Dr. Gustav Steinbauer

Gustav Steinbauer maturates at the Jesuit Gymnasium College Kalksburg at Vienna, where he met P. Nivard Schlögl OCist (1864–1939), and then studies law in Vienna. In 1909 he became the first member of the student association Franco-Bavaria after its foundation on 4.12.1908. In 1913, he completed his studies with the doctorate of Dr. iuris, then initiates the legal career and enters the law firm Martin Ritter in Innsbruck in 1916. In 1917 he was moved to Prague as a volunteer to the infantry Regiment No. 73. He is employed at the Isonzofront and returns home as a lizard.

After the war, in 1919 he founded the “Sports Association of Catholic-German High School Students and High School Students Arminia in Vienna” together with a series of sports enthusiasts CVer. In 1924 he opened his own firm, but then moved it to Mistelbach in 1927 because of the offer to lawyers in Vienna. Here he is also engaged in communal politics with the Christlich-Sozialen, will be Vice Mayor of 1929-1938 and from 12.2.1938 mayor of the city of Mistelbach.

After that, Gustav Steinbauer will be detained for some time and, after the release, he will receive a professional and local ban. In this time he must continue to suffer regular visits to the Gestapo. At the end of 1939, he is admitted again as a lawyer. Although it has been classified as “non-defense”, it must nevertheless, at the advanced age of 55 years in the last year of the war, be considered to be an unofficial as a simple soldier and arrives in 1945 in American prisoners of war.

From August 1945 he is again active in Vienna as a compulsory defender at the Volksgerichtshof.

At the Nuremberg War Crimes Process in 1946, the Vienna Bar Association created a list of defenders, from which he is selected by an American member of the Tribunal on request of the defendant and the defense of Arthur Seyß-Inquart (1892–1946) – “Kurzzeit-Bundeskanzler” and “Connection Chancellor”, Reichsstatthalter and 1940–1945 Reichskommissar for the occupied Netherlands. Both met as lawyers before the NS period The document situation is very difficult, and the whole procedure is largely based on the Anglo-American legal system. Seyß-Inquart is sentenced to death and executed in Nuremberg on 16.10.1946. Although he has not shared his mind in the least, in Nuremberg, it is the top principle that everyone can expect a fair and constitutional procedure. This also distinguishes the Nuremberg processes from show processes and historically also gives them the legitimation.