Joseph of Gadolla
Josef Ritter von Gadolla (born January 14, 1897 in Graz , † April 5, 1945 in Weimar ) was an Austrian- German lieutenant colonel . As the " combat commander " of Gotha in Thuringia , at the end of the Second World War he ensured that the city was saved from extensive destruction.
Life
youth
Josef Ritter von Gadolla was born in Graz as the son of a Styrian noble family. From 1904 to 1909 he attended the five-class elementary school in Graz .
Professional career in Austria
In the tradition of his officer family, he attended a military school in Styria and from 1913 graduated from the infantry cadet school in Graz . After being taken out of service on August 17, 1917, he was posted to the Italian front . As platoon commander he was promoted to lieutenant on May 1, 1918 . On August 1, 1919, von Gadolla joined the army of the newly founded Republic of Austria . As a captain, he served in 1933 in the Styrian Alpine Regiment No. 9. In 1936 he was promoted to major and moved to the new Austrian air force.
While still in Austria, Josef Ritter von Gadolla married the née Alma Sampl. The marriage was not considered befitting. In 1926 daughter Ingeborg was born, later married Smith, died in 1999 in Perth, Australia .
Career in the Third Reich
From 1938, after Austria was incorporated into National Socialist Germany, von Gadolla was taken on as a clerk in the Air Force . He then worked in the military district command in Marktredwitz . As a lieutenant colonel on June 1, 1943, he became the first military district officer and later commander of the Gotha military registration office , which was located in what is now the Kaufland shopping center . In January 1945 von Gadolla was appointed senior military officer and then "combat commander" Gotha.
His wife Alma and daughter Ingeborg moved with him to Marktredwitz and stayed there while he was in Gotha.
Refusal of order in Gotha
As the Wehrmacht senior and later combat commander in Gotha, Josef Ritter von Gadolla was obliged to comply with the military penal code on February 1, 1945, which stipulated that the combat commander responsible had to defend the position assigned to him until his death.
From February 1945 the command center of the combat commandant was housed in the basement of the east tower of Friedenstein Castle. A bombing in connection with the advance of the American troops would have meant the destruction of the castle.
When the American troops stood at the gates of the city of Gotha at the end of March / beginning of April 1945, von Gadolla was faced with the question of whether and how the city should be defended. Since there were not a significant number of soldiers and quantities of equipment in Gotha and the local Nazi giants had already left for Erfurt and Weimar , he decided not to obey the combat orders and to hand Gotha over to the Americans without a fight.
So Ritter von Gadolla sent the remains of the local Volkssturm home and gave the order to prepare for surrender to protect the civilian population . White flags were hoisted in public places such as Friedenstein Castle . In order to convey the surrender, von Gadolla drove towards the armored spearheads of the 3rd US Armored Division , but was intercepted by Wehrmacht soldiers in Boilstädt and transferred to the Mackensen barracks on Ettersberg in Weimar .
At dawn on April 4, 1945, the Americans stopped shelling the city after seeing the white flags on the palace and town hall. Even before an Allied bomber fleet flew over, American forces had occupied the Arnoldischule and the commercial school on Eisenacher Strasse, which were used as military hospitals. 400 wounded soldiers were declared prisoners of war in the buildings. Also in the early hours of the morning an American and a German NCO came to the town hall as an interpreter to clarify the conditions for handing over the city. Preparatory talks were held again in the Arnoldischule, which was already occupied, and an unconditional declaration of handover was formulated back in the town hall. The city was formally handed over to the Americans at around 9 a.m. Although Gadolla was unable to hand over the city himself, he, as the responsible commander, had deliberately acted against the Führer's order and with this decision saved the city from destruction and the inhabitants suffering from severe suffering. He paid for this courageous decision with his life. One day after Gotha's surrender, von Gadolla was sentenced to death on April 5, 1945 in the Mackensen barracks in Weimar for “abandoning the Gotha fixed place” and shot dead. His last words have been handed down: “So that Gotha can live, I have to die!” With the death sentence, Gadolla became a victim of the Nazi military justice . The grave of Josef von Gadolla was never found. The persons responsible for the death sentence could never be identified either. The judgment was overturned on December 30, 1997 by the Thuringian Higher Regional Court and he was thus rehabilitated. He was rehabilitated by the Republic of Austria on March 23, 1948.
Commemoration
By disregarding military orders, Josef Ritter von Gadolla saved the historic town center and the former ancestral seat of the Ernestines , the Friedenstein palace complex, from destruction. 30 years later, however, the western part of the old town was demolished and replaced by prefabricated buildings. In Gotha today a street named after him, a plaque at Schloss Friedenstein with his last words and a memorial in front of the New Town Hall in Gotha commemorate the savior of the city, who was given the title “Honored Citizen of the City” by the City Council on February 1, 1995 Gotha ”has been awarded. The military tradition has been maintained since March 2001 by the reconnaissance battalion 13 stationed in Gotha , whose ballroom in the Friedenstein barracks is named after von Gadolla.
