Rudolf Wallner

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Rudolf Wallner (born April 1, 1903 ; died May 10, 1944 in Vienna ) was an Austrian civil servant and resistance fighter against National Socialism . He was sentenced to death by the Nazi regime and executed with the guillotine .

Life

Wallner was vice-inspector of the Wiener Elektrizitätswerke and was one of the leading functionaries of the Austrian freedom movement around Karl Lederer , a Catholic-conservative group. He was also able to persuade his fiancée Anna Hanika (1903–1988), an office clerk and former employee of the Christian Social Union, to participate in the resistance.

The Lederer group sought contact with the Greater Austrian freedom movement around Jakob Kastelic and with the group around Roman Karl Scholz . All three groups fell victim to the agent-provocateur activity of the castle actor Otto Hartmann in the summer of 1940 . Although the functionaries were arrested in 1940, the trial before the People's Court did not take place until March 3, 1944. "The more than three-year postponement of the trial of these Catholic-Legitimist resistance fighters was due to an order from Hitler."

The death penalty was pronounced against Wallner and his co-defendants Karl Lederer and Alfred Miegl . The co-defendant Anna Hanika had already been released in 1943 for health reasons and received a two-year prison sentence that had been served on remand. Hanika took over the custody of the younger son of Jakob Kastelic, whose mother had died and whose father was also executed, and later also of the older son. On May 10, 1944, fourteen resistance fighters were guillotined in the Vienna Regional Court , including Karl Lederer, Alfred Miegl, Roman Karl Scholz and Rudolf Wallner.

In mid-July 1945, the mother of Hans Zimmerl , who was also executed on the same day, found out "that there were still around 250 corpses of people executed in the Anatomical Institute of the University of Vienna, including probably those of the 9 executed comrades in the Scholz - Lederer - Kastelic group." The head of anatomy was not cooperative, it took several months of efforts on the part of the relatives to agnosticate the corpses on the one hand and to be allowed to bury them on the other. Only the threat of publicity and the involvement of political functionaries made the venture possible. Two of the corpses lay in metal boxes, often with the wrong labels. Often the heads were also kept separately. Rudolf Wallner's head could not be found, his torso could be identified by his fiancée due to a scar after a hernia operation and a broken ankle. On November 3, 1945 Rudolf Wallner was buried in a grave of the Kalasantin congregation at the Baumgartner Friedhof .

According to the post-war justice system, his body was exhumed in 1947, transferred to Villach and buried there.

Commemoration

Three memorial plaques bear the name of the resistance fighter:

  • Memorial plaque for fourteen members of the Catholic resistance movement against the Nazi regime, cloister of the Minorite Monastery in Vienna (1949)
  • Memorial plaque for six resistance fighters against National Socialism in the management building of the Vienna E-Werke, Marianengasse 4–6
  • Memorial plaque in the former execution room of the Vienna Regional Court .

literature

  • Peter Csendes (Ed.): Resistance and persecution in Vienna 1934–1945. A documentation. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1975.
  • Herbert Exenberger : Commemoration and reminders in Vienna 1934–1945. Memorials to resistance and persecution, exile, liberation. Deuticke, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-216-30330-6 .
  • Anna Hanika : Memories ... As a visitor to the house of death. In: The freedom fighter . Organ of the Fighters for Austria's Freedom, No. 3, September 1994.
  • Anna Hanika - a woman's life in the shadow of the guillotine. In: The freedom fighter. Organ of the Fighters for Austria's Freedom, No. 4, December 1994, p. 6 f.
  • Wolfgang Neugebauer : The Austrian Resistance 1938–1945. Steinbauer, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902494-28-3 .
  • University of Vienna: Hanika, Anna: clerk and resistance fighter , accessed on July 25, 2015.
  • Josef Windisch : Austrian freedom movement Kastelic - Lederer - Scholz. In: The freedom fighter. Organ of the Fighters for Austria's Freedom, No. 2, June 1984, p. 7.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolfgang Neugebauer: The Austrian Resistance 1938–1945. Steinbauer, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902494-28-3 .
  2. ↑ Brigitte Bailer , Wolfgang Maderthaner , Kurt Scholz (eds.): "The execution proceeded without any special features". Executions in Vienna, 1938-1945 . Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2013, p. 51-53 ( online [PDF]).
  3. ↑ a b Postwar Justice , accessed on July 25, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Wallner, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian civil servant and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1903
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1944
Place of death Vienna