John Gudenus

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John Gudenus (2014)

John Gudenus (born November 23, 1940 in Vienna as Johann Baptist Carl Gudenus; † September 14, 2016 ibid) was an Austrian federal civil servant and colonel in the Austrian army as well as a politician . As elected representatives of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), he was a deputy in the National Council (1992-1995) and member of the Federal Council (1990-1992; 1996-2005), as last without fraction (November 2005). He was a convicted Holocaust denier.

Life

Gudenus comes from a family originally resident in Hesse, who was elevated to the status of Austrian count in 1907 by Emperor Franz Joseph . He was the son of Johann Baptist Gudenus (1908–1968) and Karin, geb. Giaever (1908-1980).

Professional career

As a student Gudenus belonged - as later his son Johann and the subsequent FPÖ- federal party leader Heinz-Christian Strache - the German national beating students connect Vienna pennale fraternity Vandalia on. After graduating from high school in 1961, Gudenus graduated from the military academy from 1962 to 1965. He completed his studies in social and economic sciences at the University of Vienna in 1972 with the academic degree of Magister. Until his retirement, Gudenus worked in the Federal Ministry for National Defense . As a colonel, most recently in the Army Material Office, he retired in 2002.

Political career

In 1973 John Gudenus became district councilor in the 1st district of Vienna Inner City , later district councilor in Vienna- Wieden (4th district), member of the district council in Albrechtsberg in Lower Austria and district party chairman of the FPÖ Wieden. From 1990 to 1992 he was a member of the Federal Council , until 1995 a member of the National Council .

After he insulted then Vice-Chancellor Erhard Busek ( ÖVP ) as a “coalition idiot” and “idiot” in parliament in 1994 and felt provoked by Busek in a debate, he said: “You should be slapped.”

From 1996 he was again a member of the Federal Council. After the split of the BZÖ under Jörg Haider from the FPÖ in March 2005, Gudenus joined the group around the new FPÖ party chairman Heinz-Christian Strache and remained with the FPÖ as a “blue guy”.

On April 14, 2005, Gudenus voted in the Federal Council for a new election proposal from the opposition ( SPÖ and Greens ), which he thus achieved - without constitutional consequences - acceptance. During the vote, Gudenus was physically hindered in pointing out the matter by the ÖVP Federal Councilor Michaela Gansterer and a colleague, who later became President of the Federal Council Sissy Roth-Halvax (ÖVP).

On November 27, 2005, after the Vienna state and municipal council elections, he lost his Federal Council mandate and ended his political activities.

From at least 2003 until 2006, together with Andreas Mölzer and Johann Josef Dengler, Gudenus was co-editor of the right-wing conservative - German nationally oriented and FP-related weekly newspaper Zur Zeit .

Relationship to National Socialism

During his membership, Gudenus belonged to the right, German national wing of the FPÖ (this is part of the so-called Third Camp in Austria). Among other things, he rejected the establishment of a memorial in the former Mauthausen concentration camp ; He described compensation payments to victims of National Socialism as “protection money” and abortion as “baby caust”. At the beginning of 1992 he supported a petition to the National Council to change the Prohibition Act.

At a panel discussion in 1995, in advance of the Wehrmacht exhibition in Vienna, Gudenus indirectly questioned the existence of gas chambers in the Third Reich :

"Gas chambers? I stay out of this! I believe everything that is dogmatically prescribed. "

He then had to resign as a member of the National Council.

In April 2006 Gudenus was sentenced to one year conditional imprisonment for violating the Prohibition Act . The jury found him guilty of having denied or "grossly played down" the National Socialist genocide of European Jews in two interviews . In July of the same year, the judgment became final .

About the neo-Nazi Gottfried Küssel , Gudenus said at a court hearing against the politician Ewald Stadler in April 2014: "Gottfried Küssel was a decent man who, unfortunately, was holed up."

Trial and conviction for re-employment

Similar to 1995 (see above), Gudenus made another statement on April 18, 2005 in the ORF broadcast Report on the subject of gas chambers in concentration camps . He said that one should "not set up taboos, but one should physically and scientifically test", as well as further:

"I believe that this topic should be seriously debated and not to a question you have to answer yes or no, but let's check it, I think I demand one, always another test."

