Wilhelm Hebra

Wilhelm Hebra (until 1919 Wilhelm von Hebra , born October 11, 1885 in Vienna , † October 27, 1944 in Munich ) was a writer and Austrian monarchist who fought against National Socialism.

Life

Hebra came from an old Viennese family. His father Hans von Hebra and his grandfather Ferdinand von Hebra were medicine professors in Vienna. The maternal grandmother was Jewish.

Wilhelm von Hebra studied law and political science at the University of Vienna and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . After serving as a one-year volunteer in the Joint Army , he fought on the Eastern Front and in the Mountain War 1915–1918 . As a monarchist , he remained a supporter of the Habsburgs even after the war in the First Republic . For them he advertised in fiction and political writings, for them he agitated as a speaker in public meetings. In 1936 he joined the legitimist Reichsbund der Österreicher . In 1937 he had to temporarily stop these activities due to illness. In essays, he dealt with the importance of Austria's military independence.

He refused the "Anschluss" of Austria because the Habsburgs no longer had any prospect of returning to the throne of the Habsburg monarchy . Like other monarchists, he began building an illegal organization in 1938. This was joined by other legitimists as well as members with other ideological attitudes. On the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss on July 25, 1938, they distributed around 1,000 leaflets for the first time . The Sudeten crisis prompted the production of further leaflets calling on railway workers to paralyze rail operations through passive resistance and thus prevent the threatening war. Since the Munich Agreement for the time being banned the danger of war, Hebra destroyed the leaflets. From an organizational point of view, the group remained in the sights of the group; sabotage devices were tried out on wagons and attempts were made to recruit new members from among Reichsbahn employees . In the fall of 1938, Hebra made another appeal. In it it said:

“Austria is not a part of the German Reich, but a country conquered by lies and violence, held in place by tyranny, deprived of all rights, tormented and tormented. We Austrians are different from the other Germans through history and culture, in spirit and disposition, in character and way of life, contrary to the Prussians. We are a nation of our own: the Austrian nation; ... "

- William of Hebra

The message, of which several hundred copies were distributed, was signed with “Östfrei” (Austria free). Immediately after the riots at the archbishop's palace , Hebra also tried to win over church circles for resistance. For example, he handed over a document to Cathedral Chapter Jakob Weinbacher in which the previous excesses were sarcastically commented on. Hebra had the illusory hope that Cardinal Theodor Innitzer would read it from the pulpit. In the Minorite Monastery in Vienna he found sympathizers and possibly also members for his resistance group. In any case, rooms in the monastery could be used for meetings. However, as early as the summer of 1938, informers from the Gestapo and SD were assigned to the group .

As early as March 1939, the Gestapo arrested 20 members of the Östfrei organization, including Hebra himself. It took three years for the People's Court to hear the moratorium on Adolf Hitler . Sentenced to death on November 16, 1943 for “preparing for high treason and favoring the enemy”, Hebra was executed another year later in the Stadelheim prison. He was buried in the cemetery at Perlacher Forst .

See also

• History of Austria # First Republic and Austrofascism (1918–1938)
• Austria in the time of National Socialism

literature

• Hans Schafranek : Resistance and Treason. Gestapo spies in the anti-fascist underground 1938–1945. Czernin, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-7076-0622-5 , pp. 180–198.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Irene Stuiber: Executed in Munich-Stadelheim: Victims of National Socialist persecution in the cemetery at Perlacher Forst . Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2004, ISBN 978-3-8334-0733-8 , pp. 51 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
2. ^ Wilhelm Hebra in the Find a Grave database . Accessed March 28, 2018 (English).