Tobias Portschy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tobias Portschy (before 1938)

Tobias Portschy (born September 5, 1905 in Unterschützen ; † March 2, 1996 in Rechnitz ) was an Austrian lawyer and National Socialist politician .

Life

Youth and education

In his youth, Portschy attended primary school in Unterschützen and the Protestant grammar school in Oberschützen . He then studied law in Vienna and Göttingen . 1937 doctorate he became Dr. iur. During his time in Göttingen , Portschy came into contact with National Socialism for the first time .

Career in the NSDAP and the NS state

In 1931 Portschy joined the NSDAP ( membership number 511.418). As a party official in 1933 he was given the post of district leader for southern Burgenland . From 1935 to March 11, 1938, Portschy served as an illegal Gauleiter . On December 4, 1937, after a plea before the Oberwart District Court in connection with his political activities, he was arrested and released in February 1938 on the basis of the Berchtesgaden Agreement .

After the " annexation " of Austria to the German Reich , Portschy took over the Burgenland provincial government without bloodshed : until the dissolution of Burgenland on October 15, 1938, which was divided between the Reichsgau Niederdonau and Styria during the " Third Reich " , he took over the agendas of the provincial governor ( March 11 to October 15, 1938 ). In 1938, Portschy also submitted a memorandum entitled “ The Gypsy Question ”, which was clearly influenced by the Nuremberg race laws . In this he called, among other things, to subject the “Gypsy” minority to a school ban and to compulsory sterilization and to send them to labor camps. He could after the Second World War personally issued orders for the deportation of Jews , Roma and Sinti from the Burgenland not be detected.

From May 24, 1938 to May 8, 1945 Portschy finally served as deputy Gauleiter of Styria. In addition, Portschy had been an SS member from 1940 (SS no. 365.175), and from 1940 onwards with the rank of SS Oberführer . Furthermore, he was awarded the so-called " Blood Order ".

post war period

After the end of the war, Portschy was taken prisoner by the Allies: He was subsequently held in internment camps from 1945 to 1947 . In 1949 he was sentenced to fifteen years in heavy prison for his work during the Nazi era . The Graz public prosecutor, who was familiar with Portschy's propaganda pamphlet "The Gypsy Question," did not conduct any investigations in this direction. As early as 1951, he was pardoned by the Austrian Federal President Theodor Körner ( SPÖ ) . In the course of the "NS amnesty 1957" the remaining sentence was checked and the conviction was declared canceled.

After his release, he ran an electronics wholesaler in Graz. After that he lived in Rechnitz, where he was president of the supervisory board of the savings and credit bank. He was also chairman of the local tourism association. Numerous state politicians from Burgenland maintained good contacts with him, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1958, the University of Vienna re-awarded him his doctorate, which had been revoked in the course of denazification .

From 1959 to the summer of 1991 he was a member of the FPÖ . Shortly before leaving the party, Portschy gave a speech at an FPÖ event for FPÖ politician Wolfgang Rauter , who had justified Jörg Haider's statement on the proper employment policy during the Nazi era and had come under criticism for it.

In Egon Humer's film “Guilt and Memory” from 1992, Portschy commented on his memorandum “ The Gypsy Question ”: “Freeloaders are freeloaders”, which is why proceedings against him were initiated because of re- activation, but not concluded because of his death.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Overview of the NSDAP Gaue, the Gauleiter and the Deputy Gauleiter 1933–1945 , Zukunft-bendet-erinnerung.de, February 13, 2020
  2. ^ Nazi crimes against Roma and Sinti in the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance
  3. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 470
  4. ^ A b Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, pp. 165f.
personal data
SURNAME Portschy, Tobias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer and politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Protect
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1996
Place of death Rechnitz