Karl Moravek

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Karl Moravek (born January 5, 1911 in Fiume ; † 1943 ) was an Austrian graduate engineer and racial researcher who worked for the Racial Hygiene Research Center . Moravek was already active in national and German national organizations during his school days and joined the NSDAP, which is illegal in Austria , in 1933 and the SS in 1938 .

Parental home, school time and studies

Karl Moravek was born on January 5, 1911 in Fiume, the son of a post clerk and lieutenant colonel in the reserve. His father Karl Moravek was killed in the Second Balkan War in 1913 . His mother, Giesela Moravek, who came from Vienna , moved to Vienna with her son, where Karl attended elementary school and then a secondary school. After 1926 he became active in the German Middle School Association and the Pennäler fraternity of the Ostmark , as well as being a supporter of the Tannenberg Association for a time .

From the extreme right later went "German middle school students covenant" Nazi students Bund in Austria forth. In Germany, the NS student union was the forerunner of the Hitler Youth . The Austrian Pennäler fraternity is also politically similar. The Tannenbergbund is one of the forerunner organizations of the Volkischer Bund for German God Knowledge .

In 1929 Moravek graduated from secondary school successfully. His wish to study anthropology and prehistory could not be fulfilled due to the veto of his wealthy grandfather; instead he studied surveying at the Vienna University of Technology . In 1933, immediately after the ban, he joined the NSDAP, now illegal in Austria (membership number 6.287.037). He completed his studies with a diploma in 1934 and got by with auxiliary work and secondary jobs.

He met Hertha Bail, his future fiancée and staunch National Socialist, in 1934. She later also became an "invaluable aid" (Moravek) in his racial work. Bail was nine years older than him.

Moravek began his self-financed studies in anthropology, psychology and prehistory at the University of Vienna in 1935. In 1937, the German Research Foundation (DFG) funded his project “population-political and racial recording of a state district in Austria”, presumably this was preliminary work for his later dissertation . For economic reasons he had to interrupt his studies; he became a permanent freelancer for the German shortwave transmitter in Berlin .

Moravek also continued his studies in Berlin. In March 1938 he announced in April 1938 that he would take his doctoral examination in Berlin 1939, but he returned to Vienna in the summer of 1938. On March 30, 1938, he joined the SS. The exit from the Catholic Church followed. Resignation from the church when membership in the SS was made was emphatically demanded. The responsible for marriage permits for members of the SS Race and Settlement Office of the SS his marriage request was received of August 1939, his fiancee gave as religion " believe in God " to.

At the end of June 1939 he registered for a doctoral examination in anthropology and prehistory in Vienna and submitted the dissertation “On the racial studies of the Burgenland gypsies”.

The doctoral thesis: "On the racial studies of the Burgenland gypsies"

Location of Oberwart

The 1939 dissertation on the racial studies of the Burgenland Gypsies comprises 90 pages of text as well as an appendix with tables and 19 plates. It is a partial evaluation of his survey carried out in summer 1937 and autumn and winter 1938 in the southern Burgenland town of Oberwart ( Gau Styria ). Moravek collected anthropometric data from around 2000 people from the “indigenous population” and compared them with data from 460 Roma . In the majority of the Roma examined, he believes that he can determine a strong intermingling with other races, about 10% of the examined would show strong "Nordic characteristics". From his investigation and the racial mixture he claimed, he concluded:

“From a racial hygiene point of view, we have to regret very much that the conditions described above have occurred. Above all, it makes it difficult to deal with the gypsy problem. It is to be hoped that the gypsy laws currently being drafted will take these circumstances into account and take all necessary precautions to prevent any further intermingling with the gypsies. "

- Karl Moravek (1939)

