Gottfried Alois Maria Kremer

Gottfried Alois Maria Kremer was born in Graz as the legitimate son of the typesetter Josef Kremer and his wife Katharina, née Reisch. He first attended elementary school, then four grades at a middle school, and subsequently three years at a teacher training college in Graz.

After the outbreak of World War I, Gottfried Kremer enlisted as a volunteer in 1914. He served in the military until 1918, rising to the rank of second lieutenant.

Following the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the collapse of the Dual Monarchy, and the expulsion of the House of Habsburg, Gottfried Kremer married Melanie Pavišek and worked as a printing press employee. He rose to become director of the Heinrich Stiasny Printing and Publishing Company in Graz. After the company went bankrupt, he was temporarily unemployed.

Politically, Gottfried Kremer was active in the Freiheitsbund, a Christian-social defense organization for workers founded in Vienna in 1927. In addition, he was active in the Schutzkorps, where he served as adjutant to the city commander of Graz, First Lieutenant Artur Hardt, and as station commander in Leoben. During the National Socialist coup attempt in July 1934, in which Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated, Gottfried Kremer was among the pro-government forces that, together with the Austrian Armed Forces and the gendarmerie, took action against the National Socialist coup. Armed clashes broke out in both the Leoben and Graz areas.

On April 5, 1937, Kremer joined the health insurance fund for assistants and apprentices of the Vienna Hotel and Restaurant Guild and moved to Vienna with his wife for this purpose. There, too, he remained a staunch opponent of National Socialism.

On March 12, 1938, Gottfried Kremer witnessed the downfall of a free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. The former member of the Freiheitsbund and Schutzkorps official, who had been actively deployed against the National Socialist coup in 1934, was arrested by the Gestapo on August 10, 1938, and dismissed without notice on August 11, 1938. He was released from custody on November 10, 1938.

After his release, Gottfried Kremer initially worked as a laborer and later as an office clerk for Deutsche Lufthansa at the Aspern airfield.

In Vienna, Gottfried Kremer witnessed the liberation of Austria and the reestablishment of the Republic in April and May 1945. On October 1, 1945, he was rehired by the legal successor to his former health insurance fund, the Vienna Regional Health Insurance Fund for Workers and Employees. He joined the newly founded Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the ÖVP Association of the Politically Persecuted and Defenders of Austria. In 1950, his marriage broke down.

As a civil servant with the Vienna Regional Health Insurance Fund for Workers and Employees, Gottfried Kremer retired and died in Vienna at the age of 75.