Hugo Lunardon

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Hugo Lunardon as a gendarmerie officer

Hugo Albano Lunardon (born November 2, 1893 in Hard ; † March 14, 1940 in Mauthausen concentration camp ) was an Austrian gendarmerie officer who was killed in the Mauthausen concentration camp after Austria was annexed to National Socialist Germany . Before the Anschluss, from 1933 to 1938, Lunardon, as post commander of the Dornbirn Gendarmerie Post, fought in particular the National Socialists who were illegal in Austria.

Live and act

Youth and First World War

Hugo Lunardon was born on November 2, 1893 in the Vorarlberg Lake Constance municipality of Hard as the son of the Italian-speaking cobbler Bartolo Lunardon and his wife Maria (née Tomio). He grew up in Hard and first learned the profession of engraver . With the beginning of the First World War , Lunardon was drafted into the war at the age of 21 in 1914 and immediately transferred to the front. Twice he was wounded during the war, before he in Russian captivity came and 43 months was detained in several Russian prison camps.

Career in the gendarmerie

After his return to Vorarlberg, Lunardon could no longer find a job as an engraver in the difficult economic situation in Austria in the interwar period , so that he decided to join the Austrian Federal Gendarmerie. He completed his basic training in Innsbruck and was assigned to the regional gendarmerie command for Vorarlberg upon completion. At this point, Hugo Lunardon was already considerably older than most of the other newly hired gendarmerie officers, so that he made double efforts and soon gained a good reputation among colleagues and superiors through his zeal. In 1923 he was assigned to the newly founded research department in Bregenz and was very successful professionally. Lunardon, as secretary of the free police union, sent a protocol in which illegal machinations of a group of monarchist police officers in Salzburg to finance a "fight fund against the red gendarmerie" were shown. This led to Lunardon's official suspension in the summer of 1927. The suspension was lifted as unjustified by the Federal Chancellery 14 days later. The Landesgendarmeriekommando Vorarlberg then transferred Lunardon to the post in Dalaas and shortly afterwards to the furthest part of the Montafon , to Partenen , where he a. had to take care of the conflicts among the construction workers of the Vermuntwerk . In the summer of 1930 Lunardon came back into a subordinate position to the post in Bregenz.

On March 15, 1931, Hugo Lunardon married the Bregenz baker's daughter Olga Frick, with whom he had two daughters in 1933 and 1935. In 1933, the Lunardon , who had been active in Hohenems until then , was appointed post commander of the Dornbirn Gendarmerie Post to fight the illegal National Socialists, who were very influential in Dornbirn. In the city, which was later referred to as the “brown nest” of Vorarlberg, a local NSDAP group had existed since 1924 , which made the community a center of political disputes between Christian-social and German nationalists. These clashes escalated in autumn 1933 when the illegal National Socialists, led by Anton Plankensteiner, regularly carried out firecrackers and explosives attacks. Finally, some financially strong manufacturers and also Plankensteiner himself were arrested, which again led to a wave of demonstrations of force and firecrackers.

Hugo Lunardon excelled in fighting the National Socialists and had to fight against resistance in his own ranks. For example, his deputy, Franz Walch, regularly sabotaged his actions against the sympathizers of the National Socialists. Lunardon celebrated the greatest success when he succeeded in arresting the SS-Sturmbannführer Alfons Mäser , who was responsible for numerous attacks across the country with a troop gathered around him. Together with the detective Anton König, his responsibility was uncovered and Mäser was subsequently sentenced in court to 15 years of heavy imprisonment. Lunardon and König were then proposed for an award by the Vorarlberg security director and awarded the Austrian Great Silver Merit Medal on January 8, 1935 .

After the National Socialists came to power

On March 11, 1938, the National Socialists took over the decisive positions of power in Vorarlberg as part of the so-called annexation of Austria to the German Reich. Anton Plankensteiner became the new governor, Alfons Mäser, who was released early in 1937, was responsible for security. Lunardon's deputy Franz Walch immediately vehemently demanded his arrest, which also happened on the night of March 11th. Hugo Lunardon, like the detective Anton König, was taken into " protective custody " and transferred to the prison in Bregenz, where the Gestapo had taken command in the meantime.

Franz Walch requisitioned Lunardon's official apartment and, after a house search, put his wife and two small children on the street. Olga Lunardon and her children stayed with friends in Sulz . Hugo Lunardon was finally officially released from gendarmerie service on November 11, 1938. Trying him in a criminal abuse of evidence, but failed. Before that, Lunardon had already been deported to Innsbruck together with chaplain Georg Schelling on May 23, 1938 , in order to be subjected to further interrogations there.

A few days later, the two were transported to the Dachau concentration camp , where they were immediately placed in so-called “command arrest”, a kind of intensified solitary confinement. For three months Hugo Lunardon was detained in this tightened form of detention, in which he was only given some bread every third day. Subsequently, Lunardon came to the punishment company of the concentration camp. At the beginning of the war in September 1939, Lunardon was transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp , where the prison conditions were much tougher than before in the Dachau concentration camp. In March 1940 Hugo Lunardon, who was already completely exhausted at the time, was beaten up by an SS-Hauptscharführer on the way to the concentration camp quarry, whereupon he finally collapsed and finally died. His official date of death was set on March 14, 1940, with the official death certificate stating that the cause of death was "cardiac muscle weakness with chronic heart defects and dropsy". Hugo Lunardon's body was cremated in the Steyr crematorium.

Honor and commemoration

After the end of the Second World War, Hugo Lunardon was posthumously promoted to Gendarmerie Rittmeister and on September 30, 1977 was awarded the Honorary Badge for Services to the Liberation of Austria by the Federal President . In his hometown Dornbirn a memorial stone reminds of him and in the Vorarlberg state capital Bregenz a path next to today's state police headquarters Hugo-Lunardon-Weg was named.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Meinrad Pichler : A conscientious vigilante , Vorarlberger Nachrichten of April 7, 2018, p. D5.
personal data
SURNAME Lunardon, Hugo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lunardon, Hugo Albano (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian gendarmerie officer
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Hard
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1940
Place of death Mauthausen concentration camp