Karl Springenschmid

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Karl Springenschmid (born March 19, 1897 in Innsbruck , † March 5, 1981 in Salzburg , pseudonyms: Christian Kreuzhakler , Beatus Streitter ) was an Austrian teacher, poet and functionary in the times of National Socialism. As the National Socialist school supervisor, he was primarily responsible for the Salzburg book burning on April 30, 1938.

Life

Literary work

In addition to his work as a teacher in Salzburg, Karl Springenschmid worked as a writer since the 1920s. Many of his short stories and stories, such as Das Bauernkind (1925), dealt with rural life and the nature of Austrian mountain farmers.

Since the beginning of the thirties Springenschmid has paid homage to the blood-and-soil ideology in his stories , for example in the volume of stories The Front Above the Summits from 1935, in which “ Peasant pride, heroic sentiments and a down-to-earth love of home ” are explained.

In the mid-1930s, Springenschmid also worked as a ghostwriter for Luis Trenker . Together they wrote the novels Heroes of the Mountains (1936) and Shining Land (1937).

Furthermore, Karl Springenschmid dealt in numerous works with his Tyrolean homeland, especially South Tyrol . In addition, he wrote books for children and young people, historical novels, non-fiction books and biographies (including about Toni Sailer and Karl Heinrich Waggerl ). A total of around 190 titles have been published to date that were written by Springenschmid or contain contributions from him. Many of them are still available in bookshops today.

Behavior in National Socialism

On November 16, 1932, Karl Springenschmid joined the NSDAP , local group Aigen / Salzburg , and on October 1, 1932, he joined the illegal Nazi teachers' association . In 1935 he was therefore dismissed from school. Between March 1934 and January 1938 he was a member of the SA . From January 1, 1938, he was an SS member (SS no. 295.474). After the " Anschluss of Austria ", he was appointed Gauamtsleiter and honorary training manager in April 1938, and from February 1, 1941 government director or head of the department for education and cultural maintenance in the Reichsgau Salzburg. On January 30, 1943, he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer .

In the mid-1930s Springenschmid caused a sensation with the work The States as Living Beings , published in several editions . Geopolitical sketchbook (Leipzig, Verlag Ernst Wunderlich, 1st – 4th ed., 1933–1936). 64 pages contain 244 hand-drawn maps along with handwritten comments and legends, which graphically explain the geopolitical teachings of Karl Haushofer , Professor of Geography and Geopolitics at the University of Munich since 1919. Haushofer also wrote the foreword on the topic of “ living space ” for Germans for this work, which was evidently designed for school and popular educational purposes . In particular, the maps of Czechoslovakia, Poland and the so-called Intermediate Europe ("The European Schütterzone"; the cordon of states between the German Reich and the Soviet Union created after 1918) clearly show the close proximity to the National Socialists' expansive foreign policy and Central Europe.

As head of the Salzburg school system and the Nazi teachers' association, Springenschmid was primarily responsible for the book burning on Salzburg's Residenzplatz on April 30, 1938. In his speech, he spoke of the need to destroy all clerical and Jewish things. He had already called for a “ thorough cleaning ” of the libraries several times , since after the political “ seizure of power ”, “ cultural and spiritual areas must also be aligned in the sense of the movement of the Führer ”.

Title page of the "Lamprechtshausner Weihespiel"

Springenschmid was the author of the Nazi play "The Lamprechtshausner Weihespiel " to celebrate the so-called "Homecoming of the Ostmark ". The Thing game should in 1938 as a folk game, the annual performance of " Everyman " by Hugo von Hofmannsthal replaced on the Cathedral Square and was until the war started on a specially constructed "outdoor stage" near Lamprechtshausen north listed from Salzburg twice (1938 and 1939).

From 1938, the Reichsschrifttumsstelle at the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda published lists of suggestions for poetry readings every year. The lists served as a recommendation by the ministry as to which writers were to be brought “among the people” with lecture tours and poetry readings. Springenschmid was one of around 50 authors who were selected for this purpose from the ranks of around 800 members of the Reichsschrifttumskammer who came from Austria .

Springenschmid wrote contributions to the Confession Book of the Association of German Writers Austria (1938) and to Heinz Kindermann's anthology Heimkehr ins Reich (1939) as well as contributions to the anthology War and Poetry. Soldiers become poets - poets become soldiers. A People's Book (1940). In 1938 he wrote the book Austrian Stories under the pseudonym Christian Kreuzhakler . From the time of illegal struggle . In 1940 he published a true story from the life of our Führer .

After 1945

In 1946, Springenschmid's complete works were on the Austrian "List of Blocked Authors and Books" and with a total of 25 works, one of them under his pseudonym Christian Kreuzhakler and one as editor, on the East Berlin " Lists of Literature to be Separated " (1946, 1947, 1948, 1953) because they were part of the Nazi propaganda content .

Springenschmid was listed as a suspected war criminal on the state police investigation sheet of July 1, 1946. He escaped arrest by fleeing, hid in the Upper Austrian mountains until 1951, took the name Karl Bauer and obtained false papers.

After the cessation of judicial investigations in 1951 and the lifting of his professional ban by Federal President Theodor Körner in July 1953, Springenschmid was able to publish freely again. He continued to write ethnically minded books, such as his autobiographical novel Der Waldgänger ( Leopold Stocker Verlag , Graz, Stuttgart 1975). From 1956 he lived in Salzburg again.

That he was still closely associated with right-wing extremist ideas in his later years is proven by his membership in the German Cultural Work of the European Spirit and the award of the Offenhausen poet's shield in 1967 by the Dichterstein Offenhausen association , which was founded in 1963 by former National Socialists and banned on December 23, 1998 . Many of Springenschmid's books from the post-war period were published by the right-wing Leopold Stocker Verlag or by the Austrian Landsmannschaft , which the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance classifies as German national and right-wing extremist.

