Johann Graber

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Johann "Hans" Graber (born February 21, 1918 in Munderfing ; died February 18, 1944 in Munich-Stadelheim ) was an Austrian soldier and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime .

Life

Johann Graber was the only child of the Catholic couple Therese and Johann Graber. His parents separated and the marriage was divorced in 1935. He lived with his mother, a laundress, in the Parsch district of Salzburg and attended a business school. During the dictatorship of the corporate state from 1933, he initially worked as a typist in the state management of the youth organization Jung-Vaterland , a sub-organization of the paramilitary home guard . He eventually became District Secretary of the Austrian Young People in the Fatherland Front , a unity party that was founded in 1933 on the fascist model and dissolved by the Nazi regime in March 1938.

In December 1938, at the age of 20, he volunteered for service in the German Wehrmacht . After the mobilization in August 1939 he worked as a typist in the Mountain News Substitute Department No. 18 of the Deputy General Command of the XVIII. Army corps stationed in Salzburg. On January 1, 1940, he was promoted to private. Oberleutnant Otto Horst , born in the Leibnitz district in 1886, worked in the same department . This was politically contrary socialized; Until it was banned in February 1934, he was a member of the Social Democratic Labor Party and leader of its military association, the Republican Protection Association . How far the two exchanged is unknown.

On August 27, 1940, Johann Graber was arrested by the Gestapo in his office, and on September 4, 1940, Otto Horst as well. The detention stations of Private Graber are known, but not that of First Lieutenant Horst. Johann Graber was initially imprisoned in the Salzburg police prison, then transferred to Berlin-Moabit, later to Amberg in Bavaria and from there back to Salzburg. He was accused of membership in the now banned Heimwehr. He wrote and distributed anti-National Socialist pamphlets and even started an illegal organization called the “home front”. The clandestine activity was interpreted as “preparation for high treason”. In 1943 the trial against him, against Otto Horst and against the railroad worker Nikolaus Schwarz , born in 1898 in the Landeck district, took place before the People's Court . Horst was accused of having tolerated Graber's activity. Schwarz had written an appeal to French prisoners of war to armed resistance. The tribunal was headed by Hermann Granzow and passed death sentences in all three cases. On February 18, 1944, the judicial murders of Johann Graber and Otto Horst were carried out. Graber, who left a suicide note for his mother, was executed by guillotine.

Commemoration

In 1965, the city of Salzburg named a small street after him in the Aigen district, Hans-Graber-Straße. It is almost 250 meters long and leads from Ziegelstadelstraße to Lenzgartenweg. On July 14, 2015, two stumbling blocks were laid in front of the house in Paris-Lodron-Strasse 9 , one for him and one for Lieutenant Otto Horst , who was executed with him in Munich.

In 2018, the resistance against the personal committee "Soldiers say no to Jägerstätter's beatification", whose exponent Hubert Keyl was to be appointed constitutional judge of the Republic of Austria, led to considerations in the city and state of Salzburg as to whether and in what form a sign could be set. At the suggestion of Sebastian Huber , the second President of the State Parliament, it was decided to erect a memorial for a member of the German Wehrmacht from Austria, who was also a resistance fighter and a victim of the Nazi regime. The choice fell on Johann Graber.

"Hans Graber and other resistance fighters were not traitors, but absolute opponents of the Nazi regime and Austrian patriots," Sebastian Huber explains his initiative. It should show that people from the Wehrmacht, a soldier environment, “stood up to the Nazis”.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gert Kerschbaumer (text) and Hanno Bayr (research), both from the Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg personal committee : JOHANN GRABER & OTTO HORST , accessed on October 3, 2018
  2. ↑ a b Thomas Neuhold: Salzburg commemorates a resistance fighter from the Wehrmacht , Der Standard (Vienna), October 2, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Graber, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Graber, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian soldier and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime who was executed
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Munderfing
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1944
Place of death Munich-Stadelheim