On April 27th, Gudenus resigned from the FPÖ, according to his statement, in order to spare the party harm from the discussion about him. Federal Chancellor Schüssel (ÖVP) called on him on the same day, on the occasion of the celebrations for the Austrian anniversary of the Second Republic, to resign from the Federal Council mandate; Federal President Fischer (formerly SPÖ ) made a similar statement. The Vienna Public Prosecutor's Office started investigations, but closed them again with the approval of the Ministry of Justice. Gudenus responded with "It's nice that doubts are allowed" and continued:

“There were gas chambers, but not in the Third Reich . But in Poland . This is also what it says in school books. I never said that I question gas chambers in principle. "

These further statements again led to great outrage and prompted the Greens to report Gudenus. The public prosecutor's office in Vienna requested preliminary inquiries from the investigating judge on suspicion of re-engagement against Section 3g of the Prohibition Act . At the beginning of June 2005, the public prosecutor submitted an extradition request to the Vienna state parliament to lift Gudenus' political immunity . The request was granted on June 29, 2005, whereupon the public prosecutor brought indictments, which became final on April 7, 2006:

"The public prosecutor's office saw in the statements of Gudenus a clear violation of the Nazi Prohibition Act: Gudenus had deliberately negated the state of the art of history and denied the National Socialist genocide and Nazi crimes against humanity," the indictment said. "

- wien.ORF.at

On 26 April 2006, Gudenus therefore had before a Vienna jury answer that him at a sentencing range of one to ten years, due to a one-year prison sentence condemned: "The jury found him guilty in two interviews the Holocaust , denied ' or to have 'grossly played down'. ”The sentence imposed was exactly below the threshold above which his civil servant's pension would have been reduced.

In the process, Gudenus was responsible, among other things, with the distinction made that, in the opinion of his defender, the “Third Reich” only applies to the period from 1933 to the “ Anschluss of Austria ” in 1938:

“I'm not at all unsure about the gas chambers in the Greater German Reich. As far as the gas chambers in the Third Reich are concerned, I can still show a certain degree of uncertainty. "

During the trial, Gudenus was also asked about a statement he made after a visit to Mauthausen concentration camp, when he summed up the prisoners depicted in a photo that they “actually look quite good”, while he, Gudenus, looks worse:

“I went there with certain expectations. I believed that I would see the sick, the dead, the emaciated, the starving. But one of the pictures was a pretty good-looking group of women. "

The defense attorney spoke of a "wrong decision" and appealed and appealed to the Supreme Court . The prosecutor, who called the defense attorney's line of defense in the trial as "nonsense", called for a higher sentence and also appealed.

After the litigants had withdrawn their appeal, the first instance judgment gained its no appeals process on 18 July 2006 legal force .

As a plaintiff for defamation

In autumn 2008, John Gudenus brought a lawsuit against Armin Wolf and the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) at the Vienna Regional Court for defamation. The background was a ZIB-2 interview that Wolf had conducted with the controversial FPÖ member of the National Council, Martin Graf, on his political positions. Towards the end of the conversation, Wolf asked: "... What, in your opinion, happened in the Holocaust?" Graf replied evasively, whereupon Wolf asked:

"So you [Martin Graf] don't doubt, like your long-time party colleague John Gudenus, that millions of Jews were murdered in gas chambers in the German Reich?"

- Armin Wolf

In this Gudenus saw his honor offended. According to his complaint, Wolf would have “publicly accused him of having a 'contemptuous disposition' [...] because he would never have claimed anything like that”, which he in turn describes in August 2009 as “particularly curious” because:

“In April 2006 [two years before his lawsuit against Wolf], Mr. Gudenus was sentenced to one year of conditional imprisonment as a Holocaust denier precisely because of the quoted statement ('There were gas chambers, but not in the Third Reich' in a STANDARD interview) - specifically because of a violation of §3 [h] of the Prohibition Act. This conviction became final in August 2006. "

- Armin Wolf

At the trial at the regional court, Gudenus was represented by Adrian Hollaender , who in turn was warned by the judge to be careful "not to come close to the prohibition law". After the ZIB-2 interview had been shown in the negotiation room and the judge had quoted from the reassessment ruling from 2006, she acquitted Wolf:

"I would have proven the truth of my assertion beyond any doubt that Gudenus would have to put up with the quote, after all he was convicted for it."

- Armin Wolf

Gudenus then appealed against this first-instance judgment. The Higher Regional Court of Vienna dismissed the appeal in full and acquitted both Armin Wolf and the ORF. Gudenus was sentenced to pay all legal costs.

Private

Resting place of the Gudenus family at Vienna's central cemetery

Born as Johann Baptist Carl Gudenus, John Gudenus had been with Marie-Louise, b. Bilogan (born June 17, 1951), married. Marie-Louise is the daughter of Colonel Leopold Bilogan (1912–1996).

