Jacob Kastelic

Jacob Kastelic (born on January 4, 1897 in Vienna ; died on August 2, 1944 there ) was an Austrian resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

The son of a master baker attended the kk state grammar school in Fichtnergasse in Vienna- Hietzing from the school year 1908/09 . As a student in need, he was exempt from school fees from the first grade due to his excellent grades, and from the fourth grade he received an annual scholarship from the Lower Austrian Lieutenancy. In October 1915, as a result of the events of the First World War , he was able to complete a high school diploma, which he passed with distinction. On August 11, 1915, he was drafted and promoted to lieutenant in the reserve. During the war, he was grazed by gunshot in July 1916 and wounded through the lung in October 1916.

After disarmament, he enrolled at the Vienna Faculty of Law and received his doctorate on December 22, 1924. In 1934, he took up a position at the Austrian Labor Service, which he helped set up. In 1935 the Austrian Labor Service became the Federal Ministry for Social Administration. In 1937 he married a hairdresser's daughter from Vienna-Hietzing, and the marriage resulted in two sons (Norbert, Gerhard).

Kastelic's political commitment began in Catholic youth organizations such as the Fathers Kalasantin . Since 1924 he was a member of the Christian Social Party and ran for the municipal council and in 1930 also on the occasion of the last National Council elections of the First Republic . Since it was founded by the Tyrolean teacher Hans Bator (based on the idea of Kurt Schuschnigg ), Kastelic has belonged to the Ostmärkische Sturmscharen . It was a paramilitary association that was later converted into a "cultural organization". In 1933/34 Kastelic was the Viennese leader of the Ostmärkische Sturmscharen , until 1938 head of the organization's social and economic association. He also worked on the Christian social Lueger young front.

After Austria was annexed to the Third Reich in March 1938, the Austrian Labor Service was dissolved and from then on Kastelic worked as a trainee lawyer in the office of the lawyer Karl Schreiner.

In the same year Kastelic founded the Greater Austrian Freedom Movement and sought contact with other resistance movements in Austria. The group proceeded theoretically and hardly acted. In the summer of 1940, the group was betrayed by the castle actor Otto Hartmann and Kastelic was arrested on July 23, 1940. In December 1940 he was admitted to the Vienna Regional Court , transferred to the prison in Anrath in the summer of 1941 , then transferred to the Hamborn prison and transferred again to Anrath in January 1943. In November of the same year Kastelic, who suffered from health problems as a result of malnutrition, was to be brought to the trial in Vienna, but the relocation dragged on for several weeks because the rails and transport network had been affected by the war.

Together with some of his fellow campaigners, he was sentenced to death on March 1, 1944 in a people's court trial for high treason . Five retrial requests and his mother's pardon were denied. The sentence was carried out by guillotine on August 2, 1944 . Eduard Köck , pastor at the Vienna Regional Court, wrote about Jacob Kastelic: "Exemplarily pious, completely devoted to God's will, [he] died composed and devoted to God like a saint."

After the end of the war in 1945, Kastelic's body was found in Vienna's anatomy and buried on October 27, 1945 in the Vienna- Penzing cemetery. During the National Socialist dictatorship, the bodies of hundreds of executed resistance fighters were given to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Vienna .

Memorials

• Own memorial plaque in the parish church on Alserstraße in Vienna
• Name of a house in the 14th district (Jenullgasse 21) after Kastelic
• Own memorial plaque in the Kalasantinerkollegium in Reinlgasse in Vienna
• Naming of the Kastelicweg in Vienna- Donaustadt (2016)

literature

• Austrian Biographical Lexicon
• Radomír V. Luža : The Resistance in Austria 1938-1945. 1983, ISBN 3-215-05477-9
• Stephan Kastelic: From the Austrian storm troops to the Austrian freedom movement (a representation based on the life of Dr. Jakob Kastelic. A contribution to Austria's statehood). Univ., Dipl.-Arb., Vienna 1993
• Brigitte Bailer , Wolfgang Maderthaner , Kurt Scholz (eds.): "The execution proceeded without any special features". Executions in Vienna, 1938-1945 . Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2013, p. 72-73 ( online [PDF]).

Web links

• http://www.alt-hietzinger.at/archiv/lösungen/jakobkastelic.shtml