Paul Heigl

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Paul Heigl (born April 29, 1887 in Marburg an der Drau , Austria-Hungary , † April 8, 1945 in Vienna ) was an Austrian librarian . From March 1938 until his suicide he was general director of the Austrian National Library .

Life

He was the son of the high school teacher Gustav Heigl (1851-1918) and his wife Berta. His father changed jobs several times, so that Paul Heigl grew up in different cities (Innsbruck, Trient and Trieste). In 1905 he passed the Abitur, did military service as a one-year volunteer and then began studying history and geography at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz . Since October 1906 he was a member of the Corps Joannea . In 1910 he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD .

Heigl trained as an archivist at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research and passed the exam in the summer of 1912. In May 1914 he married Margareta Mayer (* 1893 in Graz), with whom he later had two children. After the First World War , in which he participated as a soldier, he worked as a librarian at the University Library of the University of Vienna . In 1927 he published under the pseudonym Friedrich Hergeth at Leopold Stocker Verlag an anti-Semitic pamphlet entitled From the Workshop of Freemasons and Jews in Post-War Austria . In May 1933 he joined the NSDAP and the SS as an illegal worker . In August 1934 he was arrested for high treason and served six months in prison in Vienna. At the beginning of July 1935 he came to Germany as a political refugee and in September initially took up a position at the University Library in Greifswald. Shortly afterwards he moved to the Prussian State Library in Berlin.

On March 12, 1938, he was ordered by Arthur Seyß-Inquart to Vienna, where he was to replace the previous General Director of the Austrian National Library, Josef Bick . Bick, who had held the post since 1926, was arrested on March 16. Heigl initially took over the provisional management of the library and was officially appointed general director in November. He immediately began with organizational measures in the interests of the National Socialists. A total of 12 employees were dismissed or forced into retirement for racist or political reasons. Since he did not trust the staff at first, Heigl asked three librarians from Berlin, later only NSDAP members were hired. "National Socialist Literature" was introduced as a new subject in library training. Jews were banned from using the library. As library director, Heigl played a key role in the appropriation of confiscated books in the years that followed. It is assumed that at least 150,000 printed matter and 45,000 objects in the collection ended up illegally in the library.

In April 1941 he was also appointed commissioner for the academic libraries in occupied Yugoslavia , and in this function he undertook several business trips to Zagreb and Belgrade. In November 1942 Heigl was promoted to Standartenführer of the SS. In addition to his work as a librarian, he was a member of the advisory board of the “Research Department Jewish Issues ” at the Nazi Reich Institute for the History of New Germany . He also performed spy services for the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD). On April 8, 1945, in view of the imminent collapse of the German Reich, he and his wife committed suicide by taking a sleeping pill. His successor on June 28 was his predecessor, Josef Bick , who had been dismissed seven years earlier .

Works (selection)

  • From the workshop of Freemasons and Jews in Austria in the post-war period: A study (Graz 1927) published by Leopold Stocker Verlag

literature

  • Murray G. Hall , Christina Köstner: "... to get hold of all sorts of things for the national library ..." An Austrian institution during the Nazi era. Böhlau, Weimar et al. 2006, ISBN 3-205-77504-X .
  • Christina Köstner: Book theft in the Balkans. The National Library of Vienna and the Belgrade publisher Geca Kon. In: Regine Dehnel (ed.): Jewish book ownership as looted property. Second Hanover Symposium. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-465-03448-1 , pp. 96-106 ( Journal of Libraries and Bibliography. Special Issue 88).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 49 , 145
  2. ^ Dissertation: The diplomatic relations between Milan and Germany during the reign of Frederick III. .
  3. ^ Stolen books ( Memento from June 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 238.
personal data
SURNAME Heigl, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hergeth, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian librarian
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Maribor
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 1945
Place of death Vienna