Linz Art University revoked honorary membership for former SS henchmen

How should a university deal with an honorary member from days gone by who distinguished himself as an enthusiastic Nazi and SS henchman in the Third Reich? Exactly the way the Linz art university proceeded. The institution deprived Herbert Koller (1911-1995) of honorary membership after examination of the facts by the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance. Koller, General Director of Voest from 1961 to 1977, was also awarded the professional title “Professor” in 1976 by SPÖ Science Minister Hertha Firnberg (1909-1994). The art university decision was made by the rectorate after the university senate had unanimously approved this step. “As things stand today, such academic honors would no longer be awarded to him. As a tenant of buildings (bridgehead building, Linz main square, note) that were built by the NS regime, the art university bears a special responsibility in dealing with the NS,” said Rector Brigitte Hütter. Koller’s honorary membership went unnoticed for decades, and students drew attention to it.

How was it even possible for SS members to get such management jobs in former state-owned companies like Voest? In addition to many others, Koller’s career was also pushed in the new era by the “Bund Sozialistische Akademiker” (BSA). Like the ÖVP and FPÖ, the SPÖ was by no means squeamish when it came to accepting National Socialists. The BSA operated as a kind of Nazi washing machine, especially since all agriculture ministers of the Kreisky era had belonged to the NSDAP. Johann Birger, an SS man whose unit was involved in the shootings of Jews, became chief of police in Salzburg at the behest of the SPÖ. The former Gestapo man Ferdinand Obenfeldner held the post of SPÖ Deputy Mayor of Innsbruck for 23 years.

Koller was a member of the NSDAP from 1931, with the SS (Untersturmfuhrer) from 1941 and from 1944 he worked in the Reich Security Office (RSHA). In the RSHA, the machinery for the extermination of Jews and “politically unreliable persons” was orchestrated in the spirit of Heinrich Himmler. In 1943, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was executed after the Nuremberg trials, was put in charge of this murder agency.

The “Bund Sozialistische Akademiker” (Association of Socialist Academics) has worked through its own history in the study commissioned in 2002 “The Will to Upright Walk” (also published as a book by Czernin-Verlag) under the sponsorship of the former Interior and Science Minister Caspar Einem (1948-2021).

During his retirement, Herbert Koller was also appointed to the General