Introduction
Austria’s way of dealing with its National Socialist past is characterized by myths. Until the 1980s, the most powerful of these was the myth that Austria was the first victim of Hitler’s aggression.Footnote 1 This narrative, which has been extensively studied in research under the heading “victim thesis,” has visibly eroded since the late 1980s and has given way to a revised thesis of “‘shared guilt,” as it has also been prominently formulated by Austrian politicians. According to this narrative, the Austrian population, as part of the Nazi state, was complicit in the crimes of the Third Reich.Footnote 2 As a result, the Austrian population lost its collective victim status, but at the same time, new victim narratives emerged.Footnote 3 At the center of this article is one of these new victim narratives, the so-called “Trümmerfrauen” myth, the idea that the reconstruction of war-ravaged Austria, and in particular the removal of rubble and debris from the streets of Austria’s capital Vienna, was done primarily through the voluntary work of women. In this narrative, the female population has been collectively portrayed as a victim of the war and its destruction. However, what caused this destruction and what the Austrian population did before the end of the war have been ignored. This victim narrative is quite similar to others in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), where it has been deconstructed as a commemorative and political myth.Footnote 4 Unlike in the two Germanys, however, the subject of Trümmerfrauen arose comparatively late in Austria. While this idea can already be observed from the 1950s onward in both the GDR and the FRG, it did not emerge in Austria until the late 1980s and early 1990s.Footnote 5 However, this new victim narrative was accompanied from the very beginning by a serious defect. It was even clearer in Austria than in the two German states that there was virtually no voluntary work either by men or by women—at least in the capital Vienna, where the destruction was particularly severe. In fact, the manual debris removal was not done by volunteers but mostly by conscripted former National Socialists. The active knowledge of these so-called “emergency works” (“Notstandsarbeiten”), understood as “atonement work” (“Sühnearbeit”), left no room for narratives about heroic individuals who voluntarily removed the immediate war rubble at the expense of their own lives. Only when there was no longer any active debate about this work did a Trümmerfrauen myth emerge in Austria. Since the crimes of National Socialism were, and often still are, predominantly associated with male perpetrators, women seemed to be much better suited to this figure of the apolitical heroine of the reconstruction period. At the same time, due to the collective victim status of the entire Austrian population, there was no need to emphasize Austrian women as a separate victim group.
The aim of this study is to shed light on the two different poles of the Austrian Trümmerfrauen: on the one hand, the actual work done in 1945 and 1946 and its contemporary reception, and on the other hand, its later mnemonic and gender-specific mystification. In this article, we will answer two fundamental questions based on source material that have hardly been analyzed until nowFootnote 6: Who were the people who carried out the so-called “Trümmerarbeit” (“rubble work”) in Vienna immediately after the end of the war? How was this Trümmerarbeit remembered, and what shifts in the politics of remembrance took place within this sphere?
Our study focuses on the city of Vienna. There are several reasons for this. First, the city of Vienna is the place where a specifically Austrian Trümmerfrauen myth became manifest: this is where the physical monument to them is located, the erection of which in 2018 was the initial inspiration for our research into the topic and will be examined in more detail later in this article. Vienna is also where the images that are repeatedly used in public debate to visualize the Trümmerfrauen—whether in school textbooks, exhibitions, TV reports, or illustrated books—were created. The images of Austrian Trümmerfrauen practically always show Viennese Trümmerfrauen.Footnote 7 Some images that in fact show Trümmerfrauen in Germany are nonetheless labeled as “Viennese Trümmerfrauen.”Footnote 8 Contemporary witnesses also explicitly report that they only noticed Trümmerfrauen in Vienna and thus associate the myth with the city itself.Footnote 9 At the same time, the sources for the capital are by far the most extensive, as we will explain below. In a future project, however, we would also like to look at other Austrian cities in comparison. And, last but not least, Vienna was the place in Austria where war damage to the physical infrastructure was most severe.
The basis for this study is an archival collection stored in the Vienna City and Provincial Archives that we have systematically processed and analyzed as part of an extensive research project. The genesis of this material itself indicates the ambivalent emergence of the Austrian Trümmerfrauen myth.
On 24 August 1945, the provisional Austrian federal government enacted the “Constitutional Law on the Performance of Emergency Work in the Area of the City of Vienna.”Footnote 10 This law was intended to create a general duty to work to remove debris in the Vienna city area, as there was apparently little volunteer labor available. Evidence for the lack of voluntary workers is found, for example, in correspondence between Vienna’s then-mayor, Theodor Körner, and the Austrian federal government, in which the mayor complains about the lack of willingness among the Viennese population to remove the war damage.Footnote 11 The shortage of voluntary workers led, among other things, to the Allied authorities repeatedly carrying out arbitrary recruitments and sometimes using randomly selected passersby to clear the rubble. The constitutional law of 24 August was intended to remedy the situation. Even though this law provided for a general duty to work, it clearly stated that former members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)—both men and women—were to be specifically sought for this work and expected to work more hours.Footnote 12
Unfortunately, the records of this work are only partially preserved and do not allow for any systematic conclusions to be drawn.Footnote 13 However, numerous persons who were called upon to do this work in 1945 and 1946 subsequently sued the city of Vienna and the Republic of Austria for compensation and received a positive judgment in 1951 from the Supreme Court of the Republic of Austria.Footnote 14 According to this ruling, work that exceeded the maximum working time of 120 hours stipulated in the 1945 constitutional law was to be compensated. This ruling reveals a central paradigm shift in Austria’s approach to the Nazi era in the immediate postwar period. Whereas the 1945 law was filled with a strong antifascist spirit and the conviction that the National Socialists were to be held accountable for the damage the war had left, by 1951, that spirit had mostly evaporated, and these same National Socialists were deemed worthy of compensation. Between 1947 and 1951, numerous denazification measures were gradually withdrawn, and the former National Socialists were reintegrated into Austrian society.Footnote 15 The court-ordered compensation payments were, therefore, only one part of a whole series of such measures, which, on the one hand, resulted from the global political situation and, on the other, were considered necessary for the reconstruction of the Austrian economy and democratic politics.Footnote 16
Applications for compensation for 7,095 workers are archived in the Vienna City and Provincial Archives and form the source basis for this article.Footnote 17 These applications for compensation allow space for statements to be made about the nature and extent of the work performed, as well as about the applicants themselves. Considering the narrative of the female helpers, the gender ratio might be the biggest surprise: of 7,095 “Trümmerarbeiter” who applied for compensation, only 45 percent were women, and 55 percent were men. In view of this, the term “Trümmerarbeiter” seems to be a more adequate description of the group’s real historical gender proportion than the term “Trümmerfrauen,” which suggests an exclusively female group of laborers. Additionally, their applications allow for analyses of the applicants’ argumentation and justification strategies, as the correspondence was often accompanied by surprisingly extensive letters in which the applicants sometimes complained bitterly about the injustice of being called upon to do this work. Of course, it must be noted that these sources can provide information only on those who applied for compensation. The people who worked in this capacity in 1945 and 1946 but did not apply for compensation cannot be identified. Nevertheless, the applications for compensation on their own offer a much more detailed impression of the Notstandsarbeiten and Vienna’s reconstruction in general in 1945 and 1946 that goes far beyond what previous research on the subject has uncovered. The aim of this article is, therefore, to systematically record the work carried out in 1945 and 1946 and the people who performed it. Building on this, we examine how this work was perceived and how a Trümmerfrauen myth emerged from it. Our study is located at the interface of contemporary history, memory studies, and public history and aims to close an urgent research gap in Austrian history. It places this decidedly national history within the context of the history of fascism and, in particular, Nazi history in Europe and uses a concrete example to show how a mythologizing shift of history takes place in the social processes of reinterpretation and reactualization. In this transformation, the legally mandated atonement work of former National Socialists, carried out by both men and women, became the Trümmerfrauen myth, with a focus exclusively on women. And while the immediate postwar period was indeed a time of great hardship for women, their contribution to clearing the rubble, at least in Vienna, was by no means as great as is implied in the later mythologization.Footnote 18
The Work in Vienna in 1945 and 1946
Even though Vienna was spared large-scale destruction compared to many German cities, the war nonetheless caused enormous damage to the city. In its list of war damages, the administrative report of the city of Vienna for the years 1945 to 1947 lists a total of 100,000 uninhabitable flats, 135 destroyed bridges, and massive damage to the city’s sewer system.Footnote 19 The most pressing problem, however, was the estimated 850,000 cubic meters of rubble and debris in the city’s streets, which made the initial reconstruction work considerably more difficult. Unlike, for example, the technically demanding work required on the sewer network, skilled workers were not necessarily needed to clear the debris. This is evident in the quantitative evaluation of the works carried out during the Notstandsarbeiten. Based on the mostly very detailed descriptions of the work performed in the applicants’ request letters for compensation, a range of information about the work processes and labor performed by the so-called “Trümmerarbeiter” during the debris removal work becomes apparent.
According to an information sheet from the district office, a typical day of an “emergency worker” was as follows: Every worker was given a registration card that served as confirmation of employment for the receipt of ration cards. Work generally began at 7:00 in the morning and lasted until 17:00, with a one-hour lunch break. The registration cards were collected by an officer in charge before the work began and handed out again at the end of the working day. If someone who was obliged by the district office to carry out Notstandsarbeit did not show up at their assigned place of work, they were picked up from their homes. If the missing workers were neither at home nor at work, they were transferred to a detention camp for eight days. When the individual in question had departed from their residence within a period of 48 hours and was unable to be located, they were evicted, and their residence was turned over to the Vienna municipality.Footnote 20 Therefore, refusing to work could have very serious consequences.
Furthermore, inadequate or obstructive work could result in a worker—male or female—being sent to a detention camp. A total of 208 of the people in our records were temporarily detained in these police camps. Based on the source material, thirty-one of these detention camps can be identified across Vienna. In addition to people who refused to work, political prisoners who were, for example, detained for illegal party membership prior to the Anschluss in 1938 were imprisoned in these camps. Some detainees were forced to work on-site in the camps, while others were ordered to work in sites under supervision and were taken back to the camp at the end of the workday.
In general, the activities performed during this mandatory labor were not limited to clearing rubble from the streets. The numerous descriptions show that a wide range of work carried out in Vienna was considered “emergency work.” Although the majority of those called up reported that they were tasked with clearing rubble and cleaning up the streets, other activities, such as cemetery services, cleaning or laundry work, kitchen jobs, and administrative tasks, such as running errands for deployment sites or even the exhumation of corpses, were also described. Concerning the types of labor, a clear gender-specific division regarding the tasks can be observed, especially for supposed “female” activities. While women and men were almost equally involved in clearing rubble from the streets, it was mainly women who were deployed for cleaning jobs in buildings, doing laundry work, or working as domestic servants. As shown in Figure 1, 74 percent of the 455 people who stated they had carried out cleaning work were women. Laundry work was also almost exclusively carried out by women, with a share of 95 percent. Similarly, only women stated that they had been deployed as servants.
Figure 1. Type of work carried out by gender, female dominated.
Regarding physically demanding work, the difference between women and men was not as pronounced. Nevertheless, a clear division of labor by gender can also be identified in this respect. Of the 83 people who stated that they had been involved in construction work, around 34 percent were women and 66 percent were men—as shown in Figure 2. For other heavier construction, work such as roofing, road construction, and bridge building, however, the proportion of men was significantly higher, at around 80 percent. In exhumations and cemetery work, men were almost exclusively involved.
Figure 2. Type of work carried out by gender, male dominated.
The deployment sites were generally organized by district, and workers were assigned to their respective district sites. Specific task forces were also created during the Notstandsarbeiten, for example, the “Einsatzstelle für Lehrer” (task force for teachers) and the so-called “Bergungstrupp” (salvage section) of the Municipal Department 11 for Culture, Public Education, and Homeland Care. It is clear from the attached correspondence that the “teacher assignment” often meant being able to carry out lighter work in the course of restoring schools and to avoid “the need to work on lower and more unpleasant tasks.”Footnote 21
Those who worked in the aforementioned Bergungstrupp were usually involved in tasks such as restoring cultural institutions like museums or libraries and recovering cultural assets. The people working in this capacity included academic painters who were tasked with restoring paintings, for example. However, when they joined the Bergungstrupp, they had to sign a declaration of renunciation waiving any remuneration for their work. With reference to this waiver, the people working in the Bergungstrupp were later denied remuneration in almost all cases of applications submitted.
Regarding the severity of the work to be carried out and former Nazi membership, contrary to our expectations, no correlation could be established by evaluating the data. Except for the Bergungstrupp, no pattern could be identified as to whom was called upon to do the heavier work and why.
Payment of Compensation and Number of Work Hours Performed
As our analysis of the records shows, the range of reported working hours was extremely wide, extending from seven to more than 8,333 hours. Therefore, the average working time of 385 hours in total is distorted by outliers; the median of 105 hours provides a better estimation of the hours worked. Moreover, in almost all cases, there was a significant difference between the number of hours reported by the applicants, which was often implausibly high, and the hours confirmed by the municipal authorities. For example, if the work declared could not be confirmed by corresponding registration cards, by appearing on work lists or by witness statements, no remuneration was paid. In addition, no remuneration was paid for work performed due to compulsory deployment during the months of October and November 1945—when a mandatory labor service was ordered by mayor Theodor Körner—amounting to 120 hours a month or 240 hours over two months.Footnote 22
The amount of remuneration was set at an hourly rate of 0.67 schilling for women and 0.84 schilling for men. In comparison, the average hourly net wage in 1952 was approximately five schillings.Footnote 23 The varying hourly rates for men and women also applied if married couples performed the same work at the same work site at the same time. This difference cannot be explained as a surcharge for the heavy work performed by men but rather as pay discrimination against female workers. The net amount paid out was calculated in accordance with the “Constitutional Law on the Performance of Emergency Work” after the deduction of social security contributions and wage tax, but including interest, with a 100 percent public holiday supplement and a 50–100 percent Sunday supplement. However, the public holiday and Sunday supplements were de facto never paid out, and the fixed interest rate of 4 percent was also not disbursed in most cases, unless legal counsel formally requested the interest payment. On average, 474.98 schillings were paid out per person, which corresponds to a purchasing power-adjusted value of around 367 euros. According to the distribution of hours worked, an average of 550 schillings was paid to men and an average of around 380 schillings to women.
In total, the city of Vienna paid out 1,857,178 schillings to people who were obliged to carry out emergency work, the majority of whom, as has been illustrated, were former NSDAP members. Converted to the present, this corresponds to €1,437,010.
Party Membership and Social Structure of the Trümmerarbeiter
In addition to a detailed cover letter, the files usually contain work cards and a filled-out form from the magistrate authorizing payment of the requested amount. This form shows the date of birth, place of residence, and marital status of the respective applicant. The enclosed work cards also display the profession and, in some cases, information about the party membership of the person concerned. Occasionally, information about party membership is also mentioned by the applicants. Based on this information, it is possible to trace an outline of the social structure of the Trümmerarbeiter involved.
First, the quantitative analysis of the available data in the 7,095 files shows that a large proportion of the recorded Trümmerarbeiter self-declared as NSDAP members. In total, 44.3 percent of all persons stated that they were either “Parteigenossen” (party members), “Parteianwärter” (party candidates), or family members of a former NSDAP member. The breakdown is as follows: 38.9 percent stated they had been former NSDAP members, and 4 percent reported they had been party candidates. Only 1.5 percent of the recorded persons stated that they had been obliged to do emergency work as a close relative of an NSDAP member. It is important to note that party membership is not evident in most applications. Of those who made a statement about their party membership, only 4 percent explicitly stated that they were not NSDAP members, party candidates, or relatives of a party member. In addition, an examination of those persons whose affiliation to the party was unknown in the entries of the “NS-Registrierunglisten” (NS-Registration Lists) and the so-called “Gauakten” revealed that the number of party members is estimated to be much higher, at least 86 percent.Footnote 24 With regard to gender distribution, it is clear that the narrative of the hard-working women who heroically rebuilt Vienna after the war, which remains today, cannot be confirmed by the data we collected. As noted above, of the 7,095 Trümmerarbeiter, 55 percent were men and 45 percent were women. Former male NSDAP members were therefore overrepresented among the Trümmerarbeiter. The typical Austrian “Trümmerfrau” was most likely a male former National Socialist.
Breaking down the group of registered Trümmerarbeiter by occupational group, it becomes evident that their social structure was similar to that of the NSDAP.
