Josef Vonbun

Josef Albert Vonbun (born April 11, 1902 in Levis , Vorarlberg , † February 11, 1984 in Singen am Hohentwiel ) was an Austro-German specialist in psychiatry and neurology and a member of the National Socialist Medical Association .

Life

Vonbun was the son of a customs officer. He studied medicine at the University of Innsbruck and received his doctorate there in 1926. Until 1928 he was an assistant at the Institute for Forensic Medicine and then until 1931 assistant at the mental hospital. In August 1931 he became a secondary doctor in the Lower Austrian "Landesirrenanstalt" Mauer-Öhling , where he stayed until the end of 1935. He then opened a practice in Feldkirch as a specialist in neurology and psychiatry. Probably in the course of 1937 Vonbun became a member of the NSDAP , which was illegal in Austria at the time, and became a "storm doctor" of the SA . He was also a member of the NSDÄB and other National Socialist organizations. In his personal questionnaire, completed on June 11, 1938, Vonbun had also stated that he had been the NSDAP's shop steward in Mauer-Öhling from 1933 to 1935.

Participation in euthanasia

On December 1, 1938 Vonbun was appointed director of the united institutions of Valduna by the Nazi rulers. In the former Poor Clare Monastery of Valduna near Rankweil , a "charity" was originally founded in 1862 to "alleviate physical and mental misery". In 1870, the "Landesirrenanstalt Valduna" was also set up in the same location because the political separation from Tyrol had meant that mentally ill people from Vorarlberg were no longer admitted to Hall in Tyrol . After the Anschluss , the “Charitable Foundation” was dissolved on July 25, 1938 and merged with the “Landesirrenanstalt”. It was renamed “State Sanatorium and Nursing Home Valduna”. Between 1968 and 1990 the old buildings were demolished and replaced by new ones. In 1993 the name "Valduna Regional Nerve Hospital" was changed to " Rankweil Regional Hospital" .

Under Vonbun's leadership, grievances in the hospital became evident: On December 29, 1939, Vonbun had to report the nurse Johann Dietrich, a former SA man from Rankweil hired in February of the same year , to the governorate and to the Feldkirch public prosecutor's office. Dietrich is said to have mistreated patients several times and in December 1939 scalded a patient in such a way that he died a few days later. Two other patients mistreated by Dietrich died by March 1940. Dietrich had previously said several times that he would make sure that there was space again in the institution. The investigations of the public prosecutor ended without a judgment because of the death of Johann Dietrich. In the first months of 1941, shortly before the start of the deportations, two nurses forced patients of the institution to have sexual contacts. The nurses were sentenced on June 16, 1943 by the Feldkirch Regional Court to two years or four months in prison. Almost everyone involved alleged that Vonbun had not followed up on the reports of the staff and patients about these incidents at the time and that he had trivialized them, and that he did not have any consequences.

In 1940 the selection of patients began in Valduna too, in order to bring them to the Nazi killing center in Hartheim via Niedernhart . For this purpose, the euthanasia doctors Georg Renno and Rudolf Lonauer traveled to the institutions in Hall, Valduna and other smaller institutions and compiled selection lists for the removal of the patients based on the registration forms received. Besides Renno, Hans Czermak also took part in the selections in Valduna . Vonbun, like Renno, never denied that he was privy to the details of the “ destruction of life unworthy of life ”. As a protective claim, however, Vonbun declared in later trials that it had been severely threatened. Renno, on the other hand, described Vonbun as a cooperative director who had even offered to carry out the "euthanasia" in Switzerland after its planned conquest . In addition, Vonbun has offered his further participation in the T4 campaign several times .

On February 10, 1941, 57 male and 75 female patients were deported from Valduna to Hartheim and gassed there. A second deportation of 38 men and 50 women to Hartheim on March 17, 1941 sparked resentment among the population and even a written protest from Feldkirch's medical officer Johann Müller. Yet another 22 men and ten women were deported to Niedernhart on August 31, 1942. A total of 592 people were evacuated from Valduna. 220 people were brought directly to Hartheim, 42 more via Hall in Tirol. Of the total of 227 women and men deported to Hall, a further 68 perished there as a result of targeted starvation. 145 patients who were Swiss citizens were put at the border in Oberriet so that they could be picked up there by their relatives or by welfare officers.

Vonbun also made selections independently, to which he was not even entitled within the National Socialist system. He checked the poor houses in Egg , Langenegg , Lingenau , Hittisau , Andelsbuch and Schwarzenberg as well as the inmates of the care homes in Alberschwende , Bildstein , Höchst , Oberlochau and put them on selection lists (this was called the "Reichsstraßensammlung" by his staff). It didn't seem to matter that the poorhouse inmates he had selected were often by no means mentally ill, but only physically disabled or simply lagged behind. In individual cases he took these people with him to Valduna so that they could be taken to Hartheim.

The irony of fate was that Vonbun's wife gave birth to a brain-damaged girl in April 1941 after a healthy girl. Vonbun himself diagnosed his daughter with an "inherited brain disease and congenital inferiority". The psychiatrist and father then had little Waltraud brought to Munich, where her Luminal was injected - a drug that causes pneumonia. As with many others, a “natural death” was recorded for the child. In 1945 he even wanted to have his wife gassed.

"Processing" after 1945

As early as March 1, 1946, the medical officer of the Feldkirch district made the Vorarlberg governor aware of Vonbun's role in the briefing of allegedly mentally ill, feeble-minded or disabled inmates from supply houses to Valduna and in their subsequent deportation. Vonbun could not be prosecuted because he had accepted German citizenship. There were also no investigations into the many other parties involved in the health and social bureaucracy of the National Socialists. Investigations against Josef Vonbun were only initiated in Constance in 1961 . All Austrian files were brought to Konstanz in the course of mutual legal assistance proceedings. Those involved in the mass murder - public doctors, nurses, mayors and home managers - put Vonbun under heavy strain. There were also plenty of indications of the involvement of others, but were ignored by the court responsible only for Vonbun. The proceedings were finally discontinued in 1966 and Vonbun was practically rehabilitated.

The name Dr. Vonbun reappeared in the press on February 22, 2010, when a trial began in Dornbirn against a gang of forgers of wills that allegedly should have come from the Nazi era. Vonbun is named here as the companion of a disabled man who, according to a forged will, wanted to give his last will in court.

literature

Gernot Kiermayr-Egger: Exclude - capture -. Destroy. Arms and “Irre” in Vorarlberg (PDF; 163 kB) Studies on the history and society of Vorarlberg, Volume 7. Bregenz 1990, pp. 190–230.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Birth book of the Roman Catholic. Parish Altenstadt Sig. 418/2, Folio 72.
2. ↑ Gernot Kiermayr-Egger: The "State Sanatorium and Care Institution Valduna" under the direction of Dr. Josef Vonbun
3. ↑ Gernot Kiermayr: Valduna - flashlights on the history of the “madmen” in Vorarlberg. ( RTF ) 2002
4. ↑ tenhumbergreinhard.de
5. ↑ Walter Kohl: "I don't feel guilty" - Georg Renno, euthanasia doctor. Paul Zsolnay, Vienna 2000, p. 143.
6. ↑ vol.at  ( 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.  
7. ^ ^{A b} Gerold Riedmann , Jörg Stadler, Klaus Hämmerle: Court clerks as a gang of forgers . In: Salzburger Nachrichten , February 22, 2010