Rudolf Prikryl

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Rudolf Prikryl (born March 21, 1896 in Vienna ; † June 13, 1965 there ) was provisionally appointed mayor of Vienna from April 13 to April 16, 1945 . Viennese history knows him as the so-called three-day mayor .

Life

Prikryl grew up in Vienna- Alsergrund and after several broken apprenticeships learned to be a plumber . During the First World War he served as a soldier and married for the first time, but soon divorced. In the 1920s he opened a plumbing business in Vienna and joined the Republican Protection Association . In 1929 he married for the second time.

During the February fighting in 1934 , his hand was injured. During the Austro-Fascist period he was active underground with the Revolutionary Socialists , but was arrested in June 1935 and interned in the Wöllersdorf detention camp for illegally distributing the Arbeiter-Zeitung and producing revolutionary leaflets . He signed a letter of loyalty in August and was released under strict police control.

In debt, his commercial license was about to be pledged when Prikryl traveled to Spain in early 1937, where he and other Austrians in the XI. International brigade fought against the Franquists . In 1938 he settled in Paris with his wife. There he was arrested by the French after the Second World War and released shortly before the German invasion and then imprisoned by the Gestapo for 16 months. From October 1943 he lived with his wife again in Vienna.

When the Second World War ended in Vienna in 1945, he was allegedly accidentally recognized by a Soviet officer who had fought with him in Spain and unceremoniously appointed Mayor of Vienna. This version of the events was only circulated afterwards by Prikryl himself, there are no independent witnesses for it. The exact reasons why and how Prikryl came to this office are not known to this day. In April 1945 he had contact for the first time with the resistance group O5 , whose headquarters in the Palais Auersperg became increasingly the meeting place for civilian resistance fighters from April 7th. For the Russian occupiers , the O5 was the main point of contact immediately after the end of the war, and so several Russian officers came to Palais Auersperg on April 11 and held a meeting there with those present. According to his own statements, Prikryl is said to have been appointed provisional mayor. On the same day he started his work in the rooms of the palace, his foster daughter Elisabeth Albinger brought a typewriter and supported him as a secretary. On April 13th he moved to the Vienna City Hall . He had the Social Democrat Anton Weber come to him, to whom he introduced himself as Vice Mayor, and asked him to immediately take over the office of mayor at the request of the Red Army. Weber refused, however, because he wanted to discuss this with his party first.

Prikryl had no political powers, only to take on bureaucratic tasks. Most of all, he was busy issuing permits of various kinds. On April 17th he was replaced as mayor by Theodor Körner . At that time, he was probably posing as a representative of the communists, but according to the KPÖ he was never a party member.

Prikryl, meanwhile divorced, married three more times and built up a plumbing business, which however perished. He died impoverished and was buried in an honorary grave (section E16, number 332) of the City of Vienna in the urn grove of the Simmering fire hall .

literature

  • Karl Fischer: Phantom Prikryl. The person of Rudolf Prikryl, the legend of the “three-day mayor” and Theodor Körner's assumption of office as mayor of Vienna. In: Studies on Viennese History. Yearbook of the Association for the History of the City of Vienna. Volume 51. Vienna 1995

Web links

predecessor Office successor
Hanns Blaschke Mayor of Vienna
1945 - 1945 		Theodor Körner
personal data
SURNAME Prikryl, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first mayor of Vienna after the Second World War: "3-day mayor"
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1965
Place of death Vienna