Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna

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AustriaAustria Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna
- LGS Vienna -p1
State level Federation
position ordinary court
head office Vienna , Landesgerichtsstrasse 11 / Wickenburggasse 22
president Friedrich Forsthuber
Website www.justiz.gv.at
Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna

The Regional Court of Vienna Criminal (in the media often Criminal Court , commonly known as Landl called) is one of 20 regional courts in Austria and also the largest ordinary court of Austria. It is located in the 8th district of Vienna , Josefstadt , at Landesgerichtsstrasse 11 / Wickenburggasse 22 (access to the negotiation rooms). It is both a court of first and second instance. A prison, the Vienna Josefstadt prison, is connected. The entire building complex is popularly known as the "Gray House".

Court organization

This building complex contains:

The regional court for criminal matters is responsible in the first instance for crimes and offenses that do not belong before the district court. Depending on the seriousness of the crime, a different type of procedure is used. Either decide

In the second instance, the regional court hears appeals and complaints against the judgments of the district courts. A three-judge senate decides here whether the judgment is overturned or not and, if necessary, sets a new sentence.

The current President Friedrich Forsthuber is supported by two Vice-Presidents - Henriette Braitenberg-Zennenberg and Christina Salzborn.

The following data were published in September 2012:

  • largest dish in Austria
  • 270 office days per year
  • 1500 people daily
  • 70 judges, 130 employees in the offices
  • 5306 proceedings (2011) with the detention and legal protection judges, that is approx. 40% of the total Austrian seizure
  • 7459 proceedings before main negotiating judges (30% of the total Austrian case)
  • Public prosecutor's office with 93 public prosecutors and 250 employees
  • 19,000 proceedings against 37,000 perpetrators (2011)
  • Josefstadt Prison with 1200 inmates (overcrowded)

story

Until 1839

Regional court on Landesgerichtsstrasse between November 1901 and 1906

The original building of the Vienna City Court House, the so-called Bürgererschranne , was located at Hohen Markt 5 from 1440 to 1839. In 1773, the Schranne was enlarged under Emperor Joseph II and the city and regional courts of the Vienna Magistrate were combined in this house. From this point on it was called "criminal court".

Due to the inadequacy of the prison rooms in the old court on Hohen Markt, there was already talk of building a new criminal court building at the beginning of the 19th century, but this project had to be postponed due to the state bankruptcy in 1811.

It was not decided until 1816 that the criminal court building should be rebuilt. Although it was first spoken out against building outside the city, the area of ​​the civil shooting range and the former St. Stephanus Freithof in what was then Alservorstadt , now in this part of Josefstadt , was chosen as the building site. Architect Johann Fischer's plans were approved in 1831, and construction began in 1832 and was completed in 1839. The first council meeting took place on May 14, 1839.

1839-1918

In his plans, Johann Fischer resorted to Tuscan palace buildings from the early Renaissance, such as the Palazzo Pitti or the Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence . The building was erected on a 21,872 m² site with a length of 223 meters. It had three or two floors (upper floors); the courtyard was divided into three wings, in which the prison was located. Furthermore, a special department for the prison hospital (Inquisitenspital) and a chapel were built.

The Vienna Criminal Court was a municipal court from 1839 to 1850, which is why the Vice Mayor of Vienna was also President of the criminal courts for civil and criminal matters. In 1850 local jurisdiction was abolished; the state administration took over the criminal court on July 1, 1850. From then on it carried the title " kk regional court in criminal matters in Vienna".

In 1851 jury courts were introduced. These met in the large conference room, which was then as now on the second floor of the administrative wing. The hall was twice the height of the room (two floors). In 1890/1891 there was a horizontal subdivision. Initially, the building stood alone in a wide hallway with the neighboring house at Florianigasse 2 / Landesgerichtsstrasse 9. It was not surrounded by other buildings until the city expansion began in 1858 when the city ​​wall was demolished.