The sponsors of the dissertation refer to a network of racial hygienists that extended to regional supporters and functionaries of the initially illegal NSDAP. In addition to the DFG mentioned above, the German School Association - Südmark , which belongs to the Association for Germanness Abroad (VDA) , the Burgenland Governorate, the Reichsnährstand Südmark, NSDAP politicians: for example the initially illegal NSDAP Gaulish propaganda leader Hans Goger and the district leader of the NSDAP from Oberwart Eduard Nicka the dissertation. Hans Goger was a personal friend of the initially illegal NSDAP Gauleiter of southern Burgenland Tobias Portschy , who from the late 1930s became the central figure in the National Socialist "gypsy persecution" in Burgenland. In August 1938, shortly after the annexation of Austria, the nunmalige put Governor Portschy a "memorandum" with the title The Gypsy question before, in the "Gypsy policy" illegal NSDAP describes and racial political base a "solution of the Gypsy question" demands. The supporters of Moravek's work also included the teaching staff in the study area who sympathized with the illegal NSDAP.

The reviewers of the dissertation also show the involvement of the study in the ideological environment of the NSDAP. The reviewers were the lecturer Eberhardt Geyer (first review ) and the professor Josef Weninger (second reviewer ) Geyer played an important role in the introduction of Nazi racial hygiene at the University of Vienna. Both experts stand for an extremely politicized racial hygiene , Horst Seidler describes Weninger as a staunch National Socialist. Geyer evaluates as follows:

“The thesis presented as a dissertation 'a contribution to the racial studies of the Burgenland Gypsies' deals with a problem that is particularly important today, namely the question of the racial composition of the Gypsies. The material was collected by the author himself on his own initiative, according to his own plans and at great personal sacrifice. These circumstances alone are proof that the matter was really approached with scientific seriousness. The drafting of the work itself, which was carried out with remarkable care and accuracy, also confirms the author's attitude. Despite the brittleness of the material, which first and foremost had to be developed statistically, the author did not allow himself to be distracted from the actual aim of the work, to create a correct picture of the racial structure of the Burgenland gypsies, and proved that he was the prerequisite for approval completely fulfilled to the strict tests. "

- First report (1939)

The material resources in the form of measuring instruments were provided by the Anthropological Institute of the University of Vienna, the complete camera equipment by the German company Leitz .

Joachim S. Hohmann rates this doctoral thesis and the transfer of the data he has collected to the Racial Hygiene Research Center as complicit in the persecution and extermination of the Burgenland Roma .

Work for the Racial Hygiene Research Center (RHF), death

Forced camp in Halle, where Moravek was investigating. Photo of a flying working group of the RHF .

Moravek belonged to the "flying working groups" of the Racial Hygiene Research Center (RHF). Among other things, he was in charge of the collection of Roma in Leipzig and Halle an der Saale in 1940 .

According to the memories of Adolf Würth , an employee of the RHF, Moravek belonged not only to the SS, but also to the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD).

In the party documents on Moravek he is marked as dead in 1943, which also corresponds to the statements of his colleagues. Based on an iron cross used as a symbol, Hohmann suspects that Moravek died in a military operation. A date is not noted. Fiume, Moravek's place of death, belonged to German-occupied Italy and Croatia from September 1943 and became part of the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone . Because of the numerous Italian, Slovenian and Croatian partisans , strong military forces were stationed and the area was finally declared a "gang fighting area" in December 1943. The SS's special division Einsatz R was also active there.

