Kurt Koppel

Kurt Koppel (born April 18, 1915 in Vienna ; † after 1945), also known under the pseudonym Konrad Hans Klaser and the code names Hans Glaser , Harry , Ossi or Peter , was an Austrian functionary of the Youth Association of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) and at the same V-man of the state police of austrofaschistischen Austria or agent of the secret state (Gestapo) of Nazi Germany .

In the first place, Koppel was responsible as agent provocateur for uncovering the communist Austrian resistance to National Socialism and for the arrest of Austrian communists. This included above all members of the resistance group around Erwin Puschmann (to which Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky also belonged), the Communist Youth of Austria (KJV) and the “Czech Section of the KPÖ”. Many of the victims were arrested, liquidated or served prison terms in concentration camps . According to research by the Austrian historian and publicist Hans Schafranek , Koppel and his lover Margarete Kahane (called Grete, code name “Sonja”; * 1917) were responsible for around 800 victims of the Gestapo.

During the Second World War , Koppel was the local head of the Gestapo in the fascist Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and helped Ustascha functionaries (e.g. Ante Ciliga ) to escape at the end of the war . Koppel managed to go underground after 1945.

Koppel was considered a " full Jew " in the sense of the National Socialist racial laws . Margarete Kahane was of Jewish faith .

Life

The single trade clerk Koppel joined the Communist Youth of Austria (KJV) at the end of the 1920s. As a member of this youth association of the KPÖ of the 10th district of Vienna , he took part in an international conference of the communist youth associations in the Netherlands in 1935 . After his return to the Austro-fascist Austrian corporate state , he was arrested by the state police in April 1936 for illegal communist activity.

The Austrian State Police officer Lambert Leutgeb , who had arrested and questioned him, finally recruited Koppel as a spy (" steward ") of the State Police. Koppel was used against the communist youth association. In 1936 or 1937, on behalf of the KPÖ, Koppel traveled via France to Spain “to take part in the fighting against Franco ” (in the XI. IB / 4. Baon ). For Leutgeb, Koppel was supposed to find out the names of the Austrian interbrigadists .

After the "Anschluss" of Austria in 1938, almost all officers of the Austrian State Police were taken over by the Gestapo control center in Vienna. Leutgeb, too, with his informers like Kurt Koppel, already known under the code name "Ossi" at the time. Leutgeb, now head of the Gestapo's news department, described Koppel as “about 172 cm tall, slim, dark, thick, wavy hair, wears strong glasses, has an eye problem. He has a Jewish appearance. He is a Jewish mixed race of the first degree. "

In 1938 Koppel and his lover Margarete Kahane were temporarily listed as journalists on the payroll of a weekly magazine in Vienna . According to Leutgeb, Margarete Kahane is said to have been his lover and mother of a child since Koppel's return from Spain to Vienna. "Koppel had used the Kahane, who was sexually belonging to him, unscrupulous [l] os for his purposes." Because of Koppel's assurances and because she “was expecting the child from Koppel”, she was released.

As a stateless person, Koppel applied for a passport at the German Consulate General in Paris in 1939 and submitted “a report on perceptions”.

From 1940 Koppel von Leutgeb was employed under the names Ossi, Kurz, Harry and Klaser as agent provocateur for the Gestapo in the " Alpengauen ". In the fall of 1940 he was assigned to a mission in Pressburg by the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) . From 1941/42 it was known in the then illegal communist organization that Koppel and Kahane were working as informants for the Gestapo. Therefore, in mid-1941, Koppel was transferred to the German embassy in Zagreb and controlled the connections and activities of the resistance to the Soviet Union, Turkey, Croatia and Austria for the Gestapo. In addition, Koppel was an employee of the newspaper "New Order" published by Europa Verlag in Zagreb and published two independent publications on it. Margarete Kahane “worked” in Sarajevo or Belgrade .