On April 3, 2015 , a memorial stone with an information board was inaugurated in Boilstädt , a district of the city of Gotha; Gadolla's niece, Helma-Doris Leinich from Graz, was present at the inauguration.
Anant Kumar , City Clerk of Gotha, organized a competition for the Gotha Schools in 2015, in which a short essay “about the heirs of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , Doctor Martin Luther King and Josef Ritter von Gadolla” was to be written.
In 2000, in Graz's 17th district ( Puntigam ), the Gadollaweg was named after him. On April 5, 2013, a monument in his honor was unveiled in front of the Münzgrabenkirche in Graz .
In September 2014 the Graz municipal council decided to name the square opposite the town hall, in the center of the 6th district , “Gadollaplatz”. Niko Swatek applied for honorary citizenship for Gadolla in the Graz municipal council at the end of October 2019.
Josef von Gadolla was accepted as a witness in the 6th edition of the German Martyrology of the 20th Century in 2015 .
After the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior first approved the posthumous award of honorary citizenship in 2017, Gadolla was made an honorary citizen of Gotha in May 2018.
In 2020 MDR television produced a documentary about Gadolla "The Savior of Gotha - Knight of Gadolla". The German military historian Jürgen Möller was called in as a specialist advisor , who is researching in particular the American occupation in Central Germany in 1944/45.
Military awards (as of 1933)
- Wounded medal
- Karl-Troop Cross
- Bronze medal for bravery
- Military Merit Cross III. Class with the war decorations and swords
See also
literature
- Enrico Brissa: Josef Ritter von Gadolla. The Nazi injustice judgment against the “Savior of Gotha” . In: ZThG 65 (2011), p. 229 ff.
- Enrico Brissa and Matthias Priestoph: The right path to justice? In: Zeitschrift für Rechtssppolitik 1998, p. 91 ff. And Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1998, p. 915 f.
- Enrico Brissa: Knight of Gadolla gave his life to preserve the city of Gotha . In: Thüringische Landeszeitung from April 4, 2000.
- Enrico Brissa: Bundeswehr can rely on impeccable role models . In: Thüringische Landeszeitung from April 4, 2000.
- Enrico Brissa: The disobedient savior of Gotha . In: Information for the Troop 2001, No. 2, p. 52 ff.
- Enrico Brissa: Torn between obedience and humanity . In: Y. Magazin der Bundeswehr 2001, No. 5, pp. 97 ff.
- Enrico Brissa: A brave act against the logic of inhumanity . In: Thüringische Landeszeitung from April 2, 2005.
- Jörg Echternkamp (Ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War. The German war society 1939 to 1945. Politicization, annihilation, survival . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-421-06236-6
- Egon Ehrlich, Helga Raschke : Memories of Josef Ritter von Gadolla , Federal Ministry for National Defense, Vienna 2003.
- Detlef Igansiak: Ernst the Pious, Duke of Saxe-Gotha. Central German Miniatures, Volume 7 . Quartus-verlag, Bucha bei Jena 2001, ISBN 3-931505-89-8 .
- Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. The German Martyrology of the 20th Century , Paderborn a. a. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 199–203.
- Helga Raschke: Josef Ritter von Gadolla and the last days of the war in Gotha , Raschke Eigenverlag, Gotha 2007.
Individual evidence
- ^ Report and photos on page 6 of 4th Panzer Regiment, accessed on January 25, 2010.
- ^ Judges overturn NS judgment . Die Welt, January 21, 1998
- ↑ Honored Citizen of the City of Gotha ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2012 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.
- ↑ Wieland Fischer: Memorial stone for the Knight of Gadolla. Honor for rescuers of the city of Gotha , in: Thüringische Landeszeitung, local section Gotha, April 4, 2015.
- ↑ Kurd-Laßwitz scholarship holder Anant Kumar launches a writing competition for schools , ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. www.thueringen-reporter.de from August 27, 2015.
- ^ Robert Engele: "At that time in Graz" in Kleine Zeitung of January 8, 2012, p. 34.
- ↑ Blessing: Graz honors Josef Ritter von Gadolla Die Presse of April 7, 2013
- ↑ From the municipal council II: New Gadollaplatz as a peace signal ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Website of the City of Graz from September 18, 2014
- ↑ City hall internal: "Gadolla should become an honorary citizen", Kleine Zeitung, print, October 30, 2019, p. 35.
- ↑ Dead rescuer of the city of Gotha becomes an honorary citizen. In: mdr Thuringia. Retrieved April 4, 2020 .
- Jump up ↑ The Savior of Gotha - Knight of Gadolla. In: MDR television. Retrieved April 4, 2020 .
Web links
- YouTube video about Josef Ritter von Gadolla
- Gerd Fesser : Honor the Savior , Die Zeit, 37/1997
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gadolla, Josef von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gadolla, Josef Ritter von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austro-German officer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 14, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Graz |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 5, 1945 |
| Place of death | Weimar |