Original cell in the industrial museum in Wiener Neustadt

From 1870 to 1878 the court underwent numerous renovations. Particular attention was paid to the wing that directly adjoins Alser Strasse. A three-story detention wing and the jury wing were built on the previous building site. A new addition was the “new wing”, which represented a real extension and was built on three or four floors. From 1873 executions were no longer carried out in public, but only in the prison. The first execution took place on December 16, 1876 in the "Galgenhof"; the accused were hanged there on the choking algae. 13 people were executed there between 1876 and 1919.

The prison was expanded around 1900. In courtyard II of the prison, kitchen, laundry and workshop buildings as well as a bathing facility for the prisoners were created. In 1906/1907 the office wing was enlarged. The two-story wing wing got a third and the three-story middle wing a fourth floor.

1918-1938

In the first years of the First Republic there were changes in the organization of the courts. As a result of the poor economic situation and rapid inflation , the number of cases and the number of detainees rose sharply. For this reason, a second regional court was established in Vienna on October 1, 1920, the Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna II, as well as a branch of the prison in Garnisongasse.

One of the most important court hearings of the interwar period was the Schattendorf trial , in which the three defendants were acquitted on July 14, 1927. In January 1927, front-line fighters shot at a meeting of the Social Democratic Workers' Party in Austria , killing two people in the process. The outrage over the acquittal was great. During a mass demonstration in front of the Palace of Justice on July 15, 1927, which was initially largely peaceful, there was a fire in the Palace of Justice , whereupon the police also pursued peaceful demonstrators fleeing from the scene and shot many of them to death.

The corporate state dictatorship that began in 1933/1934 caused sensational trials against its opponents: Examples of this are the National Socialist Trials in 1934 and the Socialist Trial in 1936 against 28 then illegal Social Democrats and two Communists, including the Social Democrats Karl Hans Sailer , Maria Emhart , Franz Jonas , Bruno Kreisky , Stefan Wirlandner and Anton Proksch as well as the communist Franz Honner .

Also in 1934, in the wake of the February fighting and the July coup, a number of trials were carried out by martial and military courts . Quite a few ended with death sentences , 21 of which were carried out in the "Galgenhof" of the regional court by hanging on the choke barrels (see also the list here).

Photo of the "Galgenhof", 1945
Link to the picture
(Please note copyrights )

1938-1945

Sanctuary
Consecration room, memorial plaques for those executed at this location

The first measures that the National Socialists had taken at the Regional Court for Criminal Matters after the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in 1938 consisted of the erection of a memorial for ten executed National Socialists in the course of the trials over the events of July 1934 and the creation of one Execution room (then room 47 C, today a Weiheraum , where 650 names of resistance fighters are shown) with a guillotine delivered from Berlin (then called device F. , F like guillotine ).

At the time of National Socialism , the two regional courts for criminal matters were repealed in 1939 and merged with the regional court for civil law matters , the commercial court and the youth court to form the regional court of Vienna . It was intended (together with the Graz remand prison) as the “ central execution site for execution district X ”; Fritz Ulitzka acted as the executioner in charge. In the period from December 6, 1938 to April 4, 1945, 1,184 people were executed in the Vienna Regional Court. Of these, 537 were political death sentences against civilians, 67 were beheaded (including 7 hangings) by the military, 49 war-related offenses, 31 criminal cases. Among those executed were 93 women of all ages, including a 16-year-old girl and a 72-year-old woman, both of whom had been executed on political grounds.

On June 30, 1942, ten railway workers from Styria and Carinthia who were active in the resistance were beheaded. On July 31, 1943, 31 people were beheaded within one hour, 30 one day later. The corpses were then handed over to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Vienna and the remaining body parts were later buried in shaft graves at the Vienna Central Cemetery. Among those executed during the Nazi era, who were referred to as “justified”, were also the nunnery Maria Restituta Kafka , the theology student Hanns Georg Heintschel-Heinegg and the Viennese chaplain Heinrich Maier .

At that time the court was directly subordinate to the Reich Ministry of Justice in Berlin.

Since 1945

Friedrich Forsthuber and Detlev Rünger , Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Austria from 2012 to 2015 , in front of a plaque at the Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna (2015)

In 1945 a regional court for criminal matters was re-established by ordinance.

