Katharina WAGNER was born on October 16, 1901 in Salzburg and baptized in the Roman Catholic Church. She was one of three children of the married couple Theresia Wagner née Schmidt, and Johann Wagner, who sometimes time traded in scrap iron at 3 Kaigasse where their children were born.
The mother of the three children died of cancer at the age of 40, and their father died shortly after the First World War. So, the children grew up in poor conditions.
Katharina, the youngest of the siblings, became a resident of the Konradinum Eugendorf, a nursing home run by the Order of the »Sisters of Mercy of Saint Vincent de Paul« some 12 kilometers north of Salzburg.
The Order was forcibly dissolved by the Nazi-regime, and in November 1938 twenty patients from Eugendorf, including Katharina WAGNER, were forcibly relocated to St. Anton in Bruck an der Glocknerstraße some 90 kilometers south of Salzburg. Then in April 1939 they were moved 110 kilometers further west to Mariatal near Kramsach where the »Sisters of Mercy« from Salzburg had another nursing home.
It is now well known that Anna Bertha KÖNIGSEGG, the administrator of the Salzburg Province of the Order, protested with great courage against the Nazi murder campaign that is still wrongly called a »euthanasia« campaign [euthanasia means mercy killing, and there was nothing merciful about the brutal killing methods they employed].
The 39-year-old Katharina WAGNER was one of 61 patients1 who were deported from Mariatal to the Hartheim Castle killing center near Linz on May 23, 1941 where they were all murdered.
As with all of the victims of the Nazi’s secret »T4«1 extermination campaign, the death of 39-year old Katharina WAGNER was not recorded in the police registration files in Salzburg.
Katharina’s two siblings, Johann and Margarethe, had gotten married by then and they both survived the years of terror along with their spouses.
1 According to previous research, eight of the 61 victims were from the city of Salzburg: Katharina WAGNER, Wilhelm HÖPFLINGER, Rudolf ORTNER, Franziska SPECKINGER, Rupert ZANINELLI, Maria Kalhamer, Therese Raaber and Georg Schwaighofer.
2 It was called »T4« because the »euthanasia« campaign’s headquarters was located at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin.
Those primarily responsible in Salzburg for the murder of the handicapped 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 Genetic Biology Department of the State Sanatorium (now called the Christian Doppler Clinic).
Sources
- Birth- and Marriage register of the Salzburg Archdiocese
- Police registration and local citizenship files in the Salzburg city and state archives
- Study and memorial center at Schloss Hartheim
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid at Salzburg, Kaigasse 3