Fonts

literature

  • Joachim S. Hohmann : Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology - "Gypsy research" under National Socialism and in West Germany under the sign of racism . P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1991. ISBN 3-631-43984-9 .
  • Benno Müller-Hill : Deadly Science. The singling out of Jews, Gypsies and the mentally ill 1933–1945. Reinbek near Hamburg 1984, dISBN 3-499-15349-1.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hohmann: Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology. "Gypsy Research" in National Socialism , Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 271.
  2. ↑ Hohmann 1991, p. 271 f.
  3. ^ Hans-Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich, Matthias Schwerendt: Racial hygiene as an educational ideology of the Third Reich: bio-bibliographical manual . Akademie Verlag, 2006 p. 262.
  4. ^ Ingo Haar , Michael Fahlbusch : German scholars and ethnic cleansing, 1919-1945 . Berghahn Books 2006, p. 41.
  5. ↑ www.museenkoeln.de
  6. ↑ The documentation archive of the Austrian resistance shows neo-Nazi tendencies in individual connections of the still existing Pennälerring. DÖW report from 2002 News from the far right - March 2002
  7. ↑ Joachim Stephan Hohmann: Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology / "Gypsy research" in National Socialism and in West Germany under the sign of racism, Volume 4 of Studies on Tsiganology and Folklore, Verlag P. Lang, 1991, page 272.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Hohmann: Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology. "Gypsy Research" in National Socialism , Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 272.
  9. ↑ Hohmann 1991, p. 272 ​​f.
  10. ↑ Hohmann 1991, p. 272.
  11. ↑ On the foreign propaganda of the German shortwave transmitter in 1936 see here: [1] Radio was transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Propaganda in 1933. Josef Wulf: Culture in the Third Reich. Vol. 1. Press and radio. Ullstein 1989, p. 300.
  12. ↑ a b c d e f g Hohmann: Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology. "Gypsy Research" in National Socialism , Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 273.
  13. ↑ Hohmann 1991, p. 274.
  14. ↑ Moravek found an entry in a list of the community that showed Roma in the community as early as 1645 (source) a result that does not fit well with the accusation of nomadization.
  15. ↑ after Hohmann 1991, p. 274.
  16. ↑ Hohmann 1991, p. 273. Length of the party function Personal Article Eduard Nicka
  17. ↑ Ursula Mindler: "Portschy is Burgenland, I am a Styrian". A Burgenlander as deputy Gauleiter of Styria. The work of Dr. Tobias Portschy in the Styrian region. (PDF; 5.4 MB) In: Blätter für Heimatkunde. Published by the historical association for Styria. 2006, issue 4, pp. 117-143 here p. 118
  18. ↑ Ursula Mindler: "Portschy is Burgenland, I am a Styrian". A Burgenlander as deputy Gauleiter of Styria. The work of Dr. Tobias Portschy in the Styrian region. (PDF; 5.4 MB) In: Blätter für Heimatkunde. Published by the historical association for Styria. 2006, issue 4, pp. 117-143 here p. 119.
  19. ↑ Tobias Portschy: Die Zigeunerfrage full text PDF Eisenstadt 1938. For the assessment and person Portschy in relation to Porajmos see for example Burgenland provincial government: The persecution of the Burgenland Roma or rombase: Criminal police and "racial" record of the "gypsies"
  20. ↑ Hohmann 1991, p. 274, Hohmann does not mention Geyer's first name. Peter Weingart, Jürgen Kroll and Kurt Bayertz: Race, Blood and Genes. Frankfurt a. M. 1992, p. 432 quotes the "Viennese anthropologist" Eberhardt Geyer in a different context.
  21. ^ Wolfgang Neugebauer : University of Vienna: Confession to Nazi racial hygiene. (PDF; 132 kB) In: Gedenkdienst 2001-1.
  22. ↑ Karl Pusman: The "Human Sciences" in Vienna Land (1870-1959): The Anthropological Society in Vienna and the anthropological disciplines in the focus of the History of Science, Science and repression policy . LIT Verlag Münster, 2008 - 326 pages Geyer sites Weninger records for Seidler p. 154.
  23. ↑ after Hohmann 1991, p. 274 f.
  24. ↑ Hohmann 1991, p. 275.
  25. ↑ Müller-Hill 1988, p. 156 f.
  26. ^ "On the official route ..." documents on the registration and deportation of the Leipzig Sinti and Roma under National Socialism. An exhibition by the educational institute Further Thinking in the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung eV in cooperation with the cultural office of the city of Leipzig.
  27. ↑ Müller-Hill 1988, p. 157.
  28. ↑ Hohmann 1991, p. 275. Müller-Hill 1988, p. 157: Statement by Adolf Würth "He fell."
  29. ↑ As literature cited here: Judith Hahn, Silvija Kavčič, Christoph Kopke, Gerhard Baader: Medicine in National Socialism and the system of the concentration camps. Contributions to an interdisciplinary symposium. Mabuse-Verlag, p. 147.
personal data
SURNAME Moravek, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION National Socialist racial theorist
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Fiume
DATE OF DEATH 1943