Bundesbahn-Oberinspektor Arthur Karl Anstreicher

Arthur Karl Anstreicher was born in Lundenburg [today: Břeclav in the Czech Republic] as the legitimate son of railroad official Hermann Herschel Anstreicher and Maria, née Antrittes.

Not much is known about Arthur Anstreicher, only that he joined the Austrian Federal Railways as a civil servant in 1904 and held various positions in the executive and central service. In 1910, he married the Jewish Irma Gelbkopf, who converted to Catholicism in the same year. Irma Anstreicher dies of blood poisoning in 1919. Between 1930 and 1935, he was an inspector in the department for the security service for transportation goods and railroad property. In this role, he was entrusted with investigating particularly difficult criminal cases.

In 1935, he became a station inspector for the commercial service at Vienna's Westbahnhof. There he also witnessed the downfall of a free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht on March 12, 1938. On March 31, 1939, he was dismissed through forced retirement.

Nothing has been preserved about the exact reasons for his dismissal, except that he was dismissed for 'political reasons'. We can therefore only speculate. Either he was dismissed because Hermann Herschel Anstreicher was possibly of Jewish descent, which would have made Arthur Anstreicher a 'Mischling 1st degree' or 'Mischling 2nd degree' according to the 'Nürnberger Rassegesetze'. degree' or that he was involved in investigating attacks by National Socialists in the 1930s in his role as an inspector in the department for the security service for transport goods and railroad property.

As a result of his age, Arthur Anstreicher remained retired and witnessed the liberation of Austria in May 1945. He later joined the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich. He died childless at the age of 82 in Vienna and found his final resting place at the cemetery in Vienna-Hietzing.