Marie RAUTER was born in Salzburg on December 31, 1900 and was the youngest of the three children of the Catholic couple Katharina and Josef RAUTER. The family had local citizenship rights in Salzburg and lived in the Riedenburg neighborhood.

Marie’s father was a butcher who dies in 1926 and her mother died in 1940. Marie worked for her brother as a chambermaid and never married.

On October 26 1939 Marie RAUTER became a patient in the Schloss Schernberg sanatorium maintained by the Merciful Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in Schwarzach (in the Pongau region of Salzburg). Despite the »most courageous protest of the Church in Salzburg« (Ernst Hanisch) Schloss Schernberg was targeted by the Nazi regime’s »Euthenasia« program along with the Salzburg State Asylum.

In fact it was one woman, not the Church who displayed courage: the Catholic nun Anna Bertha Königsegg who was the Visitor (Inspector) for the Merciful Sister’s Salzburg Province. When Anna Bertha Königsegg was arrested by the Gestapo on April 16, 1941 the Schloss Schernberg patients lost their protector, though some of her co-workers were able to save 17 patients by hiding them in the woods before the Nazis came to take them all away.

Forty year old Marie RAUTER was one of the 115 patients who were deported from Schloss Schernberg to the Hartheim Castle killing center near Linz on April 21, 1941 – where they were all murdered. As with all the other victims of the Nazis’ secret »T4«1 program, Marie RAUTER’s death was not recorded in the Salzburg police registration files.

Her sister Katharina died in Salzburg at age 73, as did her brother Franz (who was a butcher like his father) at age 87.

1 It was called »T4« because its Berlin headquarters were located at Tiergartenstraße 4.
Those mainly 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 (now the Christian Doppler Clinic).

Sources

  • Salzburg city archives
  • Schloss Hartheim Learning and Remembrance Center
Author: Gert Kerschbaumer
Translation: Stan Nadel

Stumbling Stone
Laid 18.08.2016 at Salzburg, Neutorstraße 28

<p>HIER WOHNTE<br />
MARIE RAUTER<br />
JG. 1900<br />
DEPORTIERT 21.4.1941<br />
SCHLOSS HARTHEIM<br />
ERMORDET 1941</p>
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer

All stumbling stones at Neutorstraße 28