Kurt Seipel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kurt Seipel (right) on his return from Soviet custody on June 20, 1955 with Federal Chancellor Julius Raab (left), Wiener Neustadt

Kurt Seipel (born April 11, 1927 in Vienna ; † December 4, 2004 there ) was an Austrian surveying technician who, as a teenager and young adult, was illegally imprisoned by the Soviet Union for almost nine years (1946–1955) , including almost eight years in Siberia . served.

Life

Abduction, sentencing and imprisonment in the Soviet Union

Kurt Seipel was a student at the Federal Surveying Institute in Mödling when he was arrested by the Soviet occupying power in Austria on November 22, 1946 after a denunciation by a young KPÖ party member under false accusations . On June 14, 1947, he was sentenced in a "distance judgment" (without trial ) under Articles 58.4 and 58.6 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to 15 years ' imprisonment in Siberia for allegedly supporting and rebuilding the international bourgeoisie and espionage . The information about the imposition of this judgment reached Seipel on July 16, 1947 in an informal communication.

Initially, his ordeal largely coincided with that of the Austrian Trotskyist politician and resistance fighter Karl Fischer . Both were initially in a prison of the Soviet occupying forces in Baden near Vienna , then in a prison in Sopron and between August 26 and October 8, 1947 in the same forty-four-day rail transport in freight wagons to Lemberg , the Bay of Wanino and Magadan . On arrival in Magadan, Seipel was in such poor physical condition that Karl Fischer and another friend had to drag him. By doing this, you saved his life.

The next few years were a series of hard work in various Siberian " corrective labor camps ", solitary confinement and hospital stays. Seipel worked in the Kolyma area in the gold and uranium mines of Dalstroi , as a wagon driver and paramedic, in a bakery, as an improvised tailor, in a demolition squad and - in the icy winter - digging water. His parents have since been informed that he died of tuberculosis in 1947. In 1951, now 24 years old and covered with open wounds, he looked so bad that the Russians called him " little father" ( Russian Батюшка / Batjuschka ). Despite multiple requests to the Soviet authorities, he was not allowed to conduct any correspondence until the spring of 1955. The Austrian Herbert Killian , who was also deported to Kolyma from 1947 to 1953 and who knew Kurt Seipel personally, describes "that a maximum of 20 Austrians, ie one percent of the Austrians deported by the Soviets, were imprisoned in the Kolyma camps," he added a visit to Magadan in 2002 by a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences was reported. He had known 13 of them personally. The length of stay in Kolyma varied for each individual and ranged from a few months to many years.

In January 1952 Seipels sentence was commuted to prison, he was transferred to the "Politisolator Alexandrowsk" near Irkutsk , where he was imprisoned like Karl Fischer and other Austrians until 1955.

Repatriation to Austria

In May 1955 the Austrian prisoners received their "amnesty letters" in connection with the conclusion of the Austrian State Treaty . Then it went back to Austria in stages.

It was not a given that Kurt Seipel survived years of hunger, cold and terror. The best day of his life, according to his own account, was June 20, 1955, when he and 183 other transport participants were able to return to home and was personally welcomed by Chancellor Julius Raab at the train station in Wiener Neustadt .

Since 1955

Seipel was so marked by the years of suffering during the time of his abduction that it was very difficult for him to gain a foothold again in the life of "normal" society. It was not until many years after his return to Austria that he began to work on his autobiography under the pseudonym "Konrad Neumann-Langer" for fear of possible new persecution . The work he completed in 1990 despite many personal difficulties was published in 1997 under his real name as a 430-page book with the title My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at 19 . In the foreword to this, the specialty of Seipel's work is acknowledged with the following words:

"Kurt Seipel's text is a rare exception among the published autobiographies insofar as its author belongs to the rather“ speechless ”survivors of the GULag, namely to those who obviously got into the terror machine as completely apolitical and therefore also into the terrorist machine after their release their homeland found practically no social recognition and support in formulating their memories. "

- Gerhard Botz : Foreword to Kurt Seipel's book My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia

rehabilitation

Kurt Seipel, dedication of the book My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia for the son of Karl Fischer, May 1997

Kurt Seipel obtained his own rehabilitation through the Russian Federation in 1996 . In connection with his efforts in this regard, he also got to know the son of his former companion in suffering, Karl Fischer, who, according to his own account, had saved his life several times during this time (see picture of the dedication of the book My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. At 19 in the GULAG kidnapped by Kurt Seipel in May 1997, right). Together with him, he visited Karl Fischer's grave in Ilz , Styria, at his own express request in 2000 in gratitude and in personal memory of his friend who died in Vienna in 1963 .

Kurt Seipel died on December 4, 2004 in Vienna. His grave is in the Hietzing cemetery (Gr. 34, No. 24E).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Search for the deceased in the grave database of the Vienna cemeteries . Queryed on July 6, 2015.
  2. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz , Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum , Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 39, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  3. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 63, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  4. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 44ff, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  5. ↑ Criminal offenses under Article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code , accessed on March 19, 2014.
  6. ↑ Excerpt from the Criminal Code of the Russian Federal Socialist Soviet Republic of 1927 , accessed on March 19, 2014.
  7. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 391, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  8. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 69, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  9. ↑ Gerhard Botz: The machinery of the Stalinist terror . Foreword to: Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at 19 , publisher: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, pp. 18 and 21, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  10. ^ Fritz Keller : In the Gulag from East and West. Karl Fischer. Worker and revolutionary. ISP-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, pp. 103ff., ISBN 3-88332-046-3 .
  11. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 50ff, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  12. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 65ff, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  13. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, pp. 72–83, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  14. ↑ a b c d e f Written information from May 31, 1993 by Georg Scheuer , who is known to the first author and who was in contact with Kurt Seipel for a long time.
  15. ↑ See dedication of the book My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. At 19 in the GULAG for the son of Karl Fischer by Kurt Seipel in May 1997.
  16. ↑ Herbert Killian : Robbed Years. An Austrian kidnapped in the GULAG. Amalthea Signum Verlag , 2nd edition, Vienna 2005, pp. 310f., ISBN 3-85002-920-4 .
  17. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, pp. 332 and 413, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  18. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 421, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  19. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 354, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  20. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 365, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  21. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, pp. 25f., ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  22. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, publisher: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, 430 pages, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  23. ↑ Gerhard Botz: The machinery of the Stalinist terror . Foreword to: Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , publisher: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, p. 18, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
  24. ↑ Kurt Seipel: My youth stayed in the ice of Siberia. Deported to the GULAG at the age of 19 , foreword: Gerhard Botz, Ed .: Österreichisches Literaturforum, Krems an der Donau 1997, pp. 91 and 377, ISBN 3-900959-79-X .
personal data
SURNAME Seipel, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian surveyor and victim of Stalinism
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 2004
Place of death Vienna