Dr. Ignaz Tschurtschenthaler

On the advice of his primary school teacher, Ignaz Tschurtschenthaler from Gailtal is sent to the Marianum Episcopal Boys' Seminary in Klagenfurt. As he did not feel called to the priesthood, he left the seminary at the beginning of secondary school and attended grammar school as an external student. The privileged pupil earns his living by giving private lessons and selling eggs. He joins the Karantania Klagenfurt secondary school fraternity and is the initiator of the founding of the Gothia (now Babenberg) secondary school fraternity for secondary school pupils in the winter semester of 1908/09. These activities disrupted the previously unchallenged supremacy of the liberal and all-German secondary school fraternities in Klagenfurt. Ignaz Tschurtschenthaler is subjected to hostility from the radical liberal professors and is expelled from the grammar school six weeks before his final exams. In connection with this and the "exposure" of his two connections, he conducts an honorary insult trial against the professor and member of parliament Dr. Hans Angerer (1871-1944), which attracts attention throughout Austria. Thanks to the intervention of the minister Dr. Albert Gessmann (1852-1920), Ignaz Tschurtschenthaler was able to pass his Matura at the Stiftsgymnasium in Klosterneuburg in 1909. He then went to Graz to study law. In 1909, he became a member of the Traungau Graz student fraternity. After graduating in 1913, he decided to become a lawyer and became a trainee in Innsbruck and Klagenfurt, where he opened his own law firm in 1925.

Ignaz Tschurtschenthaler was also involved in the Christian Social Party [CSP], becoming a municipal councillor in Klagenfurt from 1926 to 1934 and briefly a member of the Federal Council in 1934. He is also President of the Disciplinary Council of the Carinthian Bar Association. He and his wife narrowly escaped an assassination attempt during the July coup by the National Socialists in 1934. From 1934 to 1938, he represented Carinthia on the State Council.

During the Anschluss, Ignaz Tschurtschenthaler was arrested by the National Socialists on the night of March 12, 1938 and taken to Klagenfurt police prison. The SA occupied his home and set up their office there, his bank accounts were frozen (withdrawals were only possible with the permission of the Gestapo) and his lake house was confiscated for the SS leaders. Without any interrogation or trial, he was taken to Dachau concentration camp on May 24, 1938 following police custody and transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp on September 27, 1939; he was probably released seriously ill in Klagenfurt in the spring of 1940. [It is not clear from the DÖW documents whether he was released directly from Flossenbürg or only after being returned to Dachau]. He was banned from practicing his profession and from the Gau and was removed from the list of lawyers. He was forced to leave his home country after just two days. He then went to Vienna. After spending several months convalescing in a sanatorium in Baden, he began training as a building administrator and tax consultant and also studied for this purpose at the University of World Trade, where he graduated with a degree in economics in 1944.

In October 1942, he was licensed as an assistant in tax matters. He had to report to the Gestapo every week and repeatedly fought for various work permits to earn a living. On the night of March 19, 1945, he returned to Carinthia and hid in his apartment in Klagenfurt until the British marched in.

After the war, Ignaz Tschurtschenthaler resumed his work as a lawyer. His house (the SA office) was occupied by the British for two years. He is forced to set up his law firm and his apartment in emergency quarters. He participates in the founding of the provincial ÖVP. 1945-1949 he is elected to the National Council and appointed as a substitute member of the Constitutional Court in 1950.