Engelbert MAIER was born in the Graz State Hospital on December 10, 1910 and was baptized Roman Catholic in Graz’ Holy Redeemer Church. He was the child of an unmarried servant from Salzburg named Maria Maier, who was working in Graz.
In the 1930s her son Engelbert was a patient in the »Leprosy house« on Salzburg’s Müllner Hauptstraße, before becoming a patient in the Salzburg State Asylum. He was one of the 82 men who were deported on April 17, 1941 to Hartheim Castle killing center where they were murdered.
As with all the other victims of the Nazis’ secret »T4«1 extermination program the death of the 30 year-old Engelbert MAIER was not recorded in Salzburg’s police registration records.
The June 9, 1941 burial of an urn for him in the local cemetery of Bischofshofen is documented,2 so it can be assumed that Engelbert’s mother Maria Maier lived there at the time.
1 It was called that because the »Euthanasie«-Central Office in Berlin was located at Tiergartenstraße 4.
Those primarily responsible for the murders of the sick in Salzburg were: Dr. Friedrich Rainer as Reich governor, Dr. Oskar Hausner as head of the district welfare office, Dr. Leo Wolfer as head of the state sanatorium and Dr. Heinrich Wolfer as head of the hereditary biology department of the state sanatorium (today the Christian Doppler Clinic).
2 Eight urns from the killing center in Hartheim were buried in the local cemetery in Bischofshofen. The names of the murdered are in the Bischofshofen parish death register: Johanna Brüggler (Stumbling block in Bischofshofen), Peter Buchner, Maria Anna Fercher, Maria Kraher, Gregor Landertinger, Engelbert Maier, Johann Pichl and Josef Schwarzenberger.
Sources
- War Crimes Records of the U.S. Judge Advocate Division Headquarters (The National Archives Washington DC)
- Parish registers of the Graz-Seckau Diocese and the Salzburg Archdiocese
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 13.09.2023 at Salzburg, Müllner Hauptstr. 6