The A-wing (Inquisitentrakt), which was destroyed during a bombing raid in 1944, was rebuilt in the Second Republic . This was also necessary because the Prohibition Act of May 8, 1945 and the War Crimes Act of June 26, 1945, courts and prisons had to contend with an overcrowding of unprecedented proportions.

After 1945, 31 death sentences were carried out in the Regional Criminal Court. The last execution in the Gray House took place on March 24, 1950. Woman murderer Johann Trnka , who attacked and brutally murdered two women in their apartment, had to submit to this punishment. On July 1, 1950, the death penalty was abolished by parliament through the due process. In total, there were 1248 executions in the Regional Criminal Court. In 1967 the place of execution was converted into a memorial.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the building complex was revitalized and enlarged. The building at Florianigasse 8, which had been renovated beforehand, served as an emergency shelter for some of the departments during this time. In 1994 the last renovation, actually the extension of the negotiating hall wing, was completed. In 2003 the Vienna Youth Court was dissolved as an independent court; his agendas were included in the regional criminal court.

Prominent trials since 1945 have been, for example, the Krauland trial, in which an ÖVP minister was charged with property crimes, the affair of the former SPÖ interior minister and union president Franz Olah , whose unauthorized financial help in setting up a newspaper led to the conviction, the Sassak and murder affairs that of the Lainzer nurses, the consumer case , in which the consumer manager was responsible for the bankruptcy of the company, the Lucona case against Udo Proksch , a well-connected in politics and society who was involved in an attempted insurance fraud cost the lives of several people, the trial of the Holocaust denier David Irving for re -involvement in the Nazi regime and the BAWAG affair , which is about breaches of duty by bank managers and missing money.

At the end of January 2015, ten time tables were attached to the outer facade of the Vienna Regional Criminal Court, reminding of the eventful history of the “Gray House” and the criminal justice system from 1839 to the present day. They were presented to the public by Justice Minister Wolfgang Brandstetter together with Friedrich Forsthuber and in the presence of Culture Minister Josef Ostermayer . The plaques also commemorate the horrors of the Nazi regime and the abolition of the death penalty in Austria .

In April 2015, a memorial for around 600 political victims of the judiciary of the National Socialist regime was unveiled in front of the regional court. The steel pyramid designed by the artist Eva Schlegel bears the inscription "369 weeks". This is projected onto the outer wall of the regional court as a light installation and symbolizes the 369 weeks of Nazi rule in Vienna.

President of the Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna since 1839

Friedrich Forsthuber, April 15, 2015
  • Josef Hollan (1839–1844)
  • Florian Philipp (1844-1849)
  • Eduard Ritter von Wittek (1850-1859)
  • Franz Ritter von Scharschmied (1859–1864)
  • Franz Ritter von Boschan (1864–1872)
  • Franz Josef Babitsch (1873–1874)
  • Josef Ritter von Weitenhiller (1874–1881)
  • Franz Schwaiger (1881-1889)
  • Eduard Lamezan-Salins (1889–1895)
  • Julius von Soos (1895–1903)
  • Paul von Vittorelli (1903-1909)
  • Johann Feigl (1909-1918)
  • Karl Heidt (1918-1919)
  • I: Ludwig Altmann (1920–1929) / II: Franz Schreiber (1920–1928)
  • I: Emil Tursky (1929–1936) / II: Friedrich Aichinger (1928–1932)
  • I: Philipp Charwath (1936–1938) / II: Philipp Hotter (1933–1938)
  • Otto Nahrhaft (1945–1950)
  • Rudolf Naumann (1951–1954)
  • Wilhelm Malaniuk (1955–1963)
  • Johann Schuster (1963–1971)
  • Konrad Wymetal (1972–1976)
  • August Matouschek (1977-1989)
  • Günter Woratsch (1990-2004)
  • Ulrike Psenner (2004–2009)
  • Friedrich Forsthuber (since 2010)