The marriage resulted in four sons:

  • Markus John (born August 3, 1974)
  • Johann Baptist Bjőrn, known as Johann Gudenus , former politician of the FPÖ (born July 20, 1976)
  • Jens Severin (born November 12, 1983)
  • Clemens Magnus (born September 27, 1990)

John Gudenus and his wife lived in Gußhausstrasse in Vienna- Wieden . In Albrechtsberg , the ancestral home of the former noble family, he ran a forestry and had another residence there.

For John Gudenus, who died in September 2016, there is a grave inscription on the tombstone of the family crypt of the Gudenus, formerly the Theodor Hardt family (great-grandfather of Gudenus), in the Vienna Central Cemetery (Gr. 30A, Row 2, No. 1). According to the information from the search for a grave in the Vienna cemeteries , he is not buried there, but his parents Johann Baptist and Karin Gudenus are.

Awards

literature

  • Felix Müller: The Prohibition Act in the Tension Relation to Freedom of Expression. A constitutional investigation. (= Legal series, Volume 215), Verlag Österreich, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7046-4685-7 (also dissertation at the University of Vienna , 2005, 238 pages).

Web links

Commons : John Gudenus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Gudenus 2, branch of the family of Gabriel Johann Georg Johann Baptist Virgil Anton, Baron von Gudenus in the version December 6, 2004. In: genealogy.euweb.cz. Miroslav Marek (Ed.), Accessed on August 20, 2019: “Johann Baptist Carl, Herr auf Els, * November 23, 1940; m.12.8.1972 Marie-Luise Bilogan (* 17.6.1951) ". All family members with this name up to the first ancestor in the family tree in 1795 carried and still carry the name Johann. His name version Johann Baptist Carl as his birth name is in the Central Registration Register (ZMR) as a historical [= because the person has died and the data can no longer be changed] entry of the official name John Gudenus (here without further first names); ZMR information from August 20, 2019.
  2. ^ John Gudenus on the website of the Austrian Parliament
  3. ^ Marion Kraske: Heinz-Christian Strache - Rise of a hate preacher. In: The time . May 27, 2011, accessed March 19, 2014 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Portrait: The "Count" as a Holocaust denier in the dock. In: derStandard.at / APA , November 15, 2006. Accessed October 6, 2015.
  5. ↑ a b c Cf. Prantner's friends: News from the far right. In: DÖW , October 2002. Retrieved on October 6, 2015: “One of the current editors, FPÖ Federal Councilor John Gudenus, was also interviewed. (At the time 40/2002) This confesses against all [sic!] Contrary assertions of the then FPÖ chairman Riess-Passer that there is a party with the FPÖ that supports a weekly newspaper like 'Zur Zeit'. (Ibid., P. 4) Probably with a view to the prohibition of National Socialist propaganda and the denial of Nazi crimes, Gudenus concludes about his paper: 'I find it gratifying that this newspaper creates space for free speech and free thought, as far as it can allow Austrian laws. ' (Ibid) "
  6. ↑ Re- engagement with the Nazis: One year conditionally for Gudenus. In: Wiener Zeitung , April 27, 2006. Retrieved October 22, 2015.
  7. ↑ Gudenus judgment is final. In: wien.ORF.at, August 2, 2006. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  8. ^ Process: FPÖ politicians burden Stadler. In: Vienna. ORF .at, April 30, 2014.
  9. ↑ a b c d Re-activation of the NS: One year conditionally for Gudenus. In: Wiener Zeitung , April 27, 2006. Retrieved October 22, 2015.
  10. ↑ § 3h Prohibition Act 1947 in the version of March 20, 1992: "According to § 3g , anyone who works in a printed work, on the radio or in another medium or who is otherwise public in a way that makes it accessible to many people is also punished National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity denies, grossly played down, approves or seeks to justify. "
  11. ^ Re-activation indictment against ex-Federal Councilor is final. In: derStandard.at / APA , April 10, 2006. Accessed October 6, 2015.
  12. ↑ a b c d e One year conditional: Gudenus convicted of re-employment. In: wien.ORF.at, April 26, 2006. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  13. ↑ Gudenus judgment is final. In: wien.ORF.at, August 2, 2006. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  14. ↑ a b c d e Armin Wolf : In court with John Gudenus. ( Memento of October 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: be24 / Börse Express, August 14, 2009, accessed on August 20, 2019.
  15. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.6 MB).
personal data
SURNAME Gudenus, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gudenus, John Baptist Carl (full name); Gudenus, Johann Baptist Carl (full name at birth)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian military member, politician (FPÖ), member of the National Council, member of the Federal Council
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 2016
Place of death Vienna