Josef Schmirl

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Josef Schmirl (born December 9, 1897 in Steyrling , † March 14, 1938 in Linz ) was an Austrian police officer and detective at the Linz Police Department. He was the first Austrian to be murdered by the SS after the annexation of Austria .

Life and work

Josef Schmirl became a cutler like his father. After serving in the imperial army, he was accepted into the federal gendarmerie in January 1919 and completed his gendarmerie course in Ried im Innkreis . From 1919 to 1925 he worked as a gendarme in Schärding , where he met Annemarie Kranebitter, the daughter of his superior at the time, and married on September 5, 1921. The couple's only child, Anneliese, was born in Linz in September 1928. In 1928 Schmirl was appointed to the Linz Police Department , where he had to prosecute National Socialist crimes as Chief Criminal Inspector and Head of Personal Protection. As a staunch Austrian, Schmirl made himself hated by them because of his persecution of the National Socialists .

assassination

Immediately after the " Anschluss of Austria " to the German Reich , Schmirl was arrested by Gestapo and SA men in his apartment on March 13, 1938 at 10 p.m. , transferred to the Linz police prison and shot shortly afterwards. Schmirl officially committed suicide by hanging. However, his father-in-law Adolf Kranebitter registered the entry and exit wounds on the head of his son-in-law on the body laid out at the Barbara cemetery in Linz .

Shortly after Schmirl, his police colleague Ludwig Bernegger , the director of the Linz Police Department, Viktor Bentz and the Rieder honorary citizen and namesake of the Rieder barracks, General Wilhelm Zehner, were murdered.

In his documentary novel “Bitter” (2014) about the war criminal Friedrich Kranebitter , the Austrian writer Ludwig Laher traced the last days of Josef Schmirl, Kranebitter's brother-in-law.

In 1977 Schmirl was posthumously awarded the badge of honor for services to the liberation of Austria . The on Linz Barbara Cemetery grave Schmirls located was in the Memorial in 2018 as honorary grave dedicated to the province of Upper Austria.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hannes Koch: God protect Austria , in: Gottfried Gansinger (ed.) Past, Present, Future. The history of National Socialism in Ried im Innkreis as reflected in contemporary historical activities (2002-2013) . Self-published, Ried im Innkreis 2014, pp. 23–26.
  2. ^ Siegwald Ganglmair : Resistance and persecution in Linz during the Nazi era , pp. 1407–1466; in: National Socialism in Linz , Archive of the City of Linz, 2001. ISBN 3-900388-81-4 .
  3. ↑ Ludwig Laher: Bitter. Roman , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1387-3 .
  4. ↑ Thanks to resistance fighters. In: The New Reminder Call . Volume 30, No. 6 June 1977 (online at ANNO ).
  5. ^ Herbert Schorn, Markus Staudinger: 80 years after the Nazi murder: honor grave for Josef Schmirl. In: nachrichten.at . March 30, 2018, accessed March 30, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Schmirl, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian police officer and detective at the Linz Police Department
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Steyrling
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1938
Place of death Linz