See also

literature

  • Wilhelm Deutschmann (Red.): 200 years of legal life in Vienna. Advocates, judges, legal scholars . Museums of the City of Vienna, Vienna 1985 ( special exhibition of the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna 96)
  • Heinrich Geissler: The history of the "gray house". As an introduction to the catalog about the collections in the prison museum of the regional court for criminal matters . Publishing house of the regional court prison house, Vienna 1933
  • Heinz Geissler: The history of the "gray house". Criminal history and catalog of the collections in the prison . Museum of the Regional Court for Criminal Matters, Vienna 1950
  • Gerhard Roth : The Gray House . In: Gerhard Roth: The Archives of Silence . Volume 7: A journey into the heart of Vienna . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-596-11407-1 , pp. 65-88.

Web links

Commons : Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ronald Escher: History of Justice: The Dark Pages. In: Salzburger Nachrichten . September 21, 2012, p. 23.
  2. ^ Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna. In: justiz.gv.at. Retrieved May 21, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Friedrich Forsthuber: The history of the "gray house" and criminal justice in Vienna. In: Thomas Olechowski (Ed.): Contributions to the legal history of Austria. Volume 2 / 2016. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-7001-8059-3 , pp. 409-418, chapter online at austriaca.at (PDF; 208 kB).
  4. ^ Friedrich Forsthuber: Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna . In: Friedrich Forsthuber, Ursula Schwarz, Johannes Mahl-Anzinger, Mattias Keuschnigg: The History of the Gray House and Austrian Criminal Jurisdiction , Ed .: Library Association in the Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna, 1st edition (1000 pieces), Vienna 2012, p. 157 .
  5. ↑ Geissler, 1950, pp. 6-15.
  6. ↑ 200 years of legal life in Vienna , p. 127.
  7. ↑ Geissler, 1950, p. 33.
  8. ↑ Geissler, 1933, p. 71.
  9. ↑ Geissler, 1933.
  10. ↑ Geissler, 1933, pp. 97-103.
  11. ↑ Geissler, 1950, p. 20.
  12. ↑ a b Last execution 60 years ago today. In: wien.orf.at . March 24, 2010, accessed August 11, 2018.
  13. ↑ a b 200 years of legal life in Vienna , p. 128.
  14. ↑ StGBl. No. 402/1920 : municipal districts XIII to XV, XVIII, XIX and XXI; District of the district courts of Bruck an der Leitha , Hainburg , Schwechat , Liesing , Purkersdorf , Klosterneuburg and Mödling .
  15. ↑ Geissler, 1950, p. 157.
  16. ↑ Geissler, 1950, p. 27.
  17. ↑ "Regulation to change the structure of courts in Austria" of April 13, 1939 ( RGBl. I p. 751 / GBlfdLÖ. No. 522/1939 ).
  18. ↑ The history of the gray house and the Austrian criminal justice system, Library Association in the Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna (ed.), Vienna 2012, p. 124.
  19. ↑ Willi Weinert: "You can put me out, but not the fire" - biographies of the resistance fighters executed in the Vienna Regional Court. A guide through Group 40 at the Vienna Central Cemetery and to sacrificial graves in Vienna's cemeteries , Wiener Stern-Verlag, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-9502478-2-4 , p. 310.
  20. ↑ Ursula Schwarz: Execution of ten railway workers. In: doew.at . Retrieved August 29, 2019.
  21. ↑ Weinert, p. 38 ff., P. 310.
  22. ↑ a b Geissler, 1950, p. 32.
  23. ↑ StGBl. No. 203/1945 ; see also the Court Organization Act 1945 StGBl. No. 47/1945 .
  24. ↑ Geissler, 1950, p. 30.
  25. ↑ Federal Law Gazette I No. 30/2003 .
  26. ↑ "Gray House": panels remind of history. In: wien.orf.at . January 27, 2015, accessed on May 6, 2015.
  27. ↑ Memorial for Nazi victims in front of the regional court. In: wien.orf.at . April 21, 2015, accessed May 5, 2015.
  28. ↑ Regional court gets new president. In: orf.at . December 26, 2009, accessed November 30, 2013.

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 48.8 ″  N , 16 ° 21 ′ 19.6 ″  E