Karl REITMAIER, born on 26 June 1913 in Linz and baptized a Catholic, was the son of Juliana, née Nindl, and Karl Reitmaier, who was an unskilled worker.
The family had lived in Salzburg since the 1920s, most recently in the Itzling district. Karl’s mother Juliana died here in the early 1930s.
Her son Karl, who learned the tailoring trade in Salzburg, came into conflict with the law as a young man. He committed thefts. After his prison sentence, he returned to live with his father, who worked as a house servant in Salzburg.
In 1940, the year of the war, Karl REITMAIER had to enlist in the German Wehrmacht. He was a member of the 15th Company of the Mountain Infantry Regiment 143, which was part of the 6th Mountain Division and had been deployed in Finland, Lapland and Norway since the fall of 1941.
His violent end can be reconstructed on the basis of a report of »war casualties«: »Rifleman« Karl REITMAIER deserted during a home leave in the spring of 1942. He thus refused further front operations in the National Socialist war of aggression and extermination.
He managed to go into hiding in Salzburg for a few weeks. However, in his emergency situation, he committed a burglary and was arrested by the police.
Karl REITMAIER was then sentenced to death by a court martial at the Salzburg provincial court for »desertion« and shot on June 27, 1942 at the military shooting range in Glanegg near Salzburg at the age of 29.
His body was buried anonymously in the municipal cemetery of the city of Salzburg. Afterwards, his father received a message about the »war loss«.
The war judges who passed death sentences at the Salzburg Provincial Court are mostly unknown because they were able to destroy most of their files towards the end of the war.
As a result of the destruction of files, however, most of the victims of wartime justice, including Karl REITMAIER, do not appear in the documentation Resistance and Persecution in Salzburg 1934-1945 published in 1991.
It should also be noted that deserters from the German Wehrmacht were not recognized as »victims of the struggle for a free, democratic Austria« in liberated Austria.
After Austria’s liberation, it took decades before the deserters were rehabilitated: with the Austrian National Council’s Repeal and Rehabilitation Act, which came into force on December 1, 2009.
The »Stolperstein« laid for Karl REITMAIER is the first in Austria for a deserter from the German Wehrmacht.
Sources
- Archives of the Diocese of Linz and the Archdiocese of Salzburg (registers)
- City and provincial archives (civil registers)
- 6th Mountain Division, Mountain Infantry Regiment 143 (war casualty report)
Translation: DeepL
Stumbling Stone
Laid 22.03.2012 at Salzburg, Plainstraße 74
The symbol of the Nazis' civil and military courts: A sword and scales of justice combined with the Nazi Party eagle and swastika
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer
Memorial to the victims of the Salzburg courts martial in Glanegg (erected on 30 September 2011 on the initiative of Governor Gabi Burgstaller)Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer