The ‘rubble women’, who removed selfless debris in Vienna after the Second World War, are a myth. As historians of the Academy of Sciences (Öaw) show the sources that have hardly been noticed so far, former NSDAP members had to clean up in particular.
The study, which was published in the Journal “Austrian History Year Book”, only came from the 1990s, the mystifying story of the “rubble women”.
The image of selfless use of women who have liberated his traces in Vienna in the first years after the end of the Second World War and therefore free the road for reconstruction has been firmly anchored in many heads, but has long been critically questioned by experts.
The 2018 debate was recently inflamed when Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache (FPö) revealed a “rubble women” Memorial that was made on the Mölker-Bastei in Vienna in Vienna on the initiative of the Cajetan Field Institute near the FPö.
Due to a lack of sources, vague
“The rubble problem in Austria is quite vague because there are few sources,” says Martin Tschiggerl of the Institute for Cultural Studies. Together with his colleagues Lea von der Hude and Patricia Seifner, he has so far hardly any files of the archives of Vienna City and is analyzed to delete the fog for alleged voluntary work.
The historians have investigated around 7,000 searches for compensation for mandatory national socialists. The background of this request was a law adopted by the provisional Austrian Federal Government in August 1945, which rebuilt former NSDAP members in the reconstruction.
67 Groschen for Women and 84 Groschen for Men
After a number of lawsuits were brought into compensation by such mandatory employees, the Supreme Court decided in 1951 that they were entitled to a payment for the working hours worked: 67 Groschen per hour for women and 84 Groschen for men.
“In this application for compensation there are sometimes very extensive writing with descriptions by the applicants when, where and what they worked,” said the historian. “As a former national socialist … I have suffered the most difficult,” the researchers quote an example from the search in the title of their work.
Reimbursement for millions of working hours
Based on this very extensive inventory, it is estimated that millions of working hours have been compensated. How much former NSDAP -members were actually at work was hard to say, but the searches should only be the tip of the iceberg: “We assume that a maximum of ten to 20 percent of the reconciliation workers were sought for compensation. Given this indicator chain there is not much left for voluntary work.”
About 55 percent of the approximately 7,000 documented request came from men and 45 percent of women. “This is an imbalance when you consider that in 1945/46 there were considerably more women in Vienna than men, many of whom were still imprisoned or on the way back,” Tschiggerl said.
Source: Krone
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