Karl Gufler

Karl Gufler (* 1919 in Passeier , † 1947 in Italy ) was a South Tyrolean farmer who became a resistance fighter against National Socialism . After the war he lived on as a bandit and died in 1947 in a firefight with Italian carabinieri .

Life

Karl Gufler came from a poor background and in the economically difficult 1930s hired himself as a guardian boy and servant. After the agreement between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini on 21 October 1939, he chose the option to German Reich to settle and soon after became a soldier in the Wehrmacht .

After three years at the front, where he received several awards, he increasingly became an enemy of the war and deserted in 1943. He returned to the Passeier Valley and lived there as a partisan hidden in the mountains. After Mussolini was overthrown , the Germans occupied northern Italy and Gufler was recognized and captured by local National Socialists. He was initially sentenced to death, but then pardoned for use in a German penal company . However, this came very close to a death sentence, as these penal companies were often used as cannon fodder . Nevertheless, he managed to desert again in Hungary and return to his homeland. More deserters soon gathered around him there. Karl Gufler became the leader of a partisan group. As a result, he found the person primarily responsible for his previous arrest and took revenge on him.

At the end of the war, Gufler officially worked for the advancing Americans for a short time. However, when normality returned and South Tyrol remained a part of Italy, Karl Gufler did not want to return to civilian life. He continued to stay in the woods as an armed partisan while his former opponents regained office and dignity. Now he was no longer seen as a resistance fighter, but as a bandit. To get himself some food, he got by with theft.

In 1947 there was an exchange of fire with Italian Carabinieri, in which Karl Gufler was fatally wounded. At the time he was 27 years old.

Historical assessment

The life story of Karl Gufler was only researched in more detail a few years ago by the Bolzano historian Carlo Romeo on the basis of trial files and contemporary witness statements and published in a historical novel ( Sulle tracce di Karl Gufler il bandito , 1993). This work, written in Italian, was translated into German by Martha Verdorfer and Dominikus Andergassen, supplemented by a historical appendix by Leopold Steurer ( Escape without a way out. In the footsteps of the bandit Karl Gufler , 2005)

Despite the different circumstances, his biography has, at least until the end of the war, some parallels to the Austrian resistance fighter Sepp Plieseis , who led a partisan group of deserted Wehrmacht soldiers in the mountains of the Salzkammergut.

literature

• Carlo Romeo: Sulle tracce di Karl Gufler il bandito ; (romanzo storico), Bolzano: Ed. Raetia, 1993. 119 pp. ISBN 88-7283-043-5
• Carlo Romeo: Escape with no way out - on the trail of the bandit Karl Gufler ; historical novel, from the Ital. trans. by Martha Verdorfer and Dominikus Andergassen, with a historical appendix by Leopold Steurer, Bozen: Ed. Raetia, 2005. 180 pp., ISBN 88-7283-245-4

Web links

• Carlo Romeo, Escape without a way out , review by Anton Unterkircher of the German-language edition.
• Edition Raetia: Carlo Romeo - Flight without exit , Book Description vom Verlag