Schattendorf judgment

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In 1927, the Schattendorf judgment triggered the so- called July Revolt in Austria . It is named after the town of Schattendorf in Burgenland .

On January 30, 1927, the Social Democratic Workers' Party of German-Austria held a meeting in the small Burgenland town, which was fired upon from an inn by members of the Front Fighter Association of German-Austria ( "Frontkampfer" ), resulting in two deaths and five injuries. The Austrian lawyer Walter Riehl (head of the National Socialist group Deutschsozialer Verein , among others ) defended the perpetrators in the Schattendorf trial that followed . The perpetrators were tried by a jury acquitted, which was seen as a scandal and subsequently led to violent riots in Vienna.

prehistory

In Austria in the 1920s there were repeated attacks by nationalist right-wing groups and associations (“ Heimatschutz ”). In the heated atmosphere of the post-war period, these attacks, which were mostly aimed at the left-wing parties ( Social Democrats , Communists ) and interest groups or their supporters (the working class), found open support among the bourgeoisie, which in these associations supported “law and order " saw. Although there were usually witnesses and evidence of these raids, the perpetrators were often acquitted or sentenced to mild sentences, to the acclaim of the bourgeois press.

Burgenland was threatened by the semi-fascist regime of Hungary's ruling Miklós Horthy . It was already agreed that neither the Schutzbund nor the Heimwehr would be allowed there , so as not to provide the Hungarians with a means of reclaiming Burgenland. But the front-line fighters formed up, and so the Social Democrats set up a local Schutzbund organization. As early as 1926 there were repeated brawls, disruptions to meetings and marches by front-line fighters and the Schutzbund in Burgenland.

January 30, 1927

Schattendorf's murder weapon in the Museum of Military History .

On January 30, 1927, front-line fighters held a meeting in the small Burgenland border town of Schattendorf, where the majority of the population was social democratic. When the Schutzbund learned about this, they held their meeting on the same day. The Moser inn became the headquarters of the Schutzbund, the Tscharmann inn, 500 meters away, that of the front-line fighters. The local front-line troops were clearly in the minority at a ratio of 30:70 and therefore enlisted support from the neighboring communities. The two organizations finally met at the Schattendorf train station. The Schutzbündler were able to drive out the front-line fighters who were supposed to come to support them and march victoriously to Schattendorf. There were assaults in the Gasthof Tscharmann.

With the words "Down with the front-line fighters, down with the Christian dogs, down with the monarchist murderers," the members of the Schutzbund broke into the inn. The Tscharmann brothers and Johann Pinter, three front-line fighters, shot out of the barred bedroom window of the house onto the street when the members of the Schutzbund had already passed. The Croatian war invalid Matthias Csmarits (also: Zmaritsch) and the six-year-old Josef Grössing (great-uncle of Josef Ostermayer ) were killed and five more people were injured. On February 2, 1927, the day of the funeral of the two dead, workers across Austria went on strike for fifteen minutes. The funeral of the two in their hometowns of Klingenbach and Schattendorf was accompanied by a kilometer-long funeral procession. However, Josef Grössing's remains were paved over in 1968 and are now outside the cemetery and away from the later erected memorial grave behind the sanitary facilities.

Memorial to Josef Groessing

process and judgement

The course of the trial was followed with suspense by the public, because murders of workers had already been treated as trivial offenses and the murderers had been punished lightly or not at all.

The main questions in the trial related to the intent to kill or seriously injure the victims. In the case of intent to murder, the penalty was 10 to 20 years in prison or life imprisonment . For the fact that they intentionally injured the two people seriously, they still faced 5 years in prison. The three accused Josef Tscharmann (1896-1972), Hieronymus Tscharmann (1905-1994) and Johann Pinter (1901-1985) tried from the start to portray the acts as self -defence. The question of whether the members of the Schutzbund fired small-calibre revolvers could not be finally clarified during the trial. Because the witness statements only partially matched the statements of the defendants, it was very difficult for the jury to form an opinion. It was also not clear which of the accused had fired the fatal shots.

The district commission had to decide on the jury list after the law change in 1919/1920. In this case, however, one could not speak of any political coloring. At the trial, which began on July 5, 1927, the jury was composed as follows: four workers , three civil servants , a housewife , two farmers and two tradesmen . The prosecutor pleaded guilty, but in the end neither of the two main questions could be answered in the affirmative by the necessary two-thirds majority (the jury had voted 7-5 for a guilty verdict, missing the two-thirds majority by one vote). Thus, on July 14, 1927, the judge announced the acquittal of the accused. The alleged murder was presented as self-defense and the perpetrators as "honorable men".

effects

Newspaper reports about this verdict triggered demonstrations in downtown Vienna , during which the Palace of Justice was set on fire. The use of weapons by the police against the protesters ended in a massacre with 89 dead protesters, four dead security guards and one dead detective. After the fire in the Palace of Justice , belief in a fair and impartial judiciary in Austria was shaken and the Heimwehr movement strengthened.

Museum reception

The Austrian Civil War is documented in detail in Vienna's Museum of Military History . This exhibition also includes Schattendorf's murder weapon, a hunting rifle adapted from an Austrian infantry weapon. Furthermore, uniforms of the Republican Protection League , the Home Guard and the Ostmark Storm Troops are on display. Singed files from the Palace of Justice dated July 18, 1927 and one of the field guns of 1918, with which the army fired on the municipal buildings in Vienna , round off the permanent exhibition “Republic and Dictatorship” in the Museum of Military History.

literary processing

The Austrian author Heimito von Doderer (1896–1966) made the “Schattendorf murders” and the events of the fire in the Vienna Palace of Justice into a frequently reflected motif of his nested made storylines.

literature

web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Quoted from Botz (1983), p. 109.
  2. ↑ Josef Groessing. In: dasrotewien.at – web dictionary of the Viennese social democracy. SPÖ Vienna (ed.)
  3. ↑ http://www.wien.gv.at/kultur/chronik/gedendenden2008/archiv/schicksalstag.html
  4. ↑ A village that made history. Local inspection, where 85 years ago political riots claimed two lives. In: Courier . December 12, 2012, retrieved May 4, 2016 .
  5. ↑ The Shadow Village Killers Acquitted!. In:  Arbeiter-Zeitung , No. 193/1927 (XL. Volume), July 15, 1927, p. 1, top right. (online at ANNO ).Template:ANNO/Maintenance/aze
  6. ↑ Military History Museum / Military History Institute (ed.): The Military History Museum in the Vienna Arsenal . Verlag Militaria , Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902551-69-6 , p. 135