Josef Kallbrunner

Josef Kallbrunner (born November 23, 1881 in Langenlois , † March 29, 1951 in Vienna ) was an Austrian historian and archivist . Even before the so-called “ annexation of Austria ” to the German Reich in 1938, he maintained relationships with National Socialist research institutions in his function as director of the Hofkammerarchiv , which he expanded in the following years. By doing the Hofkammerarchiv at the service of research on volkstumspolitischen questions and to make so-called " Jewish question presented," he supported the National Socialist policy , securing its archive a comparatively good material equipment.

Life

Study and archive service

Kallbrunner came from an old family of pharmacists and graduated from high school in Krems an der Donau . He studied history and its auxiliary sciences at the University of Vienna and graduated from the Institute for Austrian Historical Research from 1903 to 1906 , where he received his doctorate in 1906. He then joined the State Archives Service in the Ministries of the Interior and Justice. In 1926, in exchange for Gustav Bodenstein, he became chief archivist in the court chamber archives and in 1932 succeeded Franz Wilhelm as director of the court chamber archives.

In his research, Kallbrunner specialized in the so-called “settlement research” as well as the cultural and economic history of Vienna . In 1923 he took over the editing of the communications of the Association for the History of the City of Vienna . In 1934 he became a member of the German Academy in Munich and thus became the most important mediator between research institutions in National Socialist Germany and the Hofkammerarchiv. Kallbrunner became increasingly committed to the German Foreign Institute in Stuttgart (DAI), the Association for Germanness Abroad (VDA), the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and research projects in the vicinity of the SS .

Cooperation with the "Research Department Jewish Question"

From 1937 the Hofkammerarchiv worked together under Kallbrunner's direction with the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany , Department of Jewish Affairs. The collaboration started in November 1936 after the Reichsinstitut had announced a prize for a history of Austrian court Jews in the Frankfurter Zeitung . Kallbrunner asked about the conditions of participation. Thereupon the “Research Department Jewish Question” of the Reich Institute made a research request for documents on Jewish personalities, and in January 1937 its director Wilhelm Grau came to Vienna personally to ask Kallbrunner for support with materials for the period 1750 to 1815. Since the collaboration between an Austrian state archive and a National Socialist research center was explosive even after the July 1936 Agreement , the collaboration was veiled, although the first funds flowed from February 1937. Gra's most important contact person in the court archive was Franz Stanglica , who employed two illegal National Socialists, Walter Messing and Kurt Zeillinger, as a research assistant. From April 1938 to March 1941, employees of the Hofkammerarchiv created so-called “ Jewish registers ”, for example on the “ Strasbourg bank note forgery campaign ” (1799–1814), copies of which were also sent to the DAI. Further projects were postponed until after the war due to the tense personnel situation.

Archive commission and national political networking

In 1938, Kallbrunner entered into a new archive agreement with Czechoslovakia in order to get back the archival material handed over from Vienna on the basis of the agreements of May 18, 1920 and May 31, 1922. After the German occupation of the Czech territories and the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , from 1939 onwards he organized the work of the German Archives Commission in Prague on issues relating to the provision, excavation and disposal of the required collections.

By means of multiple networks, Kallbrunner mainly took care of national political work. The starting point was card indexes for the development of sources on the history of settlements in Southeast Europe in the Hofkammerarchiv, which had already been published in 1936 in a series of publications by the German Academy and which aroused interest at the Nazi research institutes. Kallbrunner maintained close personal relationships with historians of the ethnic German milieu such as Franz F. Beranek from the Institute for Local Research in Käsmark in Slovakia , and Emil Maenner , a high school professor in Weinheim . He maintained contacts with German ethnic groups in Southeastern Europe and regularly attended meetings of the DAI, which financed films and copies of files from the Hofkammerarchiv. For example, on behalf of the main office for clan studies of Germanness abroad and financed by the DAI, settlement cards were copied, copies of which were also sent to the Vienna Research Center and the DAI. Kallbrunner himself headed the Vienna branch of the DAI, was a member of the working committee of the Southeast German Research Association and sat on the advisory board of the research center “German Austrians all over the world” under the direction of Wilfried Krallert , which was founded by the Südmark Association together with the VDA and the DAI. First of all, all those who have emigrated from Austria since 1920 were to be recorded and then those who had emigrated before, based on the material from the Hofkammerarchiv. Tens of thousands of names were recorded in the resulting files, which were created by breaking up the files. Further contacts existed with the Mittelstelle Saarpfalz . Kallbrunner joined the NSDAP in 1944 (membership number 9,023,891).

Increasing weight in Kallbrunner's activity gained the support of what Kallbrunner called "the undertakings that had been set in motion in the Generalgouvernement to consolidate slipped nationality and to settle the Jewish question". Inquiries to the Hofkammerarchiv came from the Institute for German Ostarbeit in Krakow , “Jewish Research” section. 1944 lectured Kallbrunner invitation Lothar von Seltmanns of the People Mittelstelle in Krakow at the conference "German Research in Vorkarpathen- and Vistula space as a basis for practical Volkstumsarbeit" in connection with so-called " Umvolkungsproblemen stood" on the sources of the settlement history of Galicia . According to Herbert Hutterer, Kallbrunner's participation in this conference shows how deep insight into the criminal politics of the SS Kallbrunner was. At the same time, Kallbrunner managed to present his activities as important to the war effort.

By concentrating the projects of the Hofkammerarchiv on the German settlement in the southeast and northeast of the Kuk monarchy and promoting studies on the proportion of the Jewish population in the financial and economic life, which were important for National Socialist politics, Kallbrunner made one of the poorly equipped Hofkammerarchiv Help from Nazi research institutions, comparatively well financed institution. The Vienna archives were evaluated in order to obtain data for state propaganda and to develop concrete lines of argument for the National Socialist policy of conquest, expulsion and extermination.

Until the end of the war

From the end of 1943, Kallbrunner organized the relocation of the archives to protect against bombing attacks. In the last years of the war he was a lively lecturer. The topic of his lectures, which he gave to SA leaders in Magdeburg , on the Culture Day of the City of Passau and to SS Junkers in Bad Tölz , was primarily Prince Eugene . He also supported Max Zehenthofer , who was commissioned by the Propaganda Ministry to shoot a cultural film about Prince Eugene in 1944 .

After the end of the war

From April 27, 1945, Kallbrunner was temporarily employed in the court chamber archive and also entrusted with the management. With effect from February 6, 1946 he was removed from office and retired with a pension reduced by 10%. He was mainly accused of the text accompanying a map publication in which he had presented Austria as a "core German country" with a Swabian ruling dynasty in 1938 and in favor of the "Anschluss". The award of the Officer's Cross of the Austrian Order of Merit , which he had received in 1937, was considered in his favor . On August 31, 1947, he was denazified as a "minor burden" and finally retired.

Fonts

• and Oskar Oberwalder: Dürnstein ad Donau. F. Oesterreicher, Krems ad Donau 1910.
• (Ed.): Maria Theresa as ruler. From the German memoranda, letters and resolutions (1740–1756). Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1917 - Austrian Library 25
• (Ed.): Housing worries in old Vienna. Documents on the Viennese housing issue in the 17th and 18th centuries. Hartleben, Vienna 1926 - Austrian Library 15 / 2A
• On the reorganization of Austria under Maria Theresia, FW Graf Haugwitz and the reform of 1749. LW Seidel & Sohn, Vienna 1916?
• The time of the Derectorium in publicis et cameralibus. ; Files: Josef Kallbrunner. Holzhausen, Vienna 1925.
• and Melitta Winkler: The Austrian Central Administration. Holzhausen, Vienna 1925.
• German emigration to the southeast in modern times. sn, Sl 1930.
• Lazarus Henckel von Donnersmarck. W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1931.
• Hans Steinberger. A contribution to the history of the coal and steel industry in the age of Emperor Rudolf II. Kohlhammer, Berlin a. a. 1934.
• and Franz Wilhelm: Sources on German settlement history in Southeast Europe. Reinhardt, Munich 1932; Sources on German settlement history in Southeast Europe. With a statistical table and a map. Reinhardt, Munich 1936.
• The archive of the Austrian economy. Gistel & Cie., Vienna 1936.
• On the history of the Austrian administration under Maria Theresa. W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1936.
• The history of the economy in the Temescher Banat up to the end of the Seven Years' War. In: Southeast German Research. 1 (1936) 1936, pp. 46-60.
• and CT Müller and Walter Kühne: Polish confessions to German people and the German spirit. , Sl 1936.
• German development of the southeast. Since 1683 1st edition. Diederichs, Jena 1938.
• Austria's Path through German History, 799-1938. E. Hölzel, Vienna 1938.
• Philipp Melanchthon in the German southeast. In: All-German past: Festgabe for Heinrich Ritter von Srbik for his 60th birthday on November 10, 1938. 1938, pp. 75–82.
• Josef Kallbrunner, Mercy and Maria Theresia: The planning of the German settlement in the Banat under Mercy and Maria Theresia. In: German Archive for State and Folk Research. 7 (1943) 1943, pp. 453-458.
• and Irma Steinsch: New research on the settlement of the private manors of Swabian Turkey in Hungary in the 18th century [by] Irma Steinsch. In: German Archive for State and Folk Research. 7 (1943) 1943, pp. 153-155.
• Sources on the history of German settlement and German validity in Galicia since 1772 in the Vienna archives. Lecture. In: The castle: Vierteljahresschr. d. Institute for German Ostarbeit in Krakow. 4 (1943) 1943, pp. 197-204.
• The imperial Banat. Verl. Of the Südostdt. Kulturwerk, Munich 1958.
• and Clemens Biener : Empress Maria Theresa's Political Testament. Oldenbourg, Munich 1952.

literature

• Herbert Hutterer: Serving the “beautiful cause”. The Hofkammerarchiv and Nazi settlement research 1936–1945. In: Mitteilungen des Österreichisches Staatsarchiv 54 (2010), pp. 181–219. PDF

Web links

• Grave site at the Evangelical Cemetery in Simmering

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hutterer, Dienst , p. 182f.
2. ↑ Hutterer, Dienst , pp. 203f.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Hutterer, Dienst , p. 194
4. ↑ Hutterer, Dienst , p. 212.
5. ↑ Hutterer, Dienst , p. 200.
6. ^ Sylvia Schraut: Mapped national history. Historical atlases in international comparison 1860–1960. 1st edition. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 3-593-39427-8 , pp. 243-245, cited above. 245.
7. ↑ Hutterer, Dienst , p. 218.