Thicket and Paths" , Hermagoras Verlag, Klagenfurt, 2005. ISBN 3-7086-0004-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 650 years Gottschee, p. 301 f. (Autobiography)
2. ^ Karner: Carinthia and Slovenia p. 143.
3. ^ Prasch: The task. A manual. P. 6
4. ^ The history of the museum , accessed on August 27, 2011.
5. ↑ Pressglas-Korrespondenz , No. 2008-4 at www.pressglas-korrespondenz.de (PDF; 11.3 MB), accessed on July 19, 2012