Johann Lang (executioner)

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Johann Lang (*?; † June 22, 1938 in Dachau concentration camp ) was an Austrian executioner from 1933 to 1938 .

Lang was originally a police officer, but left the executive service and became an insurance agent . When the Austrian federal government reintroduced the death penalty on November 11, 1933 , an executioner was needed again. Since no persons “with real experience” were alive from the time of the monarchy, this search turned out to be difficult. Johann Lang got the post because he had assisted his uncle Josef Lang several times in executions and thus had practical experience in dealing with the choking algae . A Fiaker driver and a market trader acted as Johann Lang's assistants during the executions between 1934 and 1938 .

St. Pölten main cemetery: Gravestone for Viktor Rauchberger and Johann Hois, executed after the events of February 12, 1934

The government of the corporate state under Engelbert Dollfuß and later Kurt Schuschnigg had over 40 people executed for various offenses. The death penalty had been imposed since November 1933 in the standard procedure , and in June 1934 it was reintroduced for due process. The arsonist Peter Strauss was the first convicted to be hanged on January 11, 1934 in Graz . From February 1934 to March 1938 , 141 death sentences were pronounced in Austria, 44 of which were carried out. After the events of February 12, 1934 , nine people were executed, including the Social Democrats Koloman Wallisch , Karl Münichreiter and Georg Weissel . In the summer of 1934, 13 people who had been sentenced to death by military courts in connection with the July Putsch - including the National Socialists Otto Planetta and Franz Holzweber - were also executed by Lang and his assistants. Two more executions took place after a railway attack on the Ostend-Wien-Express (D-Zug 117) . The other 19 executions, which were carried out in Austria up to 1938, took place after murder cases without political connection. In 1937 Lang and his assistants hanged the farmer Anton Einböck in Ried im Innkreis , who first killed his wife on his farm near Taiskirchen im Innkreis and then set fire to cover up the crime.

Because of his work for the government, Lang became a symbol of a hated system, especially for the National Socialists in Austria. Since the press released his state-guaranteed incognito shortly after he took office, he and his family lived in constant threat. The police had to guard his house around the clock.

When the National Socialists came to power as part of the “Anschluss” in Austria in March 1938 , Lang was arrested and taken to the Dachau concentration camp on one of the first transports, where he died that same year. Several other members of his family, including his son Hans († August 22, 1938 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp ), were sent to a concentration camp and did not survive the war.

literature

  • Harald Seyrl (ed.): The memories of the Austrian executioner. Extended, annotated and illustrated new edition of the memoirs of the kk executioner Josef Lang published in 1920. Edition Seyrl, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-901697-02-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Law Gazette No. 77/1934
  2. ^ Background_Die-Todesstrafe-in-Oesterreich Background: The death penalty in Austria , DiePresse.com , September 5, 2013, accessed on October 14, 2018.
  3. ↑ NN, Heavy atonement for a terrible deed. The murderer of the husband, Einsteins, executed , in: Rieder Volkszeitung (57th vol., No. 41), October 14, 1937, p. 10.
personal data
SURNAME Lang, Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian executioner
DATE OF BIRTH 19th century or 20th century
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1938
Place of death Dachau concentration camp