Karl Glaser
Personalia
Born:
Died:
Profession:
Persecution:
Imprisonment 21.09.1938 - 27.09.10938,
Imprisonment 25.10.1938 - 28.11.1938
Honors:
Grand Decoration of Honor in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria
Grand Decoration of Honor in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria
Grand Decoration of Honor in Silver with the Star for Services to the Republic of Austria
Honorary President of the Salzburg Civil Defense Association
Grand Decoration of Honor of the Province of Salzburg
Memberships
Curriculum Vitae
Karl Glaser was born in Salzburg as the legitimate son of Karl Glaser, a telegraph official of the same name, and his wife Anna Maria, née Rubatsch. Between 1931 and 1939, he was a pupil at the Bundesrealgymnasium in Salzburg.
On March 12, 1938, as a pupil, he witnessed the collapse of a free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. On 30 March 1938, he was accepted into the secondary school fraternity Almgau Salzburg, which had already been banned by the National Socialists, by Josef Ebner together with Alfred Mateja. Together with Karl Steiner, Robert Weidinger and others, he forms a cell of the 'Grauen Freikorps' in the Österreichisches Jungvolk, recruited by Karl Beran, a university student who had come to Salzburg in the summer of 1938. This underground activity was investigated and Karl Glaser was arrested by the Gestapo together with the two other members of the fraternity on September 21, 1938, but was released on September 27, 1938 and arrested again on October 25, 1938. He remained in prison at the provincial court until November 28, 1938. On September 9, 1939, the three young Almgauers were put on trial. The following passage can be found in the indictment:
A proclamation allegedly written on August 12, 1938 was also found, which reads as follows: 'Austrians! Since the day of the Anschluss, the violence and terror of a government that is alien to you in its way of fighting and its aims have endeavored to rob you of everything that is in any way connected with the concepts of homeland consciousness, love of the homeland and Austria. Under the guise of national unification, your fatherland became a colony of Prussia at the same time as the latter finally betrayed the separated South Tyrol. Now that you have to act, as it were, as trustees of all the cultured people of your homeland, it is time to renounce the bad habit of false modesty and all too unquestioning self-aggrandizement and to cultivate a different consciousness, namely the historical consciousness and the pride of the Austrian. The bravery with which each and every one of you has demonstrated your love for your homeland over the past four years reaches its peak today in acquiescence. Austrians, the lust for power and the sabre-rattling of a few are about to thrust you and your children into a disaster that threatens to lay the world low and destroy the work of centuries of human diligence with a sacrilegious hand. Therefore, when the storm bells ring, the Fatherland calls you to unite under the slogan: stick together - keep up - endure.
[...
If one considers that the blameless Karl Glaser, Robert Weidinger and Karl Steiner have essentially confessed, that their deed was committed a relatively short time after the NSDAP had taken power in Austria and the Ostmark had been reunited with the great German fatherland, i.e. at a time when they, still surrounded by learned prejudices, were unable to appreciate and understand the greatness and beauty of the idea that had become reality of uniting the members of the German people into a great national community, that their actions were the result of adherence to an erroneous view, but not of expediency and adaptability to the new times, that Glaser is now in the labor service and the other defendants will probably be trained in the near future, then one will come to the necessary conclusion that neither Karl Glaser nor the other two ... a prison sentence of more than three months is to be expected. [...] The Court is therefore convinced that the application of the Führer's decree of clemency is appropriate in the present case.
[ ...]
Karl Glaser studied at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences for three semesters between 1939 and 1940 after graduating from high school. After completing his labor service, he was sent to the front in 1941 until the liberation of Austria.
After the war, he joined the Post and Telegraph Administration, where he worked as a postal and telecommunications clerk. He joins the newly founded Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), the Gewerkschaft and the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich. In 1946 he marries Rosina Höfelmaier. As a member of the Chamber of Labor in Salzburg, he represented the ÖVP in the Salzburg state parliament from 1949 to 1955. From 1955 to 1982, he was also a member of the National Council. Between 1950 and 1961 he was district party chairman of the ÖVP Salzburg/Stadt, between 1953 and 1978 state chairman of the ÖAAB Salzburg, between 1961 and 1964 executive state party chairman and from 1964 to 1976 state party chairman of the ÖVP Salzburg.
Citations
Krause, Peter/Reinelt, Herbert/Schmitt, Helmut (2020): Farbe tragen, Farbe bekennen. Katholische Korporierte in Widerstand und Verfolgung. Teil 2. Kuhl, Manfred (ÖVfStG, Wien) S. 92/93.
Salzburg WIKI unter www.sn.at/wiki/Karl_Glaser
Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten: Der Freiheitskämpfer, 52 Jahrgang, Nr. 3, 2001
