Marianne Feldhammer

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Marianne Feldhammer (born March 14, 1909 in Altaussee ; † 1996 in Bad Aussee , also called Mariandl in the dialect ) was an Austrian resistance fighter against National Socialism and one of the most important female members of the Willy-Fred group around Sepp Plieseis . She was the only woman who knew the way to the “hedgehog” at the time, who brought the partisans to the mountain shelter and regularly brought food there.

youth

Marianne grew up in Altaussee and attended elementary school there. Her parents both died when she was a child. In 1931 she married Karl Feldhammer and a short time later her daughter Anna was born. Her husband Karl, a trained carpenter and lumberjack from Aussee, like many other workers, was unemployed for a long time (seven years in total) and made ends meet by carving clogs that he was able to sell to the salt pans . Through her husband, who was previously a social democrat , she also began to be interested in politics and came into contact with local communist groups in the Salzkammergut after February 1934 .

Organization of Resistance

Shortly after Austria was annexed to the German Reich in March 1938, her husband Karl was arrested and taken to the Bad Ischl District Court . However, he was released 14 days later and began to seek contact with other Austrians opposed to National Socialism in order to set up a resistance group. She then met Resi Pesendorfer through the Ischl shoemaker Hans Rettenbacher , with whom she would later become one of the most important women in the resistance movement.

During this time, the main task was to find different safe quarters for people in hiding and wanted by the regime and to provide them with adequate supplies despite food rationing. The women also took care of the exchange of messages between the individual familiar people in the upper Salzkammergut and took over the delivery service between Aussee , Goisern , Ischl and Ebensee . Marianne was the official laundress who washed the laundry in the Fluder von Altaussee, a flood canal. Since there was no dry cleaning shop in Aussee, she had a reason to go to Ischl once a week and was thus able to maintain contact with Resi Pesendorfer and the supporters there without suspicion.

Supplies for the hedgehog

From 1943 onwards, more and more deserted soldiers joined these scattered groups, who after a vacation at the front at home in the Salzkammergut did not want to go back to the war and went underground. The growing number of these deserters presented the group with ever greater logistical problems, as it was not possible to find trustworthy quarters for everyone. Many of these men spent the warm months in the forest and stayed in abandoned mountain huts until Sepp Plieseis was able to organize his own partisan shelter in the mountains, the "hedgehog". There the convicted poacher was able to use his pre-war knowledge to care for his comrades.

The women in the valley organized supplies for the partisans through secret supporters, mainly food, but also weapons and ammunition. Marianne Feldhammer then deposited these supplies at predetermined points, for example on the Blaa-Alm. But she was also the only woman who knew the way to the “hedgehog” and three times brought supplies to the partisan hideout in the Dead Mountains with heavy luggage . Sometimes the men came to the valley at night or in bad weather to get bread or meat or to give the women news for other resistance groups.

Death of her husband

Marianne's husband was also wanted by the Gestapo and had gone into hiding. However, he came to the valley at irregular intervals to fetch supplies and to visit his wife and daughter. On January 26, 1945, on one of these visits, the Gestapo suddenly appeared at the door at 5 a.m. Karl Feldhammer jumped out of the window at the back of the house and tried to flee across the garden, when one of the Gestapo men shot him with a submachine gun and hit him fatally. While the second policeman threatened Marianne with a pistol, her 12-year-old daughter Annerl cleared away the illegal meat supplies stored for the partisans with a presence of mind and threw them into the high-lying snow so that nothing was discovered.

The Gestapo therefore had no direct evidence against Marianne Feldhammer. Also because a woman was not trusted to be an active resistance fighter, she remained undisturbed and was able to see to it that her husband at least got a dignified funeral .

Contemporary witness

After the war, Feldhammer lived as a widow with her daughter in Aussee. In the following political discussion about the role of the resistance and which people had actively fought for the liberation of Austria, it was not mentioned for a long time. On the one hand, this has to do with the fact that the importance of women in the resistance was underestimated for a long time; on the other hand, the incipient confrontation between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union meant that the services of the mostly communist resistance fighters in the Salzkammergut were little appreciated. It was only through the meticulous collecting work of Peter Kammerstätter that documents and testimony became accessible to a broader public and thus also to historical studies, which only began to be interested in them from the 1980s.

In 1985 the filmmaker Ruth Beckermann made a documentary about the resistance in the Salzkammergut, in which she also interviewed the women who were still alive who were involved in the resistance against National Socialism. This 37-minute film is called "The Hedgehog". Parts of her biography were also filmed in the television film "At the end of a long winter" produced by ORF and ARD in 1990 , the script of which was written by Walter Wippersberg and based on the recordings of Albrecht Gaiswinkler . In 2006 the writer Franzobel from Vöcklabruck published his play “Hirschen”, which deals with the history of the resistance group Willy-Fred and in which Marianne Feldhammer also appears as a character.

Marianne Feldhammer died in 1996 and was buried by the Altaussee community in a grave of honor, in which her husband Karl Feldhammer, who was shot in 1945, and his colleague Johann Moser (known as Renner Hans) are also lying. As an imprisoned resistance fighter, he was killed in an American air raid in Linz on February 25, 1945 when a bomb hit the police prison in Mozartstrasse. Her daughter Anna emigrated from Austria and has been living in Ghana for decades .

swell

  • Peter Kammerstätter: Material collection about the resistance and partisan movement Willy-Fred in the upper Salzkammergut - Ausseerland 1943-1945. Self-published, Linz 1978.
  • Karin Berger (Ed.): The sky is blue. Can be - Women in Resistance, Austria 1938 - 1945. Promedia-Verlag (Edition traces), Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-900478-05-8 .
  • Christian Topf: On the trail of the partisans, historical walks in the Salzkammergut . Edition Geschichte der Heimat, Grünbach bei Freistadt 1996, ISBN 3-900943-32-X .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Feldhammer, Marianne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Feldhammer, Mariandl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Altaussee
DATE OF DEATH 1996
Place of death Bad Aussee