Hermann Hiltl

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Hermann Ritter von Hiltl (born June 16, 1872 in Olmütz , Austria-Hungary ; † August 15, 1930 in Bad Hall , Austria ) was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army and co-founder and leader of the Front Fighter Association of German-Austria , a military association of the political right in of the Austrian First Republic .

Life

Knighthood diploma for the Hiltl family, Vienna 1903

Hermann Hiltl was born in 1872 as the third child of Lieutenant Colonel Anton Hiltl (1828–1886) in the General Staff Corps , who at that time was posted to Olomouc for military service. Like his father, Hiltl embarked on a military career and was retired in 1892 as a lieutenant in Infantry Regiment No. 33 “Kaiser Leopold II” . After failing to enter the war school , Hiltl devoted himself entirely to military service, was appointed captain in 1905 and, from 1907, worked as a teacher at the infantry cadet school in Vienna . From 1912 he was stationed in Sarajevo as the commander of a field company with Infantry Regiment No. 49 "Freiherr von Hess" .

Hiltl experienced the outbreak of the First World War there in 1914 and took part in the offensives against Serbia (see also the Battle of Jadar , Battle of the Drina and Battle of the Kolubara ), from November 1914 already as the commander of a battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 84 “Freiherr von Bolfras”. When Italy entered the war in 1915, the battalion commanded by Hiltl was briefly transferred to the newly added south-western front, then took part in the defeat of Serbia and returned to the Italian theater of war in March 1916 . Hiltl remained its battalion commander until it was merged with other troops to form a new regiment in early 1918. He then acted - now with the rank of lieutenant colonel - as the commander of the Feldjäger battalion No. 21. At the end of the war Hiltl, who had received several awards for his services and was also wounded, was taken prisoner in Italy, from which he returned to Austria in August 1919.

Although he remained active in the army after his return, Hiltl, like many of his peers , rejected the new republic, dominated by the Social Democrats , and its army, the people's armed forces . However, he soon wanted more than the union-like associations of former members of the Austro-Hungarian army, which came into being after the end of the war, and which saw themselves merely as representing the interests of their members to enforce the economic concerns of their members. In Hiltl's environment, ideas circulated that amounted to an undoing of the “coup d'état” of November 1918, for which Social Democrats, Communists and Jews were held responsible. They were also blamed for the humiliating war defeat and for the economic misery of the post-war period. The men around Hiltl seemed particularly advised to take action against the “ corrosive activity of the Jewish elements ”, particularly those Jews who were “targeted” “ who during the war from Galicia in droves via Inner Austria [meaning the territory of the Republic after 1918]. “Ultimately, through“ the unification of the entire German population ”, whose“ eternal solidarity across national borders ”was propagated, the“ [breaking] of Jewish rule ”was to be achieved and in this way“ the [German] people [led] up out of hunger and agony. " become.

Correspondingly, the Front Fighters' Association of German-Austria, which was officially founded in April 1920, in whose executive committee Hiltl was the organizational leader, saw itself from the start as an anti-Marxist and anti-Semitic fighting force. The marches and heroic honors of the front-line fighters, which served to cultivate comradeship and recruit new members and in which Hiltl mostly acted as a speaker, quickly turned him and his organization into the enemy of the Social Democrats. In addition to his public work, Hiltl was also involved in a lively conspiratorial activity of various monarchist, legitimist and German - national -minded groups during the 1920s , which made use of the mediation activities of Maximilian Ronges , the last head of the registry office of the Danube monarchy, to form an alliance “ against to advance the overwhelming influence of the Social Democrats ”.

Ultimately, these efforts failed because of programmatic issues as well as the rivalries and jealousies of the organizations involved and their protagonists; Even the intensification of the cooperation between all military associations of the political right in Austria, which was aimed at after the fire of the Vienna Palace of Justice - a consequence of the acquittal of those combatants who shot dead two people in the Burgenland town of Schattendorf in January 1927 - did not go beyond the beginnings, as the combatants at the front as Difficult conversation partners turned out to be who absolutely wanted to maintain their organizational independence, especially in the face of the now rapidly growing home defense movement .

In 1927 Hiltl's outstanding position within the Front Fighter Association was clearly confirmed by his election as “ Supreme Leader ”. This upgrading of Hiltl's person was not able to change the fact that the Front Fighters Association remained a small organization, mainly limited to military officers, with comparatively little political and military importance. Neither did his contact with the right-wing Stahlhelm in the German Reich or his meeting with Adolf Hitler in the summer of 1929 bring any concrete political results. While the Front Fighter Association was only able to recruit supporters to a very limited extent in the authoritarian or fascist segment of the population in Austria , conversely, in the years after 1930, the aspiring National Socialists succeeded in recruiting members from the ranks of the Front Fighters and virtually “infiltrating” their organization. This was already symbolically anticipated by the participation of a section of National Socialists at the funeral of Hiltl, who died of tongue cancer in the summer of 1930 .

family

Hiltl, whose mother had applied for the knighthood for the family in 1902, married Maria von Kriesten in 1903, who came from a respected family in Marburg . The couple got to know each other at an event organized by the Schlaraffia , to which Hiltl had been a member since 1895. In 1904 son Herbert was born.

literature

  • Eugen von Hammer (Ed.): Colonel Hiltl. A memorial book. Richard Bernhardt Publishing House, Vienna [1931].

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ a b Unless otherwise stated, all information on Hiltl's life, career path and his war effort comes from Hammer (1931), pp. 7–73.
  2. ↑ a b For the structure and the first years of existence of the Frontk Fighter Association from the point of view of its members, cf. Hammer (1931), pp. 74-96.
  3. ↑ Hammer (1931), p. 74.
  4. ↑ Hammer (1931), pp. 171f.
  5. ↑ Hammer (1931), p. 78.
  6. ↑ Hammer (1931), p. 76.
  7. ↑ a b On the - ultimately unsuccessful - activities of these groups cf. Verena Moritz , Hannes Leidinger and Gerhard Jagschitz : At the center of power. The many faces of the head of the secret service, Maximilian Ronge. Residenz-Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7017-3038-4 , pp. 184–198 and 224–235.
  8. ↑ Hammer (1931), p. 146.
  9. ↑ Death book of the Roman Catholic rectory in Bad Hall 1930, No. 27 ( online ).
  10. ↑ Moritz / Leidinger / Jagschitz (2007), p. 241f.
personal data
SURNAME Hiltl, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hiltl, Hermann Ritter von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian officer and leader of the front fighting movement
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Olomouc
DATE OF DEATH August 15, 1930
Place of death Bad Hall