Othmar Wundsam

Othmar "Otto" Wundsam (born October 23, 1922 in Vienna ; † December 27, 2014 there ) was an Austrian contemporary witness of the Nazi era . He was involved in the resistance against National Socialism and survived imprisonment in several concentration camps and a death march . Later he was involved in passing on the memory of National Socialism to the next generation. He was also active as an artist , dealing in particular with his experiences from the war and imprisonment in a concentration camp.

Life

Childhood and adolescence, vocational training

Othmar Wundsam came from a working-class family and grew up in poor conditions in “ red Vienna ”. At the age of two he came with his parents and his two years older sister Hilde to the village-like structure of Kagran , which at the time belonged to the 21st Viennese district of Floridsdorf (today mostly to the 22nd Viennese district of Donaustadt ). At first he lived with his family with his grandparents, who had bought an inexpensive piece of land there for development on their own. Later his parents got an apartment in a community building in Kagran . His parents were both active Social Democrats ; his mother worked in the education department of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP), and his father was also a staunch social democrat as a railroad worker .

Soldiers of the Federal Army during the February fighting in 1934 in front of the Vienna State Opera

Until 1934, Othmar Wundsam and his sister spent a lot of time with the Kinderfreunde and the Rote Falken . His parents then became unemployed and were actively involved in the Austrian civil war in February 1934 between the Social Democratic Workers' Party with its Schutzbund and the Austro-Fascist Ständestaat with its armed forces and home guard: His father was in the Schutzbund and was employed as a paramedic in Floridsdorf, his mother took care of wounded trams . As in many other places, the community buildings in Kagran were shelled as "red fortresses" and the family lost most of their belongings through confiscation. His parents were arrested, his mother was sent to prison for two months , and his father to the Wöllersdorf detention camp for six months . The 12-year-old and his 14-year-old sister were left alone and were taken care of by international relief efforts, such as by the Quakers and the Red Aid .

After the "Anschluss" of Austria: Adolf Hitler's Motorcade at the Praterstern in Vienna (March 15, 1938)

His parents' marriage ended in divorce in 1936. Since the Red Falcons were banned in 1934, the young people continued to meet and call themselves Junguranians . In order to facilitate a later professional position, Othmar Wundsam made a Catholic religious denomination, whereby he opted for the Old Catholic Church . After the " connection " of Austria by the Nazi German Reich in March 1938, the Austro-fascism was by the Nazis replaced. Wundsam became a member of the Communist Party (KPÖ) and took part in illegal actions against the Nazi regime. After finishing school, he began training as a commercial clerk. In 1939, he and his sister were arrested after the police found a leaflet with communist slogans during a house search . As agreed by the siblings, at the age of 17, he took over responsibility and was imprisoned for nine months, while his sister was released eight days later. He returned home from prison with pneumonia . After his release from prison, he continued his education and completed it in 1941.

Wartime, arrest and sentencing

Execution of partisans by German soldiers (here in 1943 in the Soviet Union)

During the Second World War , Othmar Wundsam was drafted into the Wehrmacht immediately after completing his apprenticeship in 1941 and employed as a radio operator . His sister Hilde, who lived with his mother in Kagran and had studied sculpture at the Vienna Women's Academy since 1941 , continued to take part in illegal activities, but acted more cautiously, especially since the arrest in 1939. As a soldier, Wundsam experienced the atrocities of the war in Eastern Europe, which he also spoke to his sister about when he was on leave from the front and told her, among other things, that "the Germans, if they catch partisans , also hang up the women ". His sister felt obliged to act in view of the descriptions and therefore contacted people who were active in the organized resistance . At the beginning of January 1944, for example, she organized the shelter for a German parachute agent who , coming from the Soviet Union via England , was supposed to support and network the resistance in Austria together with another agent.

Othmar Wundsam's sister Hilde and his mother Anna Wundsam, together with Hilde's friend Pauline Hochmeister (later after marriage to Pauline Leibel ) and her mother Gisela Hochmeister, took turns hiding the agent in their apartments. His sister had been friends with the daughter of his former neighbor from Kagran from the earliest years, and the two young women, like their parents, were closely connected through their political convictions - which Othmar Wundsam shared. The German agent, Josef Zettler ("Sepp"), initially stayed with the Hochmeister family, who lived in Vienna- Stadlau , and then with mother and daughter Wundsam. When the women were warned about an informer , it was already too late and everyone involved was arrested on March 30, 1944. Othmar Wundsam, who was on leave from home and was covering the agent's illegal accommodation, was arrested as well. Zettler was arrested from the bed of the Wundsam family and treated brutally.