Public servants made up the largest proportion of NSDAP members in 1945, with a share of 23 percent. They were represented among the Trümmerarbeiter with a similarly high proportion of 26 percent. Of these, around 10 percent worked in the education sector. Salaried employees were the second largest group within the NSDAP, with a share of 19 percent. Their share of the Trümmerarbeiter, on the other hand, was only 14 percent, which was 8 percent lower than the share of white-collar workers in the NSDAP. In addition, around 22 percent of the Trümmerarbeiter were workers or craftsmen, which does not differ greatly from the 19 percent share of blue-collar workers among NSDAP members as a whole. Self-employed academics and freelance artists, as well as self-employed tradespeople, were found to a lesser extent. Overall, there was an overrepresentation of the petite bourgeoisie among both the NSDAP and the Trümmerarbeiter. The proportion of housewives was 13 percent; among the NSDAP in 1945 and 1946, they are represented to a similar extent, at 12 percent. Unemployed people and those out of service, which mainly included former civil servants who were relieved of their office after the war had ended, made up 2 percent of the group. It is noticeable, but unsurprising, that 75 percent of those Austrians dismissed from their jobs after the defeat in 1945 were former members of the NSDAP. It can therefore be assumed that some of the people recorded as pensioners were also removed from office early in 1945. By way of illustration, the 15 percent of people who stated that they were retired included a large proportion of former federal civil servants as well as 23 percent of retired teachers. Statements such as that of Max B., that he was “dismissed without notice and without entitlement to retire on June 6, 1945” are not uncommon in their files.Footnote 26
As can be observed in Table 1, Botz (see footnote 20) does not provide the proportional share of retirees and unemployed in his analysis because they are not categorized as an occupational group. However, considering that these groups comprised a great many of the recorded Trümmerarbeiter with no records regarding their previous occupations, they are considered a social group within our analysis. Due to the similar distribution, this comparison seems valid. In Table 2, the professions are broken down by gender.
Table 1. Social structure of the Trümmerarbeiter and the NSDAPFootnote 25
Table 2. Social structure broken down by gender
The average age of those people whose birth year is recorded was 48 years, with a variance of just under ten years. At 44 years, the average age of women was six years below that of men, who were on average 50 years old. In comparison, the average age of NSDAP members in 1941 was around 40 years, which, if we add five years, is only just below the average age of the Trümmerarbeiter. Regarding the marital status of the people surveyed, the available data shows that the majority (78 percent) of all those who stated their marital status were married. Only 3 percent stated that they were divorced, 12 percent that they were single, and 7 percent that they were widowed. At 62 percent to 94 percent, the proportion of married women was strikingly lower than that of married men. Correspondingly, the proportion of single women who did rubble work was far higher than that of single men, at 21 percent to 4 percent. It can be assumed that the wives in question were less likely to be called upon if they had children to care for and a household to run, as they were exempt from the labor service by constitutional law if they had at least one child younger than 10 years.
Collective Biography
The group of 7,095 workers who applied for compensation to the Magistrate’s Department 2 consisted predominantly of the so-called “Minderbelastete” (“less incriminated”). An amendment to the Austrian “Verbotsgesetz” (Prohibition Act) was enacted on 8 May 1945,Footnote 27 and the term “less incriminated” was added in February 1947. The term “incriminated” was used to describe functionaries in the National Socialist apparatus as well as members and functionaries of the Schutzstaffel, Sturmabteilung, Gestapo, and so-called illegals.
In contrast, ordinary party members who held no or a low function within the NSDAP and its affiliated associations were classified as “less incriminated.” There was a huge apparatus of organizations associated with the NSDAP. In this respect, a distinction was made between the “Gliederungen” (branches) and the “angeschlossene Verbände” (affiliated associations). The party’s branches included the paramilitary SA, the SS, the NSKK (National Socialist Motor Corps), the HJ (Hitler Youth), the NSF (National Socialist Women’s League), the NSD (National Socialist German Students’ Union), and the NSDB (National Socialist German Lecturers League). The number of members in the branches was limited, and their members were considered extremely committed and loyal to the National Socialist ideology.Footnote 28 In contrast, anyone who was considered a “Volksgenosse”Footnote 29 had access to the affiliated associations. These included all professional organizations, such as the National Socialist German Doctors’ League, but also the NSV (National Socialist Welfare Organization) and the DAF (German Labor Front). This gigantic party and organizational apparatus made it possible to involve large sections of society. At the outbreak of the war in 1939, 69 million of the total population of 76.5 million people in the German Reich were registered in these organizations.Footnote 30
In view of these figures, it seems no surprise that numerous Trümmerarbeiter held positions in the NSDAP apparatus. However, until now, there has been no source-based information on the biographies and, if applicable, political party involvement of the Trümmerfrauen during the National Socialist era. Thus, the source material makes it possible for the first time to create a so-called collective biography.Footnote 31 Two exemplary case studies of individuals who were employed to clear rubble in Vienna after the end of the war are presented below. As the gender ratio among the applicants was almost equally balanced, one case study portrays a female worker whereas the other presents a male worker. Of course, these cases cannot be regarded as representative of the entire group, and they are deliberately selected biographies. Nevertheless, they counter the unspecific generational term Trümmerfrauen with concrete examples and biographies showing that this group of actors were not voluntary workers, but rather mostly National Socialists who had paved the way for National Socialism in Vienna and supported and profited from its ideology. These case studies reveal that the narrative of the apolitical Trümmerfrau is a construction meant to alleviate Austria’s historical guilt and suppress the memory of its society’s large-scale involvement in National Socialism.
