Ferdinand KÖCK was born in Salzburg on June 9, 1882. He was the fifth of seven children of a pair of Catholic postal workers, Mathias Köck who died in 1894 and his wife Anna (née Moosbrucker) who died in 1914.
All the members of this large family had city citizenship rights in Salzburg under the old Austrian Heimatrecht laws.
The five sisters married and lived in other places, but the two brothers remained in Salzburg.
Wilhelm, who was the older of the two brothers, followed their parents into the post office and got married.
Ferdinand didn’t learn any trade, so he worked as an unskilled worker or day laborer and remained single. Under the circumstances he changed jobs and dwellings frequently.
His last private residence was as a subtenant of the widow Anna Hellermann in the old Lodron Primogeniture-Palace which belonged at that point to the city.
In 1932 Ferdinand KÖCK was admitted to the State Asylum and by 1941 he was considered permanently disabled, so on April 17, 1941 he was shipped off to the Hartheim Castle killing center near Linz where he was murdered.
As with all victims of the National Socialist secret action »T4«1 , the death of the 58-year-old man is not recorded in the police registry of the city of Salzburg.
His older brother Wilhelm died in Salzburg in 1947.
1 »T4«: named after the »euthanasia« headquarters in Berlin, Tiergartenstraße 4.
Main persons responsible for the murders of the sick in Salzburg: Dr. Friedrich Rainer as Reichsstatthalter, Dr. Oskar Hausner as head of the Gaufürsorgeamt, Dr. Leo Wolfer as head of the Landesheilanstalt and Dr. Heinrich Wolfer as head of the hereditary biology department of the Landesheilanstalt (today Christian Doppler Clinic).
Sources
- Salzburg City Archives
- Schloss Hartheim Study and Memorial Center
Research: Gerda Brücher
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 22.03.2012 at Salzburg, Mirabellplatz 1
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer