Louis Mahrer

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Louis Alois Mahrer (born April 25, 1917 in Krems an der Donau , Lower Austria ; † October 6, 1977 there ) was an Austrian resistance fighter , writer , teacher , communist and functionary of the Austrian-Soviet society .

Louis Mahrer with his wife Therese Mahrer in Coventry (UK) in the summer of 1977.

Life

Alois Mahrer, who wrote his literary works under the pseudonym Louis Mahrer, was born into a social democratic working class family in Krems. His father Alois Franz Mahrer, who came from a poor Viennese working-class family, was a master locksmith and, as a co-founder of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) in Krems, actively involved in the proclamation of the Republic of German Austria . Until the civil war in February 1934 he was a city ​​councilor in Krems. When the SDAP was subsequently banned, he lost his mandate and his job. Son Alois was arrested in February 1934 for supporting the Schutzbund . In 1936 he graduated from secondary school in Krems. He had to earn his own studies in German and Romance languages at the University of Vienna . In 1940 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and trained as a radio reconnaissance / listening radio operator , so that he was only awarded a Dr. phil. could do a doctorate . Coming from the Rote Falken , he and his future wife joined the KPÖ in 1933 . From 1933 to 1935 he was district leader of the Communist Youth Association in Krems and later joined the illegal red students in Vienna . After he met his like-minded woman Therese Mahrer geb. Having married Lutzer , he was transferred to Serbia in November for careless speech . There he met Gerhard Chmiel, to whom he set a monument in 1947 in his story Bora , which is based on actual events . After a short American captivity , he returned home in 1945. He then taught at the Handelsakademie Vienna I , from 1947 until his death in 1977 at the Federal Trade School , the current HTL Krems Bautechnik and IT , German and French . For this school, his wife, as city councilor for education and culture, had obtained premises in the Krems barracks from the Soviet occupying power .

Works

As a schoolboy in the 1930s, Alois Mahrer and his future wife wrote poems that were published in local newspapers and presented at joint public readings. In 1942/43 he wrote the play Leuchtturm, which has been preserved in the Theater Museum in Vienna . In 1945 he completed the play Drosselbart , which, like many of his other works, remained unpublished. After the Second World War he wrote for communist newspapers and magazines, later he had little time to write in addition to his teaching activities.

His main work Bora was published in 1947 by Wachau-Verlag. It describes the resistance of the alter ego of the author Alfred Kroneck and his friend Gerhard Chmiel, mentioned in the book Schmiel. As radio operators of the Wehrmacht, the two suppress radio messages from the partisans fighting for the freedom of their homeland and warn them that their codes have been cracked. Schmiel is discovered and is executed. He saves Kroneck's life by saying that he acted alone. It was not until 40 years after Mahrer's death and 70 years after the first edition of his story Bora that the Krems historian Robert Streibel initiated a new edition with commentary. This commentary deals in detail with the military environment and the significance of the acts of resistance described, the author's surviving diary entries, his biography , his family and political background and his other literary work. When researching the sources for the new edition, it was possible to obtain information about a death of Gerhard Chmiel from the Federal Military Archives . "Shooting after a court martial" on August 29, 1944 in Vrnjačka Banja is cited as the cause of death . Documents about the court martial are not available. The grave site could not be determined. The new edition of the Bora attracted public attention in Austria. In his review in the daily newspaper Die Presse, Erich Hackl described the story as a key work of anti-fascist literature in Austria. Visits by the family members of the author and Robert Streibel to the Serbian scenes led to the translation into the Serbian language and the publication of the book in Serbian by the Museum of Local History in Kraljevo . This was the first time these historical events became known in Serbia.

Movies

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Streibel: Krems 1918–1938. A story of adjustment, betrayal, and resistance. Provincial Publishing House. ISBN 978-3-99028-330-1
  2. ↑ Ilse Korotin (ed.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 2: I-O. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 ( online ); Retrieved December 25, 2017.
  3. ^ A b Louis Mahrer: Bora. First edition, Wachau-Verlag 1947, Krems / Donau
  4. ^ A b Louis Mahrer: Bora. New edition 2017 with a historical commentary by Robert Streibel. Publishing house of the province, Weitra. ISBN 978-3-99028-556-5 . Pp. 155/156
  5. ↑ Erich Hackl on Louis Mahrer: An oath is no longer valid. The press, accessed December 25, 2017
  6. ↑ Luis Marer: Bura. Kraljevo, 2016. ISBN 978-86-85179-76-1
personal data
SURNAME Mahrer, Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mahrer, Alois
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Krems an der Donau , Lower Austria
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1977
Place of death Krems an der Donau , Lower Austria