The majority of those who held a position in the party apparatus were lower-level employees of the NSDAP, its branches, and affiliated associations. Most were employees of local groups; for example, many men held the position of a “Blockleiter” (block leader) of the NSDAP or the NSV. The women were mainly employees and block leaders of the NSF and NSV local groupsFootnote 32 or worked as typists for the party. Nevertheless, to dismiss these comparatively low-level positions within the party and organizational apparatus as irrelevant would be to fail to recognize that it was precisely the lowest level within the party apparatus that formed the “basis of the dictatorship.”Footnote 33 Rather, the local level must be understood as the “basic condition for involving people in the various processes for implementing the ideological objectives of the Nazi state.”Footnote 34 For example, according to the NSDAP, only those who were considered the “best party comrades of the local group”Footnote 35 could become block leaders. Importantly, it was the block leaders who were tasked to keep a close eye on the mood of the residents and report back to the local NSDAP group if necessary, and who, according to a 1938 party regulation, were supposed to observe the “attitude and activities”Footnote 36 of the Jewish residents.
Therese K. is an example of this commitment at the local level. She was born in Prenning in Styria in 1893, baptized Roman Catholic, and completed eight grades of primary school. She moved to Vienna in 1916 where she first worked as a nanny, later marrying Karl K., with whom she had a child. On 1 July 1938, she joined the women’s association “Deutsches Frauenwerk,” and was later admitted to the NSDAP and the NSF in 1940. She soon became the “deputy head of the department for public and household economics” of the local group “Innstraße” in the 20th district of Vienna. In February 1942, she was promoted to department head and was then officially considered a “political leader.”Footnote 37 On 20 April 1944, Therese K. took the oath of office to the Führer, swearing her “unbreakable loyalty” and “unconditional obedience” to Adolf Hitler.
Contrary to the narrative of an apolitical women’s organization that developed after the end of the war, the members of the NSF understood their work as a service to the “Volksgemeinschaft” just as much as their male colleagues. The NSF saw its task in the “ideological, political, and cultural education of German women in the spirit of the National Socialist world view.”Footnote 38 In fact, Hitler described the NSF in 1937 as a “supplement to the male combat organization.”Footnote 39 Therefore, the NSF must be understood in relation to the National Socialist ideology of gender, according to which the preservation of the Volksgemeinschaft, as well as the fight against its enemies, especially the Jews, was to be guaranteed by a principle based on the division of labor, in which both sexes fulfilled the tasks that “naturally” fell to their sex.Footnote 40
In the NSF’s press organ, the NS-Frauen-Warte, antisemitic articles appeared alongside instructions for housewives and mothers, in which, for example, the November pogroms were affirmed as a fight against “Jewish world domination.”Footnote 41 The narrative that women were oppressed under National Socialism and reduced to their role as mothers persists to this day. However, an examination of Nazi womankind reveals that National Socialism was, in fact, an “opportunity for women.”Footnote 42 Although they could not influence party policy, they were given political scope and power that had not previously existed for women.
From 13 May to 9 November 1945, Therese K. was obliged to do clean-up work in Vienna. In 1951, she made a claim for compensation and was paid 459.29 schillings by the municipality of Vienna.
Although the majority of the Trümmerarbeiter were simple party members and low-ranking officials like Therese K., there were numerous “Alte Kämpfer” (“old fighters”)Footnote 43 and so-called illegals among them who had paved the way for National Socialism in Austria, especially since the beginning of the 1930s. Significantly, among these were people who worked for those institutions that planned and carried out the systematic disenfranchisement, expropriation, persecution, and murder of European Jews, as well as other “racial” and political opponents.
Another example that clearly contrasts the common perception of the allegedly voluntary, apolitical female “worker” is the case of Leopold R. In May 1940, the then fifty-year-old was transferred as a police officer to the Reichsgau Wartheland, a region in Poland that was annexed as a “Gau” to the German Reich after the German invasion.Footnote 44 He was first transferred to Wronke (Warthestadt) to work in the local prison. Then, on 1 May 1941, he was dispatched to the prison in Sieradz, where he was assigned to work as a prison warden. The prison in Sieradz was one of the largest penal institutions in the Reichsgau Wartheland. Prisoners were brought to Sieradz from the Generalgouvernement and from the German Reich, where they were exploited as forced laborers for the production of linen.Footnote 45 The German Federal Archives in Berlin list Sieradz prison as a “severe Nazi prison.”Footnote 46 At the beginning of the war, around 30,000 Jews lived in Sieradz; by 1942, the majority had been deported to labor camps in the Lublin area in the Generalgouvernement. In April 1942, the Jews remaining in the Sieradz ghetto were taken to the Zduńska Wola ghetto. This ghetto was “liquidated” at the end of August 1942, and the Jews were deported to the Kulmhof extermination camp, where they were murdered. The deportations from Sieradz were carried out and supervised by German police units. Leopold R., who worked in the police operation in Sieradz, must have had detailed knowledge of the deportations and systematic murders, although to what extent he was directly involved is still unclear. In September 1942, he was transferred back to Vienna because he was having an affair with a Polish auxiliary policewoman, which he did not end despite repeated requests from his police department. The affair between the married Leopold R. and a Polish woman was considered “sittenwidrig” (immoral) according to National Socialist racial ideology. However, Leopold R. did not suffer any consequences other than the transfer back to Vienna and a fine of 50 Reichsmark. As a registered National Socialist, Leopold R. was obliged to perform clearance work from May to July 1945. In 1952, he applied for compensation for 320 hours of work and received 252 schillings from the municipality of Vienna.
Among the Trümmerarbeiter, Leopold R. was not the only one directly involved in the National Socialist apparatus of persecution and murder. Like Leopold, some of the male Trümmerarbeiter worked for the occupation authorities in the annexed and occupied territories, as well as in the Gestapo in Vienna and in the National Socialist justice system. Like the example of Therese K., the case of Leopold R. shows how strongly the narrative of the supposedly apolitical Trümmerfrau differs from the situations of the real actors.
Patterns of Justification and Reinterpretation
The written applications of former NSDAP members who were obliged to do Trümmerarbeit also provide, for the first time, extensive insights into the patterns of interpretation of the so-called Trümmerfrauen in the postwar period. Thus, the source material also makes it possible to examine how former NSDAP members expressed themselves both in relation to the National Socialist era and their compulsory work.
A recurring motif is the self-victimization of the applicants, who commonly use terms in connection with their duty to work that originated from the context of the victims of National Socialism. The self-designation “NS-Zwangsarbeiter” (“Nazi forced laborer”) is especially frequent and can be found in numerous applications. For example, fifty-three-year-old Leopoldine H. wrote in 1951: “I have only now come to know that as a former NS forced laborer I can apply for back pay … for work done at the time.”Footnote 47 The term “NS forced laborer” is a clear example of the self-victimization that had already been sharply criticized by former political persecutees of the Nazi regime in the postwar period. In their letters, some Trümmerarbeiter also stated that they were applying for “Wiedergutmachung” (“reparations”)Footnote 48—another term that was used to refer to compensation payments to those persecuted by the Nazi regime.
References to personal suffering are among the most frequent motifs in the applications. There is no doubt that the postwar period was a time full of deprivations for the Viennese, but the detailed descriptions of physical and psychological suffering seem to have been connected both with the hope that the application would be approved and with an attempt at personal relief. Anny P., a former member of the NSDAP, for example, described being “emaciated to a skeleton”Footnote 49 by “dragging the rubble wagons” during the clean-up work. Hans S. wrote in his 1951 application that: “as a former National Socialist … I suffered most severely psychologically and physically … during the heavy labor that did not suit me.”Footnote 50
A social psychological study by the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in the postwar society of the 1950s showed that a specific form of defense against guilt was expressed by repeated “referring back to one’s own personal suffering.”Footnote 51 Through conjuring up one’s own suffering, most likely associated with the Allied bombings, one’s own guilt could be externalized. This is made particularly clear in the applications by the fact that the internment camps for former NSDAP members, which were temporarily set up by the Allies and the provisional state government of the Social Democrats (SPÖ), Conservatives (ÖVP), and Communists (KPÖ), were repeatedly referred to as “concentration camps.” Directly connected with this was an imagined “Allied revenge,” as the following statement by former NSDAP member Franz N. reveals: “I was arrested by the police in 1945 and imprisoned in the concentration camp for National Socialists at Steinhof (‘Konzentrationsrachelager’) [‘concentration revenge camp’].” The fantasy of revenge by the Allies and the provisional state government reveals a consciousness of the crimes that were committed, as revenge is commonly understood as a reaction to a previous crime. However, this awareness of one’s own guilt was not strictly a product of the postwar period. The secret reports of the SS Security ServiceFootnote 52 show that with the defeat at Stalingrad in 1943 and the growing awareness that the war could no longer be won, fear of retaliation for the murder of Jews also increased among civilians. In this sense, retribution was felt already during the war through the Allies’ bombing campaign.Footnote 53
For the Viennese Trümmerarbeiter, who experienced the deprivations of the war years and the horrors of the nights of bombing as retaliation, it seems to have been “extraordinarily difficult … to complete the thought that they had something to make up for even now.”Footnote 54 The term “concentration revenge camp” thus expresses both their fear of punishment and their defense against guilt. To get rid of one’s own nagging guilt, an evil, vengeful persecutor (here, the Allies) is imagined, onto whom one’s guilt can be transferred. As the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research had already established in its 1950s study: “They want by all means to have been persecuted and tormented”Footnote 55—therefore, the internment camp is called a concentration camp. A confrontation with the agonizing discomfort of one’s own accountability, with its extremely negative feelings, must be avoided at all costsFootnote 56 and can thus be successfully shifted to the supposed persecutor. Finally, the applications of the former NSDAP members also contain notable downplaying of their own positions or their own political party involvement. For example, thirty-two-year-old Hans M. wrote in his application in 1953: “I was only a member of the Waffen SS,”Footnote 57 which represents an immense relativization in view of the fact that the Waffen SS was an armed unit of the SS that was directly involved in the murder of the Jews, as well as the Sinti and Roma in the occupied eastern territories, provided units to guard the concentration camps, and was declared a criminal organization in the 1946 Nuremberg trials.Footnote 58
Furthermore, regarding the aforementioned branches and affiliated associations, there are numerous minimizations in the applications, for example, in the case of Josef R., who wrote: “My political offense consisted in the fact that as an N.S.V. functionary I helped the poor.”Footnote 59 This represents a popular narrative in which, with reference to the charitable activities of the N.S.V., it is concealed that the task of the N.S.V. was “to take over the health leadership of the German people and to teach them racial hygiene, thinking, and acting.”Footnote 60
In addition to victimization and trivialization, former NSDAP members often used the argument that they had not directly harmed anyone as a way of exoneration. Franz W., for example, wrote: “I ask for a fair assessment of my case and also inform you that I as well as my wife did not harm anyone and both appear to be less incriminated.”Footnote 61 Such patterns of justification are not necessarily about a denial of the crimes themselves; rather, they indicate the inability to endure one’s own involvement in the horrific historical events, to see oneself as responsible and, as Theodor Adorno has formulated: “to include oneself morally … , experience oneself as guilty, even of those things for which he is not guilty in any immediate sense.”Footnote 62
Reception in the Press
The term “Notstandsarbeiten,” which was used by the government to describe the removal of rubble, was an established term that had already been used in Austria long before 1945 for larger work campaigns,Footnote 63 mostly so-called job creation campaigns that were intended to counteract unemployment.Footnote 64 An index word search in the digital newspaper archive ANNO revealed that the official term “Notstandsarbeiten” appeared only thirty-eight times in Viennese newspapers during the peak period of rubble clearance in 1945 and 1946. It was used particularly when information was provided about the scope of the constitutional law or the legal framework. More widespread terms tended to be “Aufräumungsarbeiten” (clean-up work) with 226 hits, “Arbeitspflicht” (work duty) with 124 hits, and “Schutträumung” (rubble clearance) with 71 hits.Footnote 65
The first newspapers to appear in Vienna after the end of combat operations in the spring of 1945 were published exclusively by the Allied forces or by the three major parties—the SPÖ, ÖVP and KPÖ—with the permission of the Allies and through strict pre-censorship. The “Decree on the Restoration of a Free Press in Austria” of 1 October 1945, stipulated that licenses from the Allies, so-called permits, were required for all published newspapers,Footnote 66 a regulation that was valid until the middle of 1947.Footnote 67 The decision on the allocation of paper, which was extremely scarce in the postwar period, was also initially the responsibility of the Allies and the so-called Paper Council, which was composed of SPÖ, ÖVP, and KPÖ representatives. An examination of the press coverage of rubble removal in the immediate postwar period, especially during the peak of the work in 1945 and 1946, must therefore take this Allied influence on the press into account. Rejections of the Allied-ordered compulsory work of former NSDAP members are accordingly not found in the articles during this period, which does not mean, however, that they did not exist within the population.
