Leopold Pölzl

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Leopold Pölzl (born November 14, 1879 in St. Aegyd am Neuwalde , Lower Austria , Austria-Hungary ; † September 1, 1944 in Aussig ) was a Czechoslovak local politician and dissident .

Life

Memorial plaque to the German mayor of Aussig Leopold Pölzl

Pölzl was the son of a file cutter . He took up his father's profession, but joined the trade union movement and the Austrian labor movement . His love for writing and the desire to emancipate the working class led him to journalism. From 1919 to 1938 he was alternately deputy mayor and mayor of Aussig for the German Social Democratic Workers' Party . Pölzl publicly accused the Hitler regime of terror and inhumanity. After the annexation of the Sudetenland by the German Reich in 1938, Pölzl was arrested. In despair, he cut his wrists open after torture in prison. He survived this suicide attempt . After his release he refused to flee to the still self-determined Czechoslovakia . Although he was still observed by the Gestapo , he founded one of the few resistance groups in the Sudetenland against the German and Sudeten German Nazis . The Leopold Pölzl group , as it was called, supported the families of those arrested, issued leaflets and later helped prisoners of war.

Pölzl died on September 1, 1944 - under circumstances that have never been clarified - in the hospital in Aussig. When he was buried, the Nazi authorities forbade any mourning speeches. Nevertheless, several thousand people came from Aussig and the surrounding area.

Aftermath

On May 7, 1945, social democrats from the circle around Leopold Pölzl prevented the two Elbe bridges and the Elbe barrage in Aussig from being blown up.

A memorial plaque for Leopold Pölzl has been standing on Aussiger Platz in Munich since 1996. Efforts were made to name the Edvard-Beneš Bridge in Aussig, on which a plaque has been commemorating Leopold Pölzl since 2005, after Leopold Pölzl.

literature

  • Bernhard Böttcher: Favors for people and homeland: War memorials of German minorities in East Central Europe during the interwar period. Studia Transylvanica, 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20313-9 , p. 179, limited preview in the Google book search

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Thomas Schmid: The forgotten. A brave social democrat in the Sudetenland. welt.de, August 3, 2015, accessed June 20, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Thomas Schmid: Leopold Pölzl. Brave against the Nazis - to the death. vorwaerts.de, September 17, 2015, accessed April 4, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Leopold Pölzl in memory. Aussiger Bote, November 1, 1996, accessed April 4, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Katrin Bock: Usti nad Labem and its German past. Radio Prague, July 9, 2005, accessed April 4, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Gerolf Fritsche: Leopold Pölzl - a worthy namesake for the Aussiger Elbe Bridge III (from 3). Jan Šinagl - Voice of Freedom and Democracy, February 11, 2016, accessed April 4, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Pölzl, Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak local politician
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Aegyd am Neuwalde
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1944
Place of death Aussig