Michael Huemer (farmer)

Johann Michael Huemer vulgo Kalchgruber (* August 17, 1777 at the Kalchgrubergut in Elmberg ; † May 10, 1849 in Oberweitersdorf 4), farmer at the Kalchgrubergut in Elmberg 3 (today No. 7), also known as " Bauernadvokat ", was a fighter for the rights of the farmers in today's Mühlviertel in Upper Austria . From 1820 he lived hidden underground and could not be found until his death in 1849, despite a wanted search by the authorities.

Life

Born the son of a Mühlviertel farmer, Michael from Kalchgruber attended elementary school in his childhood and was able to continue his education with the support of his father. As an adult he had an unusually high level of education for a farmer at the time, he could read and write and was familiar with the law. In 1812 he was therefore appointed by the Wildberg lordship to be the local judge of Katzbach (later part of St. Magdalena ), an office that roughly corresponds to today's mayor. He repeatedly campaigned for the rights of farmers, drafted objections against excessive taxes, against the refusal of marriages, against the refusal to issue home certificates (comparable to today's identity cards that were required to leave the manor) and against the recruitment for military service. Since the repeal of serfdom by Emperor Joseph II . in 1781 and their conversion into a hereditary subservience , the peasants had received a number of better legal positions, which however often only existed on paper and were often refused by the local landlords to the peasants who were ignorant of the law. The Kalchgruber therefore campaigned for the peasants to get their written law and even addressed the emperor in his letters. Once he succeeded even with Emperor Francis I . to be admitted to Vienna and to convey his concerns to him in an audience. This made him increasingly unpopular with the local giants in the Mühlviertel. So he was dismissed from his office in 1816. He continued his work as legal advisor to the farmers, which is why the authorities soon found him an agitator and troublemaker. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the government under Chancellor Metternich also increasingly pursued a restoration policy and tried to take back the liberal legislation of Emperor Joseph II or the French occupying power, which had controlled large parts of Upper Austria until 1810, which also resulted in the local landlords in felt their rejection of these rights confirmed.

In the year 1820 Kalchgruber was arrested for disturbing the public calm, however he was granted a leave of absence in the autumn in order to bring the harvest on his farm. He used this to go into hiding and hide from the authorities. Then a long odyssey began through the entire middle Mühlviertel up to the Bohemian Forest , where Kalchgruber stayed in different places and was hidden by befriended farmers. Despite a wanted letter, the authorities did not succeed in catching him, as he was able to escape again and again with the help of the farmers, sometimes in tricky ways. However, he continued to give legal advice to distressed farmers. He held regular consultation hours in secret and legally put the farmers' concerns on paper. In some months the authorities recorded up to 20 documents received, which based on the handwriting could be assigned to the Kalchgruber. When the suspension of a bonus had no effect either, the authorities resorted to repression and expropriated his farm, leaving his wife and daughter penniless. Yet he could never be caught himself. He hid in underground cellars that were equipped with escape tunnels, and the informants sent out were quickly recognized by the Mühlviertel farmers and lured on the wrong track. This tactic was called "sending people out" and kept the entire bureaucratic apparatus in check. The farmers also threatened to set fire to anyone who disclosed information about their whereabouts to the authorities.

Although Kalchgruber managed to hide from arrest over the years, life in the underground drained his strength. At the beginning of his escape, the wanted posters were looking for a tall, lean man with a brown face and brown hair, but 14 years later it was an older man with light white hair and a pale face who was being searched for. Only when he died exhausted, sick and penniless at his daughter's court in 1849, his supporters informed the governor and informed him that he could now look at the Kalchgruber lying at the “shop”, that is, on the bier. The situation of the peasants had already partially improved at this point, since in the course of the revolution of 1848 on September 7th, 1848, the inheritance was abolished - a measure that was not reversed even after the revolution was suppressed.

Appreciation

In 1977 the Kalchgruber monument was erected in the Alberndorf cemetery.

swell

• Rupert Huber: The Kalchgruber. In: gallirundschau. No. 3, September 2007, pp. 8–9 ( PDF; 3.4 MB at gallneukirchen.spoe.at).
• Hellmut G. Haasis : Der Kalchgruber: An Upper Austrian social rebel 28 years in illegality (1821-1849). In: Hellmut G. Haasis: Traces of the vanquished. Volume 2, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, ISBN 3-499-16281-4 , pp. 690-705.
• Hellmut G. Haasis: The rebel with the unearthly forces. How in Upper Austria the farmer Kalchgruber had been knocking the authorities on the fingers of the underground for 28 years and yet could not be caught. In: Hellmut G. Haasis: With cunning and trickery. How little troublemakers fooled big people. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1985, pp. 29-47.
  Again in: Hellmut G. Haasis: Edelweiss Pirates. Stories about a wild youth movement against the Nazis. Nevertheless publishing house, Grafenau / Württemberg 1996, ISBN 3-922209-61-0 , pp. 55-69.
• Hellmut G. Haasis: hatred of bondage. The Upper Austrian social rebel Kalchgruber (1777–1849). In: Renate Kahle, Heiner Menzner, Gerhard Vinnai (eds.): Haß. The power of an unwanted feeling. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1985, pp. 197-209.

Web links

• Literature by and about Michael Huemer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Bibliography on Kalchgruber in the forum OoeGeschichte.at