Kathe Odwody

Käthe Odwody born Katharina Wanek (born March 6, 1901 in Hulken , Moravia ; died September 23, 1943 in Vienna ) was an Austrian laborer , works councilor and resistance fighter against the Dollfuss dictatorship and the Nazi regime . Your code name within the Siegl group was Walli . She was sentenced to death by the Nazi judiciary and executed with the guillotine on September 23, 1943 together with two other resistance fighters in the Vienna Regional Court .

Life

The farm workers Franz and Maria Wanek lived in the South Moravian town of Hluk and had six children, Käthe was the youngest of the six. In 1905 the family came to Vienna, where Käthe completed six classes at the elementary school in Vienna-Favoriten and then worked in various companies as an unskilled worker. In 1921 she married the locksmith's assistant Franz Odwody (born October 18, 1895), who emigrated to the United States in 1922 but returned in 1924.

In 1923 she became a union member, from 1924 she worked in the Ankerbrot factory in Favoriten. She quickly won the trust of the workforce and was elected works council member. The workers at the anchor bread factory have always been highly organized in trade unions and have been the scene of labor disputes several times since it was founded in 1891. In 1918 a work force of around a thousand men was formed to protect the factory, one of the strongest organizations in Vienna at the time. During the February uprisings in 1934, this was a base for both the Republican Protection Association and the Social Democratic Party . The Ankerbrot workers responded to the unions' call to strike, and there was an armed conflict with the Dollfuss regime. The anchor bread worker and Schutzbundler Alexander Scheck was shot and the resistance broken.

After the February fighting , Käthe Odwody was arrested and remained in custody from February 17 to May 11, 1934. She was charged with "insurrection and high treason" and is said to have equipped the machine gun belts of the February fighters with cartridges in the coachman's canteen of the anchor bread factory. Although she was acquitted, at the same time she was denied the right to compensation because the "suspicion of participating in the riot had not been refuted". The arrest also made her lose her job. She remained unemployed until 1938.

In 1938, after Austria was annexed to the German Reich , the Ankerbrot works owned by the Jewish family were expropriated by the National Socialists under the title Aryanization . When taxes were raised to the level of the Reich German, but wages were frozen, strikes took place in the factory. These were violently ended by the Gestapo Vienna . Odwody is now working in the company again, joined the Communist Party of Austria , collected membership fees and secretly distributed the party magazine, Die Rote Fahne . In the autumn of 1940 she was elected to the KP district leadership of Vienna-Favoriten and participated in the so-called "Siegl Group". The group name referred to the code name of the resistance fighter and district leader of Favoriten, Rudolf Fischer .

On April 29, 1941, Fischer and his wife Maria Fischer , Odwody and their husband were arrested and interrogated by the Vienna Gestapo . Franz Odwody was suspected of complicity, but was released on May 17, 1941. Käthe Odwody was charged with "preparation for high treason " and finally sentenced to death on November 9, 1942 by the People's Court . The guillotine was executed on September 23, 1943.

“The death sentence was carried out on convicts Karl Tomasek , Anna Muzik and Katharina Odwody on September 23, 1943 from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. The enforcements went smoothly and each took a few seconds. "

- Enforcement protocol : September 24, 1943

Käthe Odwody was buried in the shaft graves of group 40 (row 25 / grave 122) of the Vienna Central Cemetery , together with Anna Muzik, who was executed on the same day. Rudolf Fischer had already been executed on January 28, 1943, he is in row 35, grave 195. Marie Fischer was beheaded on March 30, 1943, she was buried - separately from her husband - in row 29, grave 157.

Commemoration

Two memorial plaques and a street named after her remember Käthe Odwody:

• As early as 1946 , a memorial plaque in honor of Odwody and the following other resistance fighters against Austrofascism and the Nazi regime was unveiled at her former workplace, the Ankerbrot factory in Absberggasse 35:
  • Alexander Scheck (member of the Schutzbund , shot dead on February 13, 1934)
  • Franz Misek (executed September 19, 1944)
  • Ludwig Führer (executed December 5, 1944)

• Her name can also be found on the memorial plaque in the former execution room of the Vienna Regional Court .

• In 2004, the municipal council committee for culture decided to name a new street in Vienna-Favoriten after her, the Käthe-Odwody-Gasse in the settlement and residential area Monte Laa . It leads from Laaer-Berg-Straße to the kindergarten area of ​​the Monte Laa campus and runs parallel to Urselbrunnengasse and Rudolf-Friemel-Gasse , the latter named after the resistance fighter Rudolf Friemel, who was murdered in Auschwitz .

Sources and literature

• Peter Autengruber : Lexicon of Viennese street names. Meaning, origin, background information, previous designation (s). Vienna Pichler-Verlag, 9th edition 2014
• Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna . Vienna: Verlag Kremayr & Scheriau 1992–2004
• Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance : no longer anonymous , with three photos from the identification files of the Gestapo Vienna, accessed on July 5, 2015
• Willi Weinert: "You can put me out, but not the fire" . Guide through the grove of honor of Group 40 at the Vienna Central Cemetery for the executed resistance fighters. Vienna: Verlag Alfred-Klahr-Gesellschaft 2005

Individual evidence

1. ^ Postwar Justice , accessed July 5, 2015
2. ^ Käthe-Odwody-Gasse in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
3. ^ Monte Laa - history , keyword Katharina (Käthe) Odwody, created on May 6, 2010