Walter Rafelsberger

Walter Viktor Ludwig Rafelsberger (born August 4, 1899 in Vienna ; † 1989 ) was an Austrian SS leader, as State Commissioner responsible for the regulation of personnel matters in the private sector and in commercial organizations of the economy and as a NSDAP regional economic advisor with the " Aryanization ”.

Life

Rafelsberger was the son of a railway official and councilor. He finished his school career at the humanistic grammar school in March 1917 with the Matura . He then moved to the Imperial and Royal Artillery and took from October 1917 to November 1918 at the Italian front in World War I in part. After the war he was discharged from the army as an ensign in the reserve. He then studied chemistry at the Technical University in Vienna and graduated in 1921 as a graduate engineer. He then worked in the private sector, including from 1930 at the Styrian steel works in Judenburg .

Rafelsberger had been a member of the NSDAP since May 1933 ( membership number 1,616,497). He also became a member of the SS (SS No. 293,726). During the time of Austrofascism he worked as an illegal NSDAP district leader in Judenburg in Styria and, since he had not actively participated in the July coup of 1934, as Gauleiter of Styria from September 1934 . He was arrested in 1935 because of National Socialist activities and, after the July Agreement in 1936, left for the German Reich . In Berlin , he headed a department of the iron and steel monitoring center .

After the " annexation of Austria " to the German Reich , from April 1938 he was State Commissioner for Private Sector and Head of the Property Transfer Office , which by 1939 dissolved or "Aryanized" around 26,000 small and medium-sized Jewish businesses . In October 1938, Rafelsberger submitted “Proposals for the effective implementation of de-Jewification” in which he recommended the establishment of three “Jewish assembly camps” for 10,000 people each. The Jews were supposed to be retrained for manual trades and to use their labor - as long as they were in the country - for charitable projects. Unmarried Jewish unemployed people could also be employed on selected construction sites on the Reichsautobahn . The construction of the camp and the cost of meals were to be financed from Jewish property and securities. However, the project failed because Hermann Göring and the Reich Ministry of Finance did not agree to this financing. His deputy was Hans Georg Bilgeri . In June 1939 Rafelsberger was relieved of his managerial position at the property office, and the “effectively” working property office was dissolved in November 1939. In this context, Rafelsberger was involved in the "greatest financial upheaval in history since the Counter-Reformation".

From 1939 Rafelsberger was then NSDAP district economic advisor for Vienna and State Commissioner for the regulation of personnel matters in the private sector and in commercial organizations of the economy. In this function he ensured that the interests of the NSDAP were asserted in the administrations and supervisory boards of private companies.

On April 20, 1941, he was appointed SS-Oberführer . In 1941 he became the economic policy officer in the Southeast. He was also appointed Vice President of the Southeast European Society for Economic Tasks. From autumn 1943 to September 1944 Rafelsberger was deputy head of the production office for consumer goods in Albert Speer's ministry .

After the end of the war he went into hiding and ran an arts and crafts workshop with Karl Heinrich Waggerl from autumn 1945 to February 1946 .

Rafelsberger was questioned several times during the Nuremberg Trials in 1947/48. He later worked in South Tyrol as a general agent for Jenbacher Motorenwerke .

Awards

Rafelsberger received several awards during the time of National Socialism , including the War Merit Cross I Class without swords, the War Merit Cross II Class without swords, the State and Blood Orders, the sword of honor of the RF SS and the skull ring of the SS.

Works

• The economic integration of the Ostmark in the greater German area. In: spatial research and spatial planning. 10/1938, pp. 481-487.
• Walter Rafelsberger among other things: Economic support in the Ostmark . German Right publisher, Berlin / Vienna 1939.

literature

• Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS generals. Himmler's reliable vassals. Hermagoras-Verlag, Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0578-4 .
• Gregor Spuhler among others: Aryanizations in Austria and their relation to Switzerland. Chronos Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-0340-0620-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . 2., updated Edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 477.
2. ↑ Maren Seliger: Sham parliamentarism in the Führer state. Lit-Verlag, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-50233-9 , p. 638. (Preview on Google books)
3. ^ ^{A b} Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals. Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 169f.
4. ↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Vol. 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939. Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p. 39.
5. ↑ Document VEJ 2/111 In: The persecution and murder ... , Vol. 2, p. 325.
6. ↑ The persecution and murder ... , Vol. 2, p. 39.
7. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals. Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 175.
8. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals. Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 171f.
9. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals. Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 172.
10. ↑ Publication Number: M-1019, Publication Title: Records of the United States Nuernberg War Crimes trials Interrogations, 1946-1949, Date Published: 1977 (PDF; 186 kB)