Socialist trial

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The socialist trial in 1936 was the culmination of the persecution of the illegal workers' movement at the time of Austrofascism after the Austrian February fights of 1934 .

The main hearing began on March 16, 1936 in the Vienna Regional Court , at which 28 functionaries of the Revolutionary Socialists, who were underground after the ban on the Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1934, and two Communist party functionaries were charged with high treason . The defendants included the Social Democrats Karl Hans Sailer , Maria Emhart , Franz Jonas , Bruno Kreisky , Stefan Wirlandner and Anton Proksch as well as the communist Franz Honner .

The process also met with great interest abroad. The lead defender was Heinrich Steinitz . Not least because of the international media coverage, the verdicts on March 24th were comparatively mild. The two main defendants, Karl Hans Sailer and Maria Emhart, for whom the public prosecutor had requested the death penalty, were sentenced to 20 and 18 months in prison, respectively. Bruno Kreisky was sentenced to 12 months in prison and Franz Jonas was acquitted. The negotiation protocol of the socialist trial is lost. The most important source is therefore the brochure Revolutionary Socialists in Court , written anonymously by Otto Leichter , of which 20,000 copies were illegally distributed in Austria.

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