Sepp Kast

Grave of Sepp Kast (Marchegg Cemetery)

Josef "Sepp" Kast (born September 29, 1917 in Marchegg , Lower Austria ; † December 4, 1996 there ) was an Austrian fire department official. During World War II he was an officer in the Waffen SS .

Life

Josef Kast was born in Marchegg as the fourth of ten children. He first learned to be a waiter and signed up for the Waffen SS during the Second World War (SS no. 400.096). There Kast took part in an officers' course at the SS Junker School in Bad Tölz in 1941 and, after successfully passing the final exam, was promoted to SS Untersturmführer, which was equivalent to a lieutenant in the Wehrmacht. Despite being wounded six times, he remained in military service until the end of the war. In the summer of 1944, for example, he was appointed SS-Hauptsturmführer as commander of the second artillery regiment of the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” . After the war, Kast learned the chimney sweep trade .

In addition to his job, from 1950 he devoted himself constantly to the fire department , where he held numerous functions. On September 4, 1996, Kast died as a result of a traffic accident. He was buried in the cemetery of his hometown Marchegg.

Work in the fire department

In 1950, Josef Kast joined the Marchegg volunteer fire brigade and became the fire brigade's commander in 1953. Attention was drawn to higher levels when he was in command of the flood disaster in 1954.

But also at the Lower Austrian fire service competitions in Hainburg in 1958 , Kast was appointed as competition manager by the then regional commander Drexler , he also headed the competition and the fire service badge in gold from 1958 to 1976. In the following year he became the regional fire service council , a function that is the current district fire service commander was chosen for the Gänserndorf district. In 1961, Kast became competition director at the first international fire service competitions in Bad Godesberg .

In the following years, Josef Kast created the fire and rescue readiness (FuB readiness) , the predecessor of today's disaster relief service in the individual districts. In 1968 he became deputy fire brigade commander.

In 1976, after the death of Ferdinand Heger , Kast was elected as the new state fire brigade commander. In the Federal Fire Brigade Association he was also elected vice president of the association. Josef Kast became president two years later in 1978 (Bundesfeuerwehrtag in Wiener Neustadt as the successor to Ladislaus Widder). He was elected Vice President of the CTIF in 1981. In 1982 Kast resigned as state commander due to the age limit of 65, while he continued to work in the ÖBFV as president until 1988.

One of his great merits was the clarification of the insurance issue in the event of accidents in the fire service. Since then, such accidents have been counted as occupational accidents and the costs are borne by AUVA .

His grandson, Georg Schicker, has been the district fire brigade commander in the Gänserndorf district since 2006.

literature

• Lower Austria has a new state fire brigade commander !. In:  brand aus , year 1976, issue No. 9 (September) (LXXXIV. Year), p. 324. (Online at ANNO ). .
• Joachim Rössl (co-author): The great Lower Austrian fire service book. North edition . First edition. Brandstätter, Vienna (among others) 1986, ISBN 3-85447-178-5 .
• Josef Buchta : 140 years of the Lower Austrian Fire Brigade Association, 1869–2009 . Lower Austrian Fire Brigade Association. Tulln 2009, ISBN 978-3-9502364-7-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kremser fire brigade newspaper 01/1997
2. ^ Herbert Schanda: The Lower Austrian Fire Brigade Association and its functionaries. The most important designers of the fire brigade association and the change in its internal organization (1869–2009) . Lower Austrian Fire Brigade Studies , Volume 7, ZDB -ID 2289934-0 . Lower Austrian Fire Brigade Association, Tulln 2010, OBV , p. 245.
3. ↑ Brün Meyer (ed.): Seniority list of the Waffen-SS , status July 1, 1944, serial number 1.603
4. ↑ Robert Zauchinger: Lower Austria personally. Lower Austrians you should know… . Verlag Niederösterreichisches Pressehaus, St. Pölten / Vienna 1987, ISBN 3-85326-803-X .