In 1944 Koppel worked for the RSHA, Department VI E in Vienna as an undercover agent. Leutgeb said of Koppel's whereabouts: "After the evacuation of Vienna, he left Vienna with the RSHA VI E [...] As I occasionally found out from the State Police in Vienna, they received the message that he had turned to Spain." In the spring of 1945, Koppel is said to have stayed in a camp with functionaries of the Croatian Ustasha organization on Lake Attersee . On April 18, 1945 he was able to visit Kahane and his two-year-old child in Alt-Aussee . He then went into hiding with his aunt Käthe Kohn in Budapest, Hungary , and then fled to Great Britain via Czechoslovakia , Germany and Belgium . Later he is said to have stayed in Palestine and Egypt . The proceedings against Koppel, which were opened in Austria in 1949, were discontinued in 1957.

Margarete Kahane was arrested by the Austrian state police (group of war criminals) in the spring of 1945. She is said to have committed suicide in the temporary prison at Herrengasse 13. According to other sources, she is said to have been extradited to Yugoslavia and executed.

Fonts

• Konrad H. Klaser: Spies, Bombs and Conspirators in Serbian Politics . Europa Verlag, Zagreb 1941 (translations into Hungarian in 1942 and Spanish in 1943).
• Konrad H. Klaser: Murderer of Peace: Agony of the Balkan Archy . Europa Verlag, Zagreb 1942.

literature

• Diana Carmen Albu: The working methods of the informers of the news department of the Vienna Gestapo control center using the example of three biographies . In: DAVID - Jewish culture magazine . No. 48 , April 2001 ( online ).
• Diana Albu, Franz Weisz: informers and informers of the Gestapo in Vienna from 1938 to 1945 . In: Viennese history sheets . 54th vol . 3 , 1999, p. 169-208 .
• Hans Schafranek: Resistance and Treason. Gestapo spike in the anti-fascist underground 1938-1945, Vienna (Czernin-Verlag) 2017, ISBN 978-3707606225
• Hans Schafranek, Julius Kornweitz, Leo Gabler: Foreign emissaries of the KPÖ in the sights of the Gestapo . In: Documentation archive of Austrian resistance (ed.), Yearbook 2011 . Vienna 2011, p. 185-208 .
• Alfred M. Posselt: The honorary arians: traitors or spared victims? : A study of contemporary history (150 examined individual cases) . Self-published, Vienna 1992, The Koppel case, p. 39 ff .
• Uprava državne bezbednosti (ed.): Nemačka obaveštajna služba u okupiranoj Jugoslaviji . Volume VI: Primeri rada nemačke obaveštajne službe. Beograd 1960, Agilni gospodin Klaser, p. 469–487 ( online [PDF] with a focus on Klaser's work in occupied Yugoslavia).

swell

• Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance, Austrians for Spain's freedom 1936–1939. Koppel, Kurt (short biography). Retrieved June 16, 2015 . 
• Thomas Mang: "He brought very good and nice news." - Leutgebs V-People of the Gestapo: The interrogation protocol, Belgrade 1947/48 . In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (ed.): Perpetrators: Austrian actors in National Socialism . Vienna 2014, p. 171 ff . ( Online [PDF]).
• Federal Association of Austrian Antifascists, Resistance Fighters and Victims of Fascism (Ed.): The new warning call: Journal for Freedom, Law and Democracy . September / October, No. 9-10 . Vienna 2010, p. 4th f . ( Online [PDF]).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Brigitte Bailer, Elisabeth Boeckl-Klamper, Wolfgang Neugebauer, Thomas Mang: The Gestapo as a central instrument of Nazi terror in Austria . Ed .: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance. S. 12 f . ( Online [PDF]).
2. ^ Hans Schafranek: Traitor and political tool. In: The Standard. February 10, 2009, accessed June 16, 2015 . 
3. ↑ Report of the Vienna Police Department of January 18, 1949, VG proceedings against K. Koppel, ibid. Quoted from Albu, 2001.