Friedrich W. Rainer (28 July 1903 – November 1950) was an Austrian Nazi Party politician, Gauleiter as well as a Reichsstatthalter of Salzburg and Carinthia. He is the only Austrian governor who has ever held the same office in two separate states.
Friedrich W. Rainer (28 July 1903 – November 1950)1 was an AustrianNazi Party politician, Gauleiter as well as a Reichsstatthalter of Salzburg and Carinthia. He is the only Austrian governor who has ever held the same office in two separate states. He was tried in a military trial in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia in 1947 and found guilty of crimes against the people and sentenced to death on 19 July 1947.
Personal background
Rainer was a native of Sankt Veit an der Glan in Carinthia, the son of a German nationalist vocational teacher at a municipal Bürgerschule (secondary school). His father, Norbert, was a member of the German Democratic Party(Deutsche Demokratische Partei/DDP), and later the Greater German People's Party(Großdeutsche Volkspartei/GDVP). He attended the Realgymnasium in Klagenfurt and, having obtained his Matura degree, studied law at the University of Graz while he earned his living by working in a local banking institution or in general labour. After successfully completing his law examination, Rainer began working in a notary's office and completed his doctorate in 1926. From 1931 he worked as a notary public in Klagenfurt. He married Ada Pflüger on 21 May 1932. The couple had five children: three daughters and two sons.2
Early political involvement
Beginning in high-school, Rainer had been a member of right-wing organizations in Sankt Veit. He also participated in the armed Austro-Slovene conflict in Carinthia. Prior to his graduation from law school in , he joined the Austrian in 1923 and joined a student fraternity. In October 1930, Rainer joined the establishing the local branch in Sankt Veit. A close friend of , he joined the at the end of 1933.
This page is based on “Friedrich Rainer” from English Wikipedia, (r1372729204) CC BY-SA 4.0 used under the license. The original authors are listed in its page history.
That same year he took up a post at the office of Nazi GauleiterHubert Klausner in Klagenfurt. As the Nazi Party had been banned by the Austrian government under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in 1933, Rainer was in August 1935 sentenced to one year in police custody, presumably for high treason. He was released early for good behaviour the following March, nevertheless like Klausner and his deputy Globocnik he had to step down from his administrative role in the party, transferring sole leadership to the rival Austrian Nazi leader Josef Leopold.
When World War II broke out, Rainer was appointed as Reich Defense Commissioner of Wehrkreis (Military District) XVIII, headquartered in Salzburg, which comprised his Reichsgau along with Reichsgau Carinthia, Reichsgau Styria and Reichsgau Tirol-Vorarlberg. This gave him control of civil defense matters over a very large area. On 15 March 1940, he was additionally appointed as the Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of Salzburg, thus uniting under his control the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdiction. Rainer remained in these offices at Salzburg until 27 November 1941, when he was succeeded by Gustav Adolf Scheel.6
On 7 May 1945, eight days after Hitler's suicide, Rainer transferred his official functions to an executive board and fled to the mountainous area around the Weißensee lake in Carinthia. After being given leads by the local population, British occupation troops arrested Rainer and transferred him to Nuremberg Prison in October 1945.8 On 12/13 June 1946, he appeared at the Nuremberg Trials as a defence witness for the former Austrian chancellor Arthur Seyss-Inquart.
On 13 March 1947, Rainer was extradited to Yugoslavia. Here he wrote an 80-page work on the Nürnberg Trials for Yugoslav authorities.8 On 10 July 1947, he was brought before a military court of the Yugoslav 4th Army at Ljubljana. He was found guilty of crimes against the people and sentenced to death by hanging on 19 July 1947. His widow received a death certificate from Yugoslavia after the war, which showed that same date. For decades afterward, the date of his execution was unknown and could only be speculated. In 2010, documentation came to light in the Slovenian National Archives in Ljubljana which may well have answered the question. An entry in the diary of Boris Kraigher, former interior minister in Slovenia, indicates that Rainer was executed with a number of other prisoners in late November 1950. He would have been 47 years old if this is correct. The long delay in Rainer's execution is reportedly due to Tito's secret police having utilized him as an informant. Upwards of 3,000 pages of his words, written from the summer of 1947 through late 1949, and probably into 1950, have been deposited in the Slovenian National Archives.9
Nonetheless, well into the 1950s, there continued to be rumors that Rainer was still alive and working for the Yugoslav Department of State Security.101112
Published works
Rainer, Friedrich. On Brecht and Eisenstein, New York: Telos Press, issue 31, 1977.
Rainer, Friedrich. My Internment and Testimony at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, Edwin Mellen Press Ltd; illustrated edition, 2006; ISBN978-0-7734-5665-5
Miller, Michael; Schulz, Andreas (2017). Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Volume II (Georg Joel - Dr. Bernhard Rust). R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN978-1-932970-32-6.
René Moehrle, Judenverfolgung in Triest während Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus 1922–1945, Berlin 2014; ISBN978-3-86331-195-7, S. 305–460.
