Dr. Franz Josef Krusche

After Matura, Franz Josef Krusche visits the University of World Trade in Vienna, where he joined Pflug in 1923. In 1930, he graduated and received his doctorate in July 1935. He first works as an accounting officer at the Gföhl dairy and then enters the services of the Directorate-General of the Austrian Federal Railways [ÖBB]. 1935–1937 he is a commercial employee at the Alpine Montan Society. In November 1937 he returns to the federal railways as a trusted decern. He is a simple member of the VF.

After that, Franz Josef Krusche will be released from the service at the end of April 1938, “because he, as a confidant of the former Minister of Trade of the System Government, Fritz Stockinger, has settled.” Stockinger was Federal Minister for Trade and Transport 1933–1936 and President of ÖBB in 1936–1938. He was able to flee abroad in time to avoid being arrested. Franz Josef Krusche joined the company of Stockingers Gattin in early March 1939. He maintains personal contact with Stockinger, who is currently in Paris, where he visits him once in December 1938. Franz Josef Krusche hopes for a new existence from him, which he lost through him. In Stockinger's order, Franz Josef Krusche also travels in January and June 1939 to Budapest. Since the beginning of July 1939, the Stapo leadership office in Vienna has been attentive to these contacts, because it is “probably with Stockinger in a lively exchange of letters and also works for an emigrant group in Paris.” This encrypted correspondence, which gives information about the situation in Austria, is found and deciphered during a search for the house. It leads to arrest by the Gestapo on 13.7.1939. On 28.12.1939, the LG Vienna as a special court sentenced Franz Josef Krusche “for a violation according to § 1 of the law against domestic attacks on the state and party and for the protection of the party uniforms of 20.12.1934, RGBI. I, page 1269, to eighteen (18) months in prison” with the calculation of the detention period “The repetition of the criminal act” is seen as a criminal intensification because “the accused had to expect his messages from the emigrants living in Paris to be used as a weapon in the struggle against the Empire.” On 25 November 1940, he will also be awarded the Diploma and PhD titles by the LG Wien, with reference to § 4 of the Act on the Leadership of Academic Grades of 7.6.1939, “when the holder has proven unworthy due to his later conduct of an academic degree”, which is given by the conviction. The abolition of this decision is rejected by the Ministry of Science and People's Education in Berlin on 29.8.1941. The news of the rector of the Vienna University of Economics about the decision of the Professor College of 28.7.1945 that Franz Josef Krusche is re-created to the doctorate cannot be delivered at that time because the address is unknown; the letter is unopened until 17.4.2015 in the archive of WU Vienna. After the arrest on 13. 1.1941 Franz Josef Krusche no longer returns to his Viennese apartment, but changes via the Pinzgau to Innsbruck.

After the war, he works in the Federal Ministries of Internal Affairs and Transport, most recently in the rank of a ministerial council. he dies in Klosterneuburg in 1967 and found his last resting place in Altlengbach/NÖ.