Karl Burian | |
---|---|
Died | 13 March 1944 |
Cause of death | Execution |
Nationality | Austrian/Austro-Hungarian |
Known for | Military strategizing, monarchist activism, and Nazi resistance |
Hauptmann Karl Burian (died 13 March 1944) was an Austrian captain for Austria-Hungary during World War I, activist for the restoration of the Austrian monarchy, and an important figure of the Austrian resistance against Nazi Germany. After Germany's anschluss of the country in March 1938, Burian created a resistance group, the Legitimist Central Committee, which planned to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna, the Hotel Metropole. Later that year, he attempted to give German mobilization plans to a contact who was secretly a Gestapo spy. He was sentenced to five years in prison, and executed in Vienna in 1944.
Hauptmann [1] Karl Burian was an Austrian captain for Austria-Hungary during World War I, and a legitimist. Legitimists were those who wanted the reinstation of pre-World War I monarchies. After the war, Burian created the monarchist combat organization Ostara, [2] and was later in the Legitimist academic fraternity Corps de Ottonen. [3] In the late 1930s, legitimists rallied around the son of the late Austro-Hungarian emperor Charles I, Otto von Hapsburg, who had been in exile in Steenokkerzeel, Belgium. Their attachment to Austria-Hungary "became more insistent as National Socialism displayed more disregard for the separate Austria identity." [4]
Nazi Germany annexed Austria on 12 March 1938, and Hapsburg pleaded for armed resistance in a Paris speech on 15 March. The Corps de Ottonen was dissolved that month, and three days later, fifty of its members went underground. The previous senior president, Willi Klein, emigrated to Paris, and Burian took his place. Burian created the Legitimist Central Committee. Leading Committee members were Josef Wotypka, Burian's deputy, Rochus Kozak, in charge of "organizational affairs", Julius Kretschmer, in charge of propaganda, Ludwig Krausz-Wienner, in charge of "ideological problems", and Josef Krinninger, their courier. The Committee communicated with the Hebra and Zemljak legitimist groups, and was supplied with funds from abroad. They communicated with Hapsburg through the former Greek Consul in Vienna, Michael Georg Koimzoglu, and other associates of Krinninger's in Switzerland and Czechoslovakia. [5]
In May, the assets of Hotel Metropole in Vienna were seized by the Gestapo, who made it their headquarters. Burian's resistance group planned to blow the hotel up. One of the hotel's expropriated co-proprietors and a legitimist, Karl Freidiger, came to the group with the hotel's floor plans. The bombing plan, and Burian's direct contact with Hapsburg, made Burian a "particularly dangerous" threat to the Gestapo. [1]
A former member of Corps de Ottonen, Dr. Othmar Slavik, who was then living in Solothurn, Switzerland, arranged a meeting for 27 August between Burian and a supposed Polish intelligence agent, to whom Burian would supply German mobilization plans. [5] The man was actually Gestapo spy Josef Materna, who was also an Abwehr informant in their Vienna office. [1] The Gestapo and Abwehr Vienna office had been exchanging information. [6] Burian was arrested on 13 October 1938, while leaving the coffeehouse where Materna had given him military documents. Other members of the group were arrested later that month. [5] He was interned for five years on charges of espionage, [7] sentenced to death on 9 December 1943, and executed in Vienna on 13 March 1944. [1]
The Geheime Staatspolizei, abbreviated Gestapo, was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
Otto von Habsburg was the last crown prince of Austria-Hungary from 1916 until the dissolution of the empire in November 1918. In 1922, he became the pretender to the former thrones, head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, and sovereign of the Order of the Golden Fleece, upon the death of his father. He resigned as Sovereign of the Golden Fleece in 2000 and as head of the Imperial House in 2007.
Tyrol is an Austrian federal state. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical Princely County of Tyrol. It is a constituent part of the present-day Euroregion Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino. The capital of Tyrol is Innsbruck.
Günther Schifter was an Austrian journalist, radio presenter and record collector.
Karl Josef Seitz was an Austrian politician of the Social Democratic Workers' Party. He served as member of the Imperial Council, President of the National Council and Mayor of Vienna.
The Austrian resistance was launched in response to the rise of the fascists across Europe and, more specifically, to the Anschluss in 1938 and resulting occupation of Austria by Germany.
Währing is the 18th district of Vienna and lies in northwestern Vienna on the edge of the Vienna Woods. It was formed in 1892 from the unification of the older suburbs of Währing, Weinhaus, Gersthof, Pötzleinsdorf, Neustift am Walde and Salmannsdorf. In 1938 Neustift am Walde and Salmannsdorf were annexed to the neighbouring 19th District (Döbling).
Hotel Metropole was a hotel in Vienna, Austria that was constructed in 1871–73. It was destroyed during World War II after serving as the Vienna headquarters of the Gestapo from 1938. The address was Morzinplatz, in the 1st District Innere Stadt.
Rudolf Graf von Marogna-Redwitz was a Colonel of the Wehrmacht, member of the German Resistance in Nazi Germany and the 20 July Plot against Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia.
Reichenau an der Rax is a market town in the Austrian state of Lower Austria, situated at the foot of the Rax mountain range on the Schwarza river, a headstream of the Leitha.
Heinrich Maier was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, pedagogue, philosopher and a member of the Austrian resistance, who was executed as the last victim of Hitler's regime in Vienna.
Großweikersdorf is a municipality in the district of Tulln in the Austrian state of Lower Austria.
Karl Wolfgang Franz Count Motesiczky was an Austrian student of medicine and psychoanalysis and an active opponent of Nazism. After the German annexation of Austria, Motesiczky used his manor in Hinterbrühl to shelter Jews and other persecuted persons. He was arrested by the Gestapo on October 13, 1942, for helping Jews to flee to Switzerland. Following his deportation he perished in Auschwitz concentration camp. Posthumously, he was honoured as a Righteous Among the Nations.
The Austrian SS was that portion of the Schutzstaffel (SS) membership from Austria. The term and title was used unofficially. They were never officially recognized as a separate branch of the SS. Austrian SS members were seen as regular personnel and they served in every branch of the SS.
Peenemünde is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. It is part of the Amt of Usedom-Nord. The community is known for the Peenemünde Army Research Center, where the world's first functional large-scale liquid-propellant rocket, the V-2, was developed.
Franz Josef Huber was an SS functionary who was a police and security service official in both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Huber joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and worked closely with Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller. After the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Huber was posted to Vienna, where he was appointed chief of the Security Police (SiPo) and Gestapo for Vienna, the "Lower Danube" and "Upper Danube" regions. He was responsible for mass deportations of Jews from the area. After the war ended, Huber never served any prison time. He was employed by the West German Federal Intelligence Service from 1955–64. He died in Munich in 1975.
Jonny Moser was an Austrian historian of the Holocaust and a survivor of the Holocaust.
Karl Biedermann was the commander of the Austrian Heimwehr, Major of Wehrmacht and a member of German resistance to Nazism.
Marie Schönfeld was an Austrian government worker ("Regierungsassistentin") who became an anti-Nazi resistance activist.
The Order of St. George – a European Order of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, or simply Order of Saint George, is a dynastic order of chivalry and thus a house order of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, the former Imperial and Royal House of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg monarchy, the Empire of Austria, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Crown lands of Bohemia and Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia and further nations.