Robert Geher

Robert Geher (born September 20, 1963 ; † May 21, 1994 in Vienna ) was an Austrian sociologist and chronicler of the underworld .

life and work

Geher completed his studies of sociology at the University of Vienna in 1990 with a dissertation on the Brenner circle. His doctoral supervisor was Roland Girtler . Then Geher devoted himself to field research in Vienna's underworld using the method of participatory observation . According to self-testimony, she gave him a stomach stitch and a graze shot. He played billiards and learned boxing, demonstrated for prostitutes and - because of his tattoos - was mistaken for a pimp , founded Austria's first boxing magazine and for a short time also published a paper for prostitutes .

The result of his research was published in book form in 1993 with the title Wiener Blut or Die Ehre der Strizzis . The author succeeds in creating a central work, easily readable, in hard, fast-paced language, "earthy, incapacitated, fast-paced, personal". It spans a broad arc from the beginnings of the Second Republic in 1945 to the present day, outlines Heinrich Gross , an eyesore of Austria's non-appraisal, to which Geher kept an archive, describes unsolved criminal cases, the scene, crime scenes, people involved and the sparse Publications.

Geher's biographer Marcus J. Oswald describes the book as a standard work in the subculture of the regional courts and the connecting rooms in 2008 , but criticizes the fact that Geher (a) saw the Viennese underworld as a "homogeneous counterculture" that it would not be, and (b) insolently copied have. Oswald uncovered two plagiarisms : Geher plagiarized an article in his book by Peter Michael Lingens (about Heinz Sobota's book Der Minusmann ) and by Reinhard Tramontana (about Vienna's Praterstrasse ), both of which appeared in the magazine profil . Word equality 80 or 95%. Incidentally, as editor-in-chief of profil, Lingens published a series of articles by Gehers in the 1980s.

The book was presented in the strip bar Maxim , with a broad spectrum of guests, from the security director and the doctoral supervisor to Gerti Senger and Adi Hirschal to numerous lightly dressed women and the line filo stove and friend of the author, Freddy Rabak, who just got out of the Prison had been released. The response to Geher's book was just as widespread. In the Wiener Zeitung it was once celebrated as "a gorgeous book about the Viennese underworld", another time dismissed as "thoughtless".

“Here an author wrote about the“ Viennese milieu ”who had a guard, a degree, an antique chin and a head of hair that would have passed him off as the disco king. Someone who did strength training, was tattooed, looked elegant and educated, and kept the head teacher’s index finger crooked. Such book authors come once every decades. Now Geher was there. That was in 1993. "

- Marcus J. Oswald : Red light in Vienna and the world

On March 8, 1994 there was a Club 2 for the book. The author discussed there with a ports poet , a brothel operators , the Minister for Families , a barmaid and Udo Jesionek . At this point, Geher himself was already visibly marked by his cocaine consumption.

On May 22, 1994, Robert Geher and his wife Iris were found dead in their apartment:

“There was a bullet stuck in the doctoral certificate on the wall. Another bullet pierced the head of his wife, who was sitting on the couch. A bullet stuck in Geher's head. A female witness ran out of the apartment on time. After the fact, speculation continued. His computer was gone and only came back empty. Colonel Franz Kössler, then head of forensic intelligence, still remembers today that the crime scene looked so that people knew about it. They found heaps of cocaine in the apartment ... They found two dead people in the apartment and a trail of blood in the hallway that led upstairs. The criminalists feared the worst, namely a third death. But the trace was an escape trace of the third person, a woman from the Far East who was in the apartment during the crime. "

- Marcus J. Oswald : Red light in Vienna and the world

The murder weapon was a 38 Smith & Wesson . The homicide squad could not find any traces of outside influence; apparently it was a matter of spouse murder with subsequent suicide in the affect. However, after the death of his son, the sociologist's father expressed the conviction that Geher and his wife had been murdered. He had contracts for more books. A few days before his death, Geher would have finished the last chapter of his next book - Gallows Birds . It was titled: It doesn't always have to be suicide. The content would have been the mysterious deaths of Karl Lütgendorf and Heribert Apfalter , and his son intended to name the perpetrators.

Galgenvögel actually appeared posthumously in the same year - also in the S. edition - as Geher's second book. The few remaining notes of the deceased were reconstructed by friends. In the present version, the book contains small essays , short works that have already appeared in newspapers, articles on the history of criminalistics in Vienna, again on Heinrich Gross , on fingerprinting and murder considered a fine art by Thomas De Quincey .

"Crime stories are moral ventilation and valve devices of a culture."

- Robert Geher : Gallows Birds (1994)

In 1996 Edition S. closed . The book ended up on sale.

Robert Geher was buried in Vienna at the Inzersdorfer Friedhof (group 16, row 8, number 6).

Publications

• The "Brenner" circle. A contribution to the history of the cultural magazine . Vienna: University of Vienna, dissertation 1990.
• Wiener Blut or The Honor of the Strizzis. A history of the Viennese underworld after 1945 . Vienna: Verlag der Österreichische Staatsdruckerei (Edition S) 1993.
• Gallows birds - You can't get those in the dark. Unsolved criminal cases after 1945 . From the estate, ed. by Manfred A. Schmid. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichische Staatsdruckerei (Edition S) 1994.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marcus J. Oswald in his obituary
2. ↑ Manfred A. Schmid, 2002: "Books in the witness stand" ( Memento from November 1, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Martin Luksan, 2004: "Violent perpetrators with a rebel image" ( Memento from April 12, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Austrian for: Prison literature.
5. ↑ In a comment on Oswald's obituary it is said that the woman does not come from the Far East, but from Jamaica .
6. ^ Marcus J. Oswald: Red light in Vienna and the world
7. ↑ Cocaine, weapons, gallows birds (article in NEWS)

Web links

• Obituary by Marcus J. Oswald , accessed February 20, 2011