Springenschmid was no longer politically active after 1945.

Works (selection)

  • The Sepp (1931)
  • On the rope from Stabeler Much (1933)
  • Heroes in Tyrol (1934)
  • Tyrol is laughing (1935)
  • St. Egyd on boards (1935)
  • The Front Above the Peaks (1935)
  • Seed in the night. Farmer's fate in South Tyrol. With 9 pictures by Carl Rieder on panels, Rieder also designed the dust jacket and binding, 333 p. (1936)
  • Heroes of the Mountains , 1936 (with Luis Trenker and Walter Schmidkunz )
  • Shining Land , 1937 (with Luis Trenker)
  • Zs. Der Weltkampf , 1938, vol. 15: Austria in the world fight against supranational powers .
  • A Tyrolean does not go under (1940)
  • Farmers in the mountains . In words by Karl Springenschmid and in pictures by Peter Paul Atzwanger ( History of Photography ) (1888–1974). People's Association of Book Friends. Wegweiser-Verlag, Berlin (1941). With numerous illustrations. 150 pp.
  • Six against Napoleon (1942)
  • The love letter on the tundra (1944)
  • Novè (1951)
  • The Tschullererbuben (1952)
  • The golden medallion (1953)
  • It was an Edelweiss (1962) (together with Mathias Kräutler )
  • The Merano grape cure. Verlag Das Bergland-Buch, Salzburg Stuttgart 1962.
  • Seven Bars of Love (1963)
  • Seven Days of Sexten (1965)
  • The Men of Narvik (1968)
  • Who drives over the Brenner , Eckartschriften issue 38, Österreichische Landsmannschaft (1971)
  • Costabella (1973)
  • Christmas before the borders , Eckartschriften Heft 48, ÖLM (1973)
  • The Forest Walker (1975)
  • Another Tyrolean More (1977)
  • Janissaries? The children's tragedy in the Banat , Eckartschriften Heft 65, ÖLM (1978)
  • Hello Heiner! (1979)
  • Jörg. From the life of the South Tyrolean freedom fighter Georg Klotz (1980)
  • Ski is trumps (1980)
  • The Gaismair Saga (1980)
  • Out of Königsberg (1981)
  • Fate of South Tyrol (1982, 3rd edition)
  • Enjoy your work

His children's books included:

  • Seven Girls in the Snow (1978)

He wrote the screenplay for the documentary Gold aus Gletschern (1956) by Luis Trenker .

literature

  • Bruno Jahn: "Springenschmid, Karl". In: Killy Literature Lexicon . Volume 11: Si-Vi . Second, completely revised edition. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, 2011. pp. 146–147.
  • Wolfgang Laserer: Karl Springenschmid (biography). Weishaupt, Graz 1987, ISBN 3-900310-41-6 .
  • Andrea Reiterer: Karl Springenschmid: The forest walker. Justification prose in the Biedermeier style? In: Uwe Baur (Ed.) Makes literature war. Austrian Literature in National Socialism. Böhlau, Wien et al. 1998, ISBN 3-205-98451-X , pp. 307-319 ( conclusion 2).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Amann: The poets and politics. Essay on Austrian literature after 1918 . Edition Falter / Deuticke, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-85463-119-7 , p. 173.
  2. ↑ Leopold Steurer : The 'King of the Mountains' as the “chameleon politicon” of world history. Gerhard Köpf : Ezra and Luis or the first ascent of the Ulm Minster. A game. With essayistic climbing aids on Pound a. Trenker , ed. by Fabian Kametz u. Christina Karafiat. Innsbruck 1994, pp. 137-153; Gudrun Pilz: The storyteller. In: Köpf 1994, p. 167ff .; Martin Hanny: The storyteller. In: ff. 02/2007, pp. 38–41. ( online ( memento of August 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), PDF file; 356 kB)
  3. ↑ Susanna Hettegger, Hildemar Holl, Irmgard Lahner: Salzburg University Library “… against forgetting”. An exhibition on the burning of books in Salzburg on April 30, 1938. In: Mitteilungen der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare 61 (2008), p. 103.
  4. ^ SV and SZ, May 2, 1938. On the burning of books in Salzburg see also the article: The Salzburg Autodafé by Gerhard Langer in the Salzburger Nachrichten, supplement Uni-Nachrichten of June 2, 2007, p. 14.
  5. ↑ Rudolf Damolin: The reaction of the Austrian writers who remained in the country to the so-called “Anschluss” in spring 1938 as reflected in some daily newspapers, cultural journals and anthologies . Typescript. Salzburg 1982, pp. 23-27.
  6. ↑ Klaus Amann: The poets and politics. Essay on Austrian literature after 1918 . Edition Falter / Deuticke, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-85463-119-7 , pp. 120ff.
  7. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 581.
  8. ↑ Files of the Linz Public Prosecutor's Office
  9. ↑ See, for example, the DÖW's page on the Dichterstein Offenhausen association , which contains a link to a legal opinion on the dissolution of the association.
  10. ↑ Laserer, a grandson of Springenschmids, described his grandfather in this "euphemistic biography [...] as a victim". Not Springenschmid, but the area leader of the Hitler Youth from the Hohenwerfen Gau training center would have staged the book burning. Quotation and information from: Susanne Rolinek, Gerald Lehner and Christian Strasser: Travel guide through the brown topography of Salzburg. In the shadow of the Mozartkugel. Czernim Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-7076-0276-0 , p. 20
personal data
SURNAME Springenschmid, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kreuzhakler, Christian (pseudonym); Streitter, Beatus (pseudonym); Bauer, Karl (wrong name to disguise identity)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH innsbruck
DATE OF DEATH March 5th 1981
Place of death Salzburg