Notes
Footnotes
Miller, Michael & Andreas Schulz, (2017). Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Volume II (Georg Joel - Dr. Bernhard Rust). R. James Bender Publishing; ISBN 978-1-932970-32-6, page 382. ↩
Williams, Maurice. "The Nazis, German Nationalism, and Ethnic Diversity: The Adriatic Coastland Under Friedrich Raineri". Slovene Studies 17.1-2 (1995): 3-23. ↩
Friedrich W. Rainer (28 July 1903 – November 1950)1 was an AustrianNazi Party politician, Gauleiter as well as a Reichsstatthalter of Salzburg and Carinthia. He is the only Austrian governor who has ever held the same office in two separate states. He was tried in a military trial in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia in 1947 and found guilty of crimes against the people and sentenced to death on 19 July 1947.
Personal background
Rainer was a native of Sankt Veit an der Glan in Carinthia, the son of a German nationalist vocational teacher at a municipal Bürgerschule (secondary school). His father, Norbert, was a member of the German Democratic Party(Deutsche Demokratische Partei/DDP), and later the Greater German People's Party(Großdeutsche Volkspartei/GDVP). He attended the Realgymnasium in Klagenfurt and, having obtained his Matura degree, studied law at the University of Graz while he earned his living by working in a local banking institution or in general labour. After successfully completing his law examination, Rainer began working in a notary's office and completed his doctorate in 1926. From 1931 he worked as a notary public in Klagenfurt. He married Ada Pflüger on 21 May 1932. The couple had five children: three daughters and two sons.2
Early political involvement
Beginning in high-school, Rainer had been a member of right-wing organizations in Sankt Veit. He also participated in the armed Austro-Slovene conflict in Carinthia. Prior to his graduation from law school in Graz, he joined the Austrian SA in 1923 and joined a Burschenschaft student fraternity. In October 1930, Rainer joined the Nazi Party establishing the local branch in Sankt Veit. A close friend of Odilo Globocnik, he joined the Austrian SS at the end of 1933.3
That same year he took up a post at the office of Nazi GauleiterHubert Klausner in Klagenfurt. As the Nazi Party had been banned by the Austrian government under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in 1933, Rainer was in August 1935 sentenced to one year in police custody, presumably for high treason. He was released early for good behaviour the following March, nevertheless like Klausner and his deputy Globocnik he had to step down from his administrative role in the party, transferring sole leadership to the rival Austrian Nazi leader Josef Leopold.
When World War II broke out, Rainer was appointed as Reich Defense Commissioner of Wehrkreis (Military District) XVIII, headquartered in Salzburg, which comprised his Reichsgau along with Reichsgau Carinthia, Reichsgau Styria and Reichsgau Tirol-Vorarlberg. This gave him control of civil defense matters over a very large area. On 15 March 1940, he was additionally appointed as the Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of Salzburg, thus uniting under his control the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdiction. Rainer remained in these offices at Salzburg until 27 November 1941, when he was succeeded by Gustav Adolf Scheel.6
On 7 May 1945, eight days after Hitler's suicide, Rainer transferred his official functions to an executive board and fled to the mountainous area around the Weißensee lake in Carinthia. After being given leads by the local population, British occupation troops arrested Rainer and transferred him to Nuremberg Prison in October 1945.8 On 12/13 June 1946, he appeared at the Nuremberg Trials as a defence witness for the former Austrian chancellor Arthur Seyss-Inquart.
On 13 March 1947, Rainer was extradited to Yugoslavia. Here he wrote an 80-page work on the Nürnberg Trials for Yugoslav authorities.8 On 10 July 1947, he was brought before a military court of the Yugoslav 4th Army at Ljubljana. He was found guilty of crimes against the people and sentenced to death by hanging on 19 July 1947. His widow received a death certificate from Yugoslavia after the war, which showed that same date. For decades afterward, the date of his execution was unknown and could only be speculated. In 2010, documentation came to light in the Slovenian National Archives in Ljubljana which may well have answered the question. An entry in the diary of Boris Kraigher, former interior minister in Slovenia, indicates that Rainer was executed with a number of other prisoners in late November 1950. He would have been 47 years old if this is correct. The long delay in Rainer's execution is reportedly due to Tito's secret police having utilized him as an informant. Upwards of 3,000 pages of his words, written from the summer of 1947 through late 1949, and probably into 1950, have been deposited in the Slovenian National Archives.9
Nonetheless, well into the 1950s, there continued to be rumors that Rainer was still alive and working for the Yugoslav Department of State Security.101112
Published works
Rainer, Friedrich. On Brecht and Eisenstein, New York: Telos Press, issue 31, 1977.
Rainer, Friedrich. My Internment and Testimony at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, Edwin Mellen Press Ltd; illustrated edition, 2006; ISBN978-0-7734-5665-5
Miller, Michael; Schulz, Andreas (2017). Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Volume II (Georg Joel - Dr. Bernhard Rust). R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN978-1-932970-32-6.
René Moehrle, Judenverfolgung in Triest während Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus 1922–1945, Berlin 2014; ISBN978-3-86331-195-7, S. 305–460.
Notes
Footnotes
Miller, Michael & Andreas Schulz, (2017). Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Volume II (Georg Joel - Dr. Bernhard Rust). R. James Bender Publishing; ISBN 978-1-932970-32-6, page 382. ↩
Williams, Maurice. "The Nazis, German Nationalism, and Ethnic Diversity: The Adriatic Coastland Under Friedrich Raineri". Slovene Studies 17.1-2 (1995): 3-23. ↩