Leopold Kunschak

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Memorial plaque on the house at Hernalser Hauptstrasse 54

Leopold Kunschak (born November 11, 1871 in Vienna ; † March 13, 1953 there ) was an Austrian politician ( CS / ÖVP ).

Life

Even as a child, the son of a wagon entrepreneur had to work from home to draw wicks in wax candles. The father had financial misfortune and died early, so the mother had to support him and his siblings alone as a laundress. First Kunschak was to become a typesetter, then a saddler, and finally found work in the Simmeringer wagon factory , where he came into contact with a strike of the Viennese tram workers for the first time in 1889 .

On February 11, 1913, his brother Paul Kunschak shot and killed Franz Schuhmeier , a member of the Social Democratic Reichsrat . The death sentence in the subsequent process was later commuted to 20 years imprisonment and Kunschak was pardoned in 1918 under the general political amnesty after the First World War.

After the funeral of MP Schuhmeier, the police headquarters in Vienna received a telegram from the Munich police that the carpenter's assistant Franz Freiberger had left for Vienna to avenge, as he had said, the death of Schuhmeiers and Leopold Kunschak, the murderer's brother , to kill. After the agreement had been reached, raids were carried out all over Vienna; An agreement was immediately sent to Mayor Weiskirchner and Leopold Kunschak, whose house was placed under police surveillance. In the course of the night, the police found the whereabouts of Freiberger, who had had dinner in a small inn and had gone to the men's home on Meldemannstrasse . In order not to disturb the night's sleep, he was arrested in the early hours of the morning. During Freiberger's physical search, a revolver was found that was loaded with two cartridges; a three-edged, sharply pointed file was also found on the suspect, which he wanted to use as a stabbing weapon in the event that the revolver should fail.

As a trained saddler , Kunschak founded the Christian Social Workers' Association in 1892 , of which he was chairman until 1934. For the time being, he was not even allowed to join his own club, as he had not yet reached the legally required age of 24. As a result, he held various political functions:

Vienna Central Cemetery - honor grave of Leopold Kunschak

Because of his democratic attitude, Kunschak was an opponent of the Heimwehr and Engelbert Dollfuss . Together with Johann Staud, he was also the most important political exponent of the Freedom League and acted as a mediator between the parties during the February fights in 1934 .

After the Second World War , he signed the Austrian Declaration of Independence on April 27, 1945 together with Karl Renner , Adolf Schärf and Johann Koplenig . From 1945 he was again a member of the Vienna City Council, and from 1945 to 1946 also Vice Mayor. He also participated in the founding of the ÖAAB and the ÖVP . From 1945 to 1953 he served as President of the National Council and he died five days before the end of his term of office.

Kunschak was buried in an honorary grave in the Vienna Central Cemetery .

anti-Semitism

Kunschak, who was close friends with Mayor Lueger , appeared as an anti-Semite . So he scourged the "Jewish liberal press" and saw the Christian social workers endangered by Jewish employers.

As early as 1919 he had drafted a bill on “The Legal Relationships of the Jewish Nation”, but on the advice of his party chairman Ignaz Seipel, he had not published it. In 1936 Kunschak published a similar draft in a magazine of the Reich Association of Christian Workers' Associations in Austria, which provided for a "Jewish cadastre ", separate schools and restrictions on access for Jews to universities and the public service. At the main roll call of the Freedom League on March 15, 1936, Kunschak said:

"Either the Jewish question is resolved in good time after the promptings of reason and humanity, or it will be resolved in the form of the senseless animal in which it concerns its enemy, in forms of instinct that has gone wild and irrepressible."

- Communications of the Freedom League, special edition March 1936

The assertion repeated in 2013 in the criticism of Kunschak that Kunschak publicly described himself as an anti-Semite even after the Nazi era , was based on a text in the Zürcher Israelitisches Wochenblatt on December 7, 1945. As a response to this, in 2013 it was quoted that the alleged confession was Kunschak 1945 was not mentioned in any Austrian daily newspaper and does not appear in the police reports, which were very detailed at the time. The accusation related to 1945 could therefore not be upheld; this view was strongly contradicted.

Honors

  • In 1946, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, he was unanimously made an honorary citizen of Vienna by the Vienna City Council, making him the first in a resurrected Austria to be honored in this way.
  • In 1951 he was one of the winners of the Karl Renner Prize .
  • In 1971 the Leopold-Kunschak-Platz in Vienna- Hernals (17th district) was named after him.
  • In 1978, on the occasion of the day of his death, he was commemorated with a stamp.

Fonts

  • Workers' question and Christianity , 1905
  • Nationality and Workers , 1928
  • Austria 1918–34 , 1934
  • Little stones from the path , 1937

literature

  • Franz Bauer: Leopold Kunschak as a politician . Vienna 1950 (dissertation, University of Vienna).
  • Franz Stamprech : Leopold Kunschak. Portrait of a Christian labor leader . Freedom, Vienna 1953.
  • Gustav Blenk: Leopold Kunschak and his time. Portrait of a Christian labor leader . Europa-Verlag, Vienna a. a. 1966.
  • Anton Pelinka : Stand or Class? The Christian labor movement in Austria 1933 to 1938 . Europa-Verlag, Vienna a. a. 1972, ISBN 3-203-50400-6 ( publications of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History of the Labor Movement ).
  • Politics for the people - 15 years of the Leopold Kunschak Prize . Board of Trustees for the Leopold Kunschak Prize, Vienna 1980.
  • Gustav Otruba :  Kunschak, Leopold. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 301 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ludwig Reichhold: Leopold Kunschak . Karl von Vogelsang Institute - Political Academy, Vienna 1988.
  • Biographical data of Leopold Kunschak . In: Niederösterreichische Landtagdirektion (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch des NÖ Landtag: 1861–1921. Lower Austria Landtag Directorate, St. Pölten, print: ISBN 3-85006-166-3 (as of January 1, 2005). Online version: PDF, 843 kB

Web links

Commons : Leopold Kunschak  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Große Österreicher , Ueberreuter , publisher and author Thomas Chorherr
  2. ^ Innsbrucker Nachrichten, February 18, 1913, issue No. 40, page 8
  3. ↑ Kurt Bauer : The “Anschluss” and the hatred of Jews by an ÖVP icon. In: The Standard. Vienna, March 13, 2013, and website of the paper from March 12, 2013.
  4. ^ Street names in Vienna since 1860 as “Political Places of Remembrance” (PDF; 4.4 MB), p. 66ff, final research project report, Vienna, July 2013.
  5. ↑ Emmerich Tálos , Wolfgang Neugebauer : Austrofaschismus. Politics, Economy, Culture, 1933–1938. 7th edition, LIT, 2014.
  6. ↑ Paul Mychalewicz: How “unteachable” was Leopold Kunschak really? In: The Standard. Vienna, March 16, 2013, and website of the paper from March 15, 2013.
  7. ↑ Kunschak's biography on the ÖCV website
  8. ↑ November 7, 1946: Leopold Kunschak - Honorary Citizen of the City of Vienna
  9. ↑ Vienna City Hall Correspondence, December 13, 1951, sheet 2230
  10. ↑ Vienna City Hall Correspondence, January 26, 1952, sheet 111
  11. ^ Catholic color students in Austria 1933–1983. Edited by the Vienna City Association of the MKV. P. 14
personal data
SURNAME Kunschak, Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (CS, ÖVP), member of the state parliament
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1953
Place of death Vienna