Differences in reporting can be discerned primarily regarding the severity with which the criticism of former NSDAP members was put forward. The harshest criticism was voiced in the Österreichische Zeitung, published by the 3rd Ukrainian Front of the Soviet Army. Its first issue appeared on 15 April 1945, only two days after the end of combat operations in Vienna. Polemical articles, such as “Brown Shirkers,” dated 6 September 1945, described, for example, how “the National Socialists try by all means to shirk their work”Footnote 68 and were often supplemented with caricatures.Footnote 69 While the Österreichische Zeitung, published by the Soviet forces, focused primarily on former NSDAP members, the newspaper Neues Österreich, the joint press organ of the ÖVP, SPÖ, and KPÖ, repeatedly criticized the unwillingness of the rest of the population to participate in the reconstruction work. Central here was the moral condemnation of those who did not belong to the NSDAP and who tried to avoid work. The Viennese vernacular dubbed these people “Schlurfs,” a term used especially to describe young people who, in the postwar period, engaged in surreptitious trade and enjoyed themselves in dance halls rather than getting involved in the reconstruction of the city.Footnote 70 In doing so, Neues Österreich appealed to the patriotic feelings of its readership and called for “community work.”Footnote 71
The fact that mainly former NSDAP members were called upon to clear debris was generally known among the population, and many citizens were obviously only too keen to leave the hard work to the Nazis, as was implied in an article in the Wiener Kurier published by the American forces on 19 October 1945: “It must by no means come to the point that the work is seen only as ‘punishment’ for National Socialists, as it often seems.”Footnote 72
Reporting on the removal of rubble decreased from 1947 onward, but from time to time newspaper articles still appeared reporting on the slow progress of the debris clearance. On 26 July 1950, the term “Trümmerfrau” appeared for the first time in the Austrian press. The article “Life between ruins. War and the postwar period have created a new type of woman in Germany” appeared in the women’s section of the Wiener Kurier. Footnote 73 The article praised, in high terms, how unassuming and selfless German women would settle for the least in the postwar period to advance the reconstruction of their country. Here, it is significant that no comparison was made with Austria: in Germany, the Trümmerfrauen were working; in Austria, the former National Socialists had to work.
When the Supreme Court decided in 1951 to compensate the former NSDAP members retroactively, the Österreichische Zeitung in particular was outraged by the “reactionary”Footnote 74 decision and cynically remarked that, at this point, the funds that were supposedly often so scarce suddenly became available very quickly.
Several former Trümmerarbeiter mention in their applications that they had become aware of the compensation payments through articles published in the right-wing conservative weekly Wiener Montag in the spring and summer of 1951. In the article “Ein Unrecht wird beseitigt” (“An injustice is being remedied”) of 11 June 1951, the former NSDAP members are referred to as “NS forced laborers.”Footnote 75 In addition, the Wiener Montag reports on a group of lawyers who had joined forces for the legal protection of the former NSDAP members and to “establish internal peace.” These lawyers came from the milieu of the VdU (Verband der Unabhängigen) party, a political repository for the National Socialists after 1945 and a precursor of today’s right-wing extremist party FPÖ.Footnote 76
Der Neue Mahnruf. Zeitschrift für Freiheit, Recht und Demokratie, the organ of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime, heavily criticized the coverage of the Wiener Montag and its expressed sympathy for the former NSDAP members. Der Neue Mahnruf also condemned the willingness with which these former NSDAP members were now being awarded compensation for an original political work of atonement and asked cynically: “What would have happened to one of us if we had sued the National Socialist state for the work we were forced to do in the concentration camps?”Footnote 77
From Remembrance to Mystification
This active engagement with the work of the conscripted former National Socialists continued in the postwar period. Even in 1965, in an anniversary volume published by Karl Ziak on the twentieth anniversary of the end of the war and the tenth anniversary of the State Treaty, conscripted former National Socialists were still explicitly mentioned.Footnote 78 However, just like National Socialism itself, the atonement work of former National Socialists subsequently disappeared from public perception. In the 1970s and early 1980s, no mention was made of the former National Socialists who were forced to contribute to reconstruction, nor was the narrative of the heroic Trümmerfrauen yet fabricated. When historians began to take an interest in the role of women both during the war and in the postwar period, the German Tümmerfrauen debate slowly spilled over into Austria.Footnote 79 Although historians emphasized from the beginning that the Trümmerfrau, in the true sense of the word, did not exist in Austria, the term only slowly gained traction in Austria.Footnote 80 For example, it was first mentioned in the Austrian parliament as late as 1989.Footnote 81