Those directly involved came into Gestapo custody and were subsequently interrogated several times in the Vienna State Police Headquarters , which was housed in the former Hotel Metropol on Morzinplatz. The women tried to downplay their deed with a pre-arranged story, but soon realized that the Gestapo had been on their trail for some time and knew about the agent and his mission. Another parachute agent Albert Huttary , who was deployed in Vienna with Zettler, and his supporters were arrested on the same day. Zettler and Huttary were subjected to physical abuse and threats to force them to make pretend radio contacts with their liaison offices. The women were largely spared from violence by the Vienna Gestapo. Othmar Wundsam came as a Wehrmacht nationals in custody and, after several months of negotiations in October 1944 by a military court for "war treacherous aid to aiding the enemy" to ten years in prison convicted, he would serve out after the war. In addition, he was initially declared "unworthy of defense" and placed under the Gestapo, which subsequently deported him to various concentration camps.

→ For the further fate of the four women, Hilde and Anna Wundsam as well as Pauline and Gisela Hochmeister, as well as Josef Zettler, who all survived the imprisonment and wartime, see the chapter: The further fate of women and Josef Zettler

Concentration camp prisoner and death march

Survivors of the Mauthausen concentration camp , shortly after the liberation in May 1945

Othmar Wundsam came shortly after the verdict in October 1944, first in the in Weimar located Buchenwald concentration camp , which was operated as a labor camp. From there he was deported to the former Buchenwald satellite camp, the Mittelbau concentration camp near Nordhausen in Thuringia , where he had to do forced labor under inhumane conditions . Later he was transferred to the Hohlstedt field station . As the Allied troops drew closer, he and other prisoners were taken on a death march transport to the Mauthausen concentration camp , which was located in the Danube and Alpenreichsgauen (propaganda designation for Austria at the time). This “transport” was one of the “most terrible experiences” of Othmar Wundsam.

He was then taken to the Steyr-Münichholz subcamp , which was completely overcrowded in April 1945, as several death marches from the Wiener Neustadt concentration camp were led via Steyr . Conditions were catastrophic in the sub-camp. Due to the completely inadequate nutrition, the hard labor and exertion of the death march, Wundsam only weighed 38 kilograms and barely escaped being transported to the main camp to be killed. Eventually he was freed from serious illness when US troops reached the camp on May 5, 1945.

Post-war period, marriage and employment

On returning to Vienna, Othmar Wundsam lived for a few years with his sister Hilde, who had survived imprisonment in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp with his mother , and their friends - all concentration camp survivors - in one house. However, they soon realized that the ideals from the Red Falcon era could not be realized: there was already a new government and additional occupying powers , the people were busy with the reconstruction and wanted nothing to do with coming to terms with the National Socialist past displaced this. However, Wundsam did not give up his socio-political ideas and hopes and continued to show solidarity in his environment, including as a member of the re-admitted Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ).

Wundsam first began an artistic training in 1945 at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts , among others with Gerda Matejka-Felden , Josef Dobrowsky and Herbert Boeckl . After marriage, he left the academy and went to work to support his family. From 1947 until his retirement he was employed by the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB). In 1948 a daughter was born.

Later life, artistic activity

Wundsam campaigned for education and remembrance work about the atrocities of the war and National Socialism, such as in discussions with contemporary witnesses with schoolchildren and young people. As a former concentration camp inmate, he took part in events and commemorations, such as the Buchenwald-Dora Freundeskreis e. V. and the Austrian camp community Mauthausen or their successor organization since 1997, the Mauthausen Committee Austria (MKÖ). He also supported the activities of his sister Hilde Zimmermann (née Wundsam ), who died in 2002, in the Austrian camp community Ravensbrück (ÖLGR, since 2005: Austrian camp community Ravensbrück & Friends - ÖLGRF).

In addition to his professional activity, Wundsam was active as an artist and from 1968 onwards he was more intensively involved in painting , where he was supported by the Salzburg painter, graphic artist and art professor Werner Otte (1922–1996). Wundsam's defining themes were his experiences during the war and in concentration camp imprisonment as well as the Holocaust , and he also dealt with files and landscapes . He was culturally active in his residential district, the Vienna Donaustadt , among other things, he has been involved in the Donaustadt cultural association since his retirement and led drawing and painting courses at the Donaustädter Volkshochschule for many years .

His drawings , linocuts and watercolors have been shown at numerous art exhibitions at home and abroad, such as in Vienna and throughout Austria, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, France, the Soviet Union (Moscow, Baku), the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy. Among other things, he had a solo exhibition in the Floridsdorf district museum in Vienna in 2002 ( Austria's mountains , watercolors), and in 2008 two solo exhibitions at the “Art in Wurmbrandgasse” initiative in Vienna-Donaustadt ( motifs from the Donaustadt - drawings, watercolors and linocuts; Austria's mountains - Watercolors). Wundsam received several international awards and prizes, such as a gold medal in Bologna , Italy.

