Josef Gerö

Josef Gerö , Hungarian József Gerő (born September 23, 1896 in Maria Theresiopel , Austria-Hungary , † December 28, 1954 in Vienna ) was an Austrian lawyer and politician. He also served as President of the ÖFB and Vice President of UEFA .

Life

Josef Gerö came from a family of Hungarian origin, but moved to Vienna at an early age, where he completed elementary school and grammar school and studied law at the University of Vienna . During the First World War he was an artillery officer. After receiving his doctorate in 1921, he entered the court service and in 1926 was appointed judge at the Baden District Court near Vienna . In the same year Josef Gerö became a public prosecutor in Wiener Neustadt . In 1934 he was appointed to the Ministry of Justice in Vienna in the “Penal and Mercy Department of a Political Nature”, where he was responsible for personnel matters and the prosecution of political crimes. This department was presumably a subordinate department of Department 4 (criminal and mercy matters), of which Gerö was head from 1937 to 1938. At the same time he worked as the first public prosecutor from 1936.

Registration card of Josef Gerö as a prisoner in the National Socialist concentration camp Dachau

Although independent , he was arrested by the Gestapo after the annexation of Austria by the German Reich on March 12, 1938 because of his professional activity and his status as a " half-Jew " within the meaning of the Nuremberg Laws and on April 1, 1938 (with the so-called transport of celebrities ) Deported to the Dachau concentration camp , later transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp . After 16 months in prison, Gerö was released and settled in Zagreb , Yugoslavia, and became an authorized officer in a textile company. In 1941 he was arrested again by the Gestapo, but later released without guilt and brought back to Vienna in 1944, where he became export manager at a silk factory.

After the end of the war, at the suggestion of the SPÖ , he was Austrian Minister of Justice until 1949 and 1952-1954 (see Federal Government Figl I to Figl III and Raab I ). In the meantime, Gerö was President of the Higher Regional Court in Vienna. Since he had been a victim of the Nazi regime, the SPÖ overlooked the fact that he had worked as a prosecutor in the persecution of revolutionary socialists and February fighters from 1934 to 1938.

Gerö was an enthusiastic soccer player even as a schoolboy in Vienna and together with his friends founded FC Libertas Vienna , which in its history made it into the top Austrian league. The right-wing attorney soon took over the office of secretary and later that of president in his club. In 1927 Gerö finally became president of the Vienna Football Association and held this position until his arrest by the National Socialists. In 1945 Gerö became the first president of the revived ÖFB and held this office until his death. He was also appointed the first Vice President of UEFA on June 22, 1954. He was also President of the ÖOC from 1946 to 1954 .

Gerö was the father of Heinz Gerö , who also became president of the ÖFB. He was the grandfather of Thomas Blimlinger , the first district head of the Greens in Vienna's 7th district , of Eva Blimlinger , rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and Marianne Afifi, librarian in Los Angeles.

Honors

Gerö was honorary president of the Vienna Football Association. His greatest honor, however, was the trophy, which is awarded as part of the European National Football Team Cup and which was named Dr. Gerö Memorial Cup in 1954 . In 1973 the Gerögasse in Vienna- Liesing (23rd district) was named after him.

Web links

• Entry on Josef Gerö in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Justice Minister Dr. Gerö died . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 29, 1954, p. 1 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
• Wolfgang Weisgram: Grandfather Josef and Uncle Heinz , in: Daily newspaper Der Standard , Vienna, 24./25./26. December 2014, p. 12, and the newspaper's website
• Josef Gerö on the website of the Austrian Parliament

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Wolfgang Stadler: “… juristically I cannot be grasped”: the proceedings of the Vienna People's Court against judges and prosecutors 1945-1955 , LIT Verlag Münster, 2007, ISBN 3-7000-0512-1 , p. 117
2. ^ Street names in Vienna since 1860 as "Political Places of Remembrance" (PDF; 4.4 MB), p. 244f, final research project report, Vienna, July 2013
3. ↑ Maderthaner, Pfoser, Horak (ed.), Die Eleganz des Runde Leders, Göttingen 2008, p. 163
4. ↑ Josef Gerö , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 10/1955 of February 28, 1955, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
5. ↑ Marianne Afifi ( Memento of the original from September 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the Oviatt Library website; accessed on May 9, 2017