From the late 1990s, however, there was increased public interest in the topic of the Trümmerfrauen, as indicated by several exhibitions and anthologies.Footnote 82 In particular, the political right began to discover the topic. In 2006, the BZÖ/FPÖ (far-right) politician Theresia Zierler published a volume of interviews with twenty female “Zeitzeuginnen” at the end of the war, all of whom are referred to as “Trümmerfrauen.”Footnote 83 When reviewing the texts, however, it is noticeable that hardly any of the women report on rubble work in the narrow sense; rather, they talk about assaults by the occupying troops and the difficult living situation in the immediate postwar period in general. The women of an entire generation appear collectively as Trümmerfrauen, victims of the circumstances, in this volume of interviews; the question of whether individual women did any Trümmerarbeit at all and why is irrelevant. The year before, the conservative-right government of the ÖVP (conservatives) and FPÖ (far-right) had passed a federal law that also honored the female postwar generation. This law created a “one-off allowance for women in recognition of their special achievements in the reconstruction of the Republic of Austria.”Footnote 84 Here, too, all women who experienced the end of the war in Austria are grouped together, albeit with one important restriction: according to this law, “Trümmerfrauen” had to be explicitly “Trümmermütter” (“rubble mothers”) in order to receive the one-off allowance and must have “given birth to at least one child in Austria before 1 January 1951 or raised a child born in Austria before this date.”Footnote 85 A total of just over 14 million euros was paid out.Footnote 86 In the debate about the law, both in the Austrian parliament and in the media, the term “Trümmerfrauen” was explicitly and unsurprisingly invoked.
It is obvious that the far-right FPÖ has actively taken up the Trümmerfrauen theme. This is also supported by the fact that the party’s then chairman, Heinz Christian Strache, in his role as Vice-Chancellor of the Republic of Austria, spoke at the official opening of a Trümmerfrauen memorial in Vienna’s city center in October 2018. The monument, which was privately financed and erected on private land, was extremely controversial and triggered a broad discussion among the Austrian public about the status of the Trümmerfrauen. Once again, it was the critical historians who emphasized that they should not be separated from the National Socialist past, while conservative and far-right parties stressed that the women of the postwar period deserved to be honored for their achievements.Footnote 87 This commitment is all the more interesting in view of the FPÖ’s history. After all, the party was founded as a rallying point for former National Socialists, and its leaders stood out in the history of the Second Republic, either due to their own National Socialist past or a lack of distance from neo-Nazi tendencies.Footnote 88 Until the late 1980s, the party had played a rather marginal role in the Austrian political landscape, constantly languishing in the mid-single-digit percentage range in elections. However, this began to change with Jörg Haider’s rise to power in 1986, and the party tried to find a way into the center of society.Footnote 89 Part of the process, under the chairmanship of the former neo-Nazi Heinz Christian Strache, of all people, was to increasingly dispense with direct references to the Nazi era in order to appeal to a potentially larger group of voters. At the same time, however, the far-right electorate had to be kept in line. The sudden focus on the Trümmerfrauen can also be explained in this context. Here, the FPÖ was able to implement its “double speak,”Footnote 90 which was essential for internal cohesion. To the outside, this was conciliatory, while to the inside, it was a sign that the core group of former National Socialists had not been forgotten even after almost eighty years. On the one hand, the Trümmerfrauen can be excellently constructed as a supposedly apolitical reconstruction myth. It suggests a point zero after the end of the war in which an ideologically unsuspicious group of women rebuilt Austria under the greatest hardship. Why Austria was destroyed in the first place and what these women had done before 1945 are not mentioned, however. At the same time, it is also hinted that membership in the NSDAP and one of its affiliated associations is not a problem.
Conclusion
The discursive construction of the selfless, apolitical “Trümmerfrau” remains in place to the present day. By examining the contemporary reception based on press coverage, it became clear that in the postwar period, it was generally known that former NSDAP members, in particular, were required by law to clear rubble. This narrative changed from the late 1980s onward, and a process of reinterpretation apparently took place in the collective memory through which former NSDAP members have been turned into “voluntary” helpers. This reinterpretation process, and the fact that the term “Trümmerfrauen” is still used in Austria as a kind of generational term, shows how strong the need for relief from historical guilt remains. Thus, it becomes clear that “blind spots in historical consciousness”Footnote 91 are passed on over several generations and that repressed guilt still has an influence on historical consciousness today. The gender specificity of the Trümmerfrauen myth also plays an essential role here: the narrative of women as “victims” oppressed by the Nazi regime is what makes the image of the apolitical Trümmerfrau so appealing in the first place. However, the archival records examined here show that these so-called Trümmerfrauen were, to a large extent, male and female National Socialists. This aspect of their identities has been intentionally overlooked in subsequent discourse. The preceding analysis made it clear that the examination of historical and familial involvement in National Socialism is far from complete. A differentiated examination of this topic must include gender-historical as well as memory-theoretical aspects and, last but not least, personal introspection.
Even today, academic debate around this myth provokes strong controversy. The critical examination of the role of the Trümmerfrauen in the Austrian media in connection with the debate about the Vienna Trümmerfrauen monument has been met with shock, disbelief, and sometimes verbally aggressive reactions from those born after the war. However, the fact remains that anyone who cleared rubble in Vienna in 1945/46 was most likely a member of the NSDAP. Against this background, pride in the achievements of one’s ancestors becomes stale. The knowledge of the circumstances of the Trümmerarbeit calls into question the heroic reconstruction myth in general and destroys the unreflected idea of the purely positive role of Austrian women in reconstruction.