“My drawings are not just about art. I've experienced all of this myself and seen it with my own eyes. For decades I suppressed these horrors. These works were created in the processing of what was seen. As a chance survivor, I give testimony for and by those who did not survive the concentration camp. "

- Othmar Wundsam : Text accompanying an art exhibition in 2008 in Vienna-Donaustadt

Social scientists Helga Amesberger and Brigitte Halbmayr from the Vienna Institute for Conflict Research (IKF) recorded, analyzed and documented the life stories of Austrian survivors of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp in several years of oral history work in the late 1990s and early 2000s the experiences of Othmar Wundsam's sister Hilde Zimmermann. In 1999, Halbmayr conducted several interviews with Zimmermann, which, along with other selected biographies, were reproduced and evaluated in the scientific study On Life and Survival - Ways to Ravensbrück , jointly prepared by Halbmayr and Amesberger . The fate of Othmar Wundsam in connection with the biography of his sister and the "Zettler case" was also dealt with. The two-volume work was published in 2001 by the Viennese Promedia Verlag in its edition traces (see literature).

In the 2009 yearbook of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance, Halbmayr published her specialist article "It was a matter of course that we helped." The parachute agents Albert Huttary and Josef Zettler and their supporters - a case study . In it, Halbmayr presented the "Zettler case" with its supporters Hilde and Anna Wundsam as well as Pauline and Gisela Hochmeister as an "exemplary and at the same time unique" example of resistance and concentration camp imprisonment of Austrians during the Nazi era, in addition to the "Huttary case" she also dealt with the fate of Othmar Wundsam, with whom she had previously had several conversations as part of her research (see literature).

In 2009, Austrian-based director Tina Leisch portrayed the “path of the political activist and resistance fighter Hilde Zimmermann” in her film Against I have to do something . Leisch linked interviews that Halbmayr had conducted ten years earlier with Othmar Wunsam's sister and that are now part of the Ravensbrück VideoArchive with the memories of like-minded people and companions, including contributions by Othmar Wundsam. The film by Nestroy Prize winner Leisch was shown at a matinee at the Vienna Filmhaus am Spittelberg in 2009 and had its cinema premiere in Austria in April 2010 . Wundsam took part as a contemporary witness, as well as in other film screenings and accompanying panel discussions.

Othmar Wundsam lived in Vienna-Donaustadt until his death. He died on December 27, 2014 at the age of 92.

The further fate of the women and of Josef Zettler

→ See also main article: Hilde Wundsam (later after marriage: Hilde Zimmermann)

Othmar Wundsam's mother and sister, as well as Hochmeister's mother and daughter, in whose apartments the parachute agent Zettler had found shelter, came to the Ravensbrück concentration camp because of “favoring the enemy” after several months in Gestapo detention. When the Red Army approached the camp in April 1945, they were driven on a death march along with other prisoners, but all four of them were able to escape and return to the camp, which has since been liberated. The return to Vienna was delayed because her mother, Anna Wundsam, fell ill with typhoid, where all four women finally arrived in July 1945. Othmar Wundsam's sister, after marriage in the 1950s Hilde Zimmermann , was active all her life in the Austrian Camp Community Ravensbrück (ÖLGR), which she co-founded, and as a political activist and contemporary witness. Professionally, she worked, among other things, as a glasses designer and was also active as an artist. She died in Vienna in 2002 at the age of 81.

The German agent Josef Zettler (1904–1974) was interrogated by the Vienna Gestapo after his arrest, where he was severely ill-treated. Zettler was later taken to the Small Fortress Gestapo prison in Theresienstadt , where he was liberated by the Red Army in April 1945. Zettler returned to his family in Tomsk in the Soviet Union , moved with them to East Berlin in 1947 and made a political career in the GDR in the higher police and ministry service. Awarded numerous high medals from the GDR and USSR , Zettler died in 1974 at the age of almost 70. His previous hosts knew nothing of his later life. There was no contact between Zettler and his former supporters in Vienna and the surrounding area. Othmar Wundsam, like his sister Hilde, rather assumed that Zettler had been brought to justice in the Soviet Union; and Pauline Lebel (née Hochmeister ) was also convinced until the results of Halbmayr's research became known that Zettler had been interrogated in the Soviet Union, had come to a camp and had been shot there.

media

literature

• Brigitte Halbmayr: “It was a matter of course that we helped.” The parachute agents Albert Huttary and Josef Zettler and their supporters - a case study . In: Christine Schindler (Red.), Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (Ed.): Focus: Armed Resistance - Resistance in the Military . Lit Verlag, Münster 2009 (= 2009 yearbook of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance), ISBN 978-3-643-50010-6 , pp. 176-204.
• Helga Amesberger u. a .: Mauthausen in the memory of the survivors . In: Bertrand Perz (Red.): The memory of Mauthausen . Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial, Federal Ministry of the Interior, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-9500867-4-9 , pp. 104–127.
• Brigitte Halbmayr: “So the first imprint was: No war!” Hilde Zimmermann (née Wundsam) . In: Helga Amesberger, Brigitte Halbmayr: life stories . Verlag Promedia, Vienna 2001 (= Edition traces: From life and survival - ways to Ravensbrück. The women's concentration camp in memory , vol. 2); ISBN 3-85371-176-6 , pp. 257-263.
• Helga Amesberger, Brigitte Halbmayr: On life and survival - ways to Ravensbrück. The women's concentration camp in memory . Verlag Promedia, Vienna 2001 (= Edition traces); Volume 1: Documentation and Analysis , ISBN 3-85371-175-8 ; Volume 2: Life stories , ISBN 3-85371-176-6 .

Documentaries

• I have to do something about that. Portrait of the resistance fighter Hilde Zimmermann . Documentary by Tina Leisch , Austria 2010, length: 90 minutes, distribution / distribution: Sixpackfilm . (Contains articles from interviews conducted with Othmar Wundsam; film trailer is freely available as an online video stream at: www.erinnern.at → Film recommendations: I have to do something about it )

Web links

• Information about Othmar Wundsam from the Linkes Wort cultural initiative
• Information about Anna Wundsam ( memento of March 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) with photos from the identification file of the Gestapo Vienna, at the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (also contains information about Othmar Wundsam)
• Obituary for Othmar Wundsam from the KPÖ on Kaktus-Online

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Brigitte Halbmayr: “So the first coinage was: No war!” Hilde Zimmermann (née Wundsam) . In: Helga Amesberger u. a .: life stories . Vienna 2001, pp. 257–263.
2. ↑ Monika Horsky (Ed.): You have to talk about it. Schoolchildren ask concentration camp inmates . Ephelant-Verlag, Vienna 1988 (= volume 2 of documents, reports, analyzes ), ISBN 3-900766-01-0 , p. 209: Biographien . (Short biography of Hilde Zimmermann).
3. ^ ^{A b} Robert Eichet, Claudia Rois: Othmar Wundsam. (PDF; 1.7 MB) (No longer available online.) In: Donaustadt 1938–1945. Donaustädter Bezirkszeitung, p. 14 , formerly in the original ; Retrieved on April 19, 2010 (No. 5/2008).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Vrääth Öhner: I have to do something about that. Portrait of the resistance fighter Hilde Zimmermann. (No longer available online.) In: Film and Video Database. Austrian Independent (www.filmvideo.at), January 13, 2010, archived from the original on October 8, 2011 ; Retrieved on April 18, 2010 (brief description and technical film information). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Brigitte Halbmayr: "It was a matter of course that we helped." The parachute agents Albert Huttary and Josef Zettler and their supporters - a case study . In: Christine Schindler (Red.), Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (Ed.): Focus: Armed Resistance - Resistance in the Military . Münster 2009, pp. 176-204.
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Othmar Wundsam, b. 1922. In: Art in the Wurmbrandgasse - exhibition: Othmar Wundsam. Initiative “Art in Wurmbrandgasse”, Vienna-Stadlau, April 29, 2008, accessed on April 18, 2010 (short biography). 
7. ^ "Lobau and more." Inge Matysek - exhibition from May 20, 2010 to May 30, 2010. Citizens' initiative Rettet die Lobau , accessed on April 19, 2010 . 
8. ↑ Successful exhibitions with Othmar Wundsam in Stadlau. Initiative “Art in Wurmbrandgasse”, Vienna-Stadlau, November 26, 2008, accessed on April 19, 2010 . 
9. ↑ Wundsam exhibition - pictures part 2. Initiative “Art in the Wurmbrandgasse”, Vienna-Stadlau, June 9, 2008, accessed on April 19, 2010 . 
10. ↑ Helga Amesberger / Brigitte Halbmayr: From life and survival - ways to Ravensbrück. (No longer available online.) In: Wissenschaftliche Studien. Austrian Camp Community Ravensbrück & Friends (ÖLGRF), archived from the original on March 22, 2011 ; Retrieved April 19, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ^ Against the mind - an event on the subject of resistance and social work as an accomplice of National Socialism - Saturday, October 17, 2009, Amerlinghaus (Stiftgasse 8, 1070 Vienna) . Program announcement, BastA - Movement of alternative student concerns, University of Applied Sciences for Social Work Vienna.
12. ↑ The KPÖ mourns Othmar Wundsam . Obituary for Othmar Wundsam from the KPÖ on Kaktus-Online from December 28, 2014; accessed on December 29, 2014.