kk women's penal institution Wiener Neudorf

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East wing of the institution during the renovation in 2010, you can still see the old structure. Assisted living from 2011.

The kk women penal institution Wiener Neudorf in Lower Austria was founded in 1853 as the first prison run by nuns in Austria .

History and goals

Up to 1903 the history of the kk women penal institution Wiener Neudorf is described in detail, for the time thereafter, however, hardly any material can be found. The facility aimed at the social rehabilitation of the prisoners, and a quasi-monastic way of life became the framework for bringing about a conversion in the Christian sense.

monarchy

Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn first suggested placing female convicts under the supervision of nuns. She found support for her plan from the Empress widow Karoline Auguste , the police director Theodor Weiß von Starkenfels, the governor of Lower Austria Joseph Wilhelm von Eminger and the general practitioner Hofrat Doktor Anton Schmidt Ritter von Tavera.

On August 1, 1853, Emperor Franz Joseph I approved the Congregation of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Austria by the highest resolution . This was chosen to run the women's penal institution.

The former prince-archbishop's summer palace in Wiener Neudorf, south of Vienna, was acquired as a monastery and prison at the same time and the nuns moved into it on October 4th, 1853.

From an asylum for neglected girls, 16 girls came to the monastery as penitents or volunteers. These penitent women wanted to stay in the monastery after completing their sentence. Good guidance was a prerequisite for staying in the monastery. The first female prisoners came to Wiener Neudorf from the Vienna prison on January 5, 1854. Governor Eminger visited the institution the next day.

In the course of its history, the Wiener Neudorf women's penal institution had prominent visitors:

Probably the most prominent inmate of this women's prison was Auguste Caroline Lammer . She was the first woman in Austria to set up a bank. After this bank went bankrupt, she was sentenced to a prison term, during which she died.

Governor Eminger then had so-called Zwänglings assigned. These inmates were people who were encouraged to do honest work under strict supervision, either after they had served their sentence or from the outset by order of the authorities. The duration of the stay could not be longer than three years. With good conduct, an early discharge could be ordered. Up to 300 prisoners were held in Wiener Neudorf - strictly separated from the other prisoners.

At the beginning of 1855, other objects formerly belonging to the castle were purchased. In 1856 the construction of the new penal institution began. Whether one actually dared to do something in his empire without the knowledge of the emperor or whether he was unofficially informed and consented to it by his brother, who had the prison church built (laying of the foundation stone June 13, 1854, solemn inauguration July 26, 1855), is not known. In any case, Franz Joseph I made a donation to the order from the state lottery.

When it became known to the general public that religious sisters were responsible for running a women's prison, heated discussions broke out. The liberal press criticized the Church's involvement in the penal system. The publisher and editor-in-chief of the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift , Leopold Wittelshöfer, wrote violent abusive articles against the prison in Wiener Neudorf. The public prosecutor's office even took action against him, as he incited against state institutions and sentenced him to a fine of 20 guilders and a month's arrest.

First republic

After the First World War , the nuns could not cope with the challenges of supervising the female prisoners. The prison management took over a prison director. The nuns engaged in other tasks for the institution and its residents.

Third Reich

After Austria was annexed to the Third Reich, the prison was abandoned and the prisoners were removed in groups. What happened to them afterwards is unknown. Youngsters were allowed to stay. From March 19, 1940, a police school moved in and, from 1942, a Wehrmacht hospital . On February 15, 1945, the facility was badly damaged by a bomb attack.

Second republic

West wing of the women's prison, which today houses a residential building and a police station

After the end of the war, three remaining buildings were restored and adapted for a higher school. In 1982 a gendarmerie post and an ambulance service moved in. In addition, a new residential building with around 100 apartments was built. In 2003 the south wing was revitalized and the Christoph Migazzi House was built as a foster home for culture and science; the market town archive is also housed there. In 2009–2011 the east wing was revitalized and a supervised residential building for senior citizens was built. The draft provides for 29 care apartments for the elderly, a social station with care support point, a lounge area with day care and short-term care, a café, hairdresser and foot care and a green inner courtyard with therapy garden.

Grounds for detention

The women detained were held in the institution for more than a year. By far the most common grounds for detention were property crimes , followed by offenses against physical security (especially child murder ). Moral offenses hardly played a role.

Employment and daily routine

Newly arrived convicts were first bathed and then housed in the reception cell for a maximum of eight days. During the first 24 hours the prison doctor had to examine the prisoner and within 48 hours a visit by the prison chaplain and a teacher was planned to get to know each other.

In addition to employing the prisoners through work, they received schooling. For this purpose, they were divided into two classes: The first class was divided into illiterate women and those prisoners who had “extremely poor knowledge” of the subjects taught at the elementary school. In the second grade there were women with insufficient knowledge of primary school subjects.

Weekday schedule

  • 5:00 a.m. (October - March 5:30 a.m.): wake up, get up, get dressed, clean clothes and shoes, call a name, distribute morning soup and water, start work
  • Mornings or afternoons: once or twice a day, a total of one hour of outdoor exercise in the designated courtyard
  • 12:00 noon: Lunch and delivery of a portion of bread and water in the dormitories. One hour break, half in the dormitories and half in the corridors or in the courtyard.
  • 1.30 p.m .: start of work
  • 6.30 p.m. (Saturdays 6.00 p.m.): closing time
  • 6.30 p.m. - 7.30 p.m .: three times a week religious instruction in the church by the priest, once a week in the work rooms a reading from books by a religious woman
  • 8:00 p.m .: After a half-hour break, name calling and counting in the dormitories, evening prayer and night's rest
Prison church of the women's penal institution.

Sundays and holidays

Convicts of Christian denomination were off work on Sundays and public holidays, Israelites and people of different faiths on their holidays.

  • 6:00 a.m .: wake up, get up, get dressed, clean clothes and shoes, call a name, distribute the morning soup and water
  • 8:00 a.m .: Service
  • 9:30 am: Lessons in charitable activities
  • 12:00 noon: Lunch and delivery of a portion of bread and water in the dormitories.
  • 2 p.m .: Blessings and sermons
  • 8:00 p.m .: Name calling and counting in the dormitories, evening prayer and night's rest

In their free time, the female prisoners had time to listen to readings by women religious or fellow prisoners, to read, to do schoolwork or to write letters.

Catering

The feeding of prisoners was precisely regulated in the monarchy. Per prisoner and day there was

Since the work in the women's penitentiary was described as not strenuous and could mostly be done sitting down, this food key, which refers to Julius Uffelmann , was sufficient according to the prison administration.

hygiene

The coexistence of many people in a confined space made it necessary for the religious women to be more responsible for hygiene .

  • The rooms were whitewashed with lime , this coating was renewed annually.
  • The floors were cleaned at least every 14 days.
  • There was a spittoon in each room with a disinfectant liquid.
  • The bed linen was changed every 14 days and the underwear every week.
  • Every convict was required to wash their face and hands in the morning and, if necessary, during the day.
  • A doctor visited the detention center every day.
  • Baths were administered once a month, alternating full baths and foot baths.

The hygiene measures were questionable by modern standards. In 1859 there was a typhus epidemic , which killed 20 women and in 1866 16 people were killed by cholera . Between 1853 and 1902, 846 out of 6,726 female convicts died in the Wiener Neudorf women's penal institution. The most common cause of death was pulmonary tuberculosis .

But Stefan Großmann also criticized the concept of cleanliness used by the Austrian authorities and the nuns who head the women's penal institution in 1905 in his book “Austrian Prisons”. Another point of criticism from him was the fact that even visitors with official permission to visit were only allowed to stay in prison for an hour. It was only allowed to receive or send a letter every four to six weeks, but only with harmless content. (Incidentally, the compulsions did not have this right.)

That in the prison church altar with the pulpit were separated and the measurement visitors by a massive grille, he found just as unsatisfactory as the fact that were showered the Arrestantinnen while working with praying, singing sacred songs and the reading of holy books to distract them from the bad things.

literature

  • Leopold Senfelder: The kk women penal institution in Wiener Neudorf 1853 - 1903 , Vienna, 1903, self-published by the prison management.
  • Stefan Grossmann: Austrian penal institutions , Wiener Verlag - Vienna and Leipzig, 1905.
  • Martin Gschwandtner: The power of money - The crisis republic and the story of Auguste Caroline Lammer and her small regional bank 1920 - 1937 , University of Salzburg, diploma thesis 2003.
  • Peter Csendes : The frescos of the monastery church in Wiener Neudorf , in: Unser Neudorf, Heft 5 (2015), pp. 4–17.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.wiener-neudorf.gv.at/system/web/status.aspx?menuonr=218535002& Bezirkonr=0&detailonr= 218004082  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.wiener-neudorf.gv.at  
  2. ↑ http://raumpunkt.at/portfolio_page/betreutes-wohnhaus-wiener-neudorf-ii-wohnen-im-klosterpark-fuer-die-wohnbaugenossenschaft-wng/ Project description with floor plan of the old monastery, as of August 28, 2010

Coordinates: 48 ° 5 ′ 3.1 ″  N , 16 ° 19 ′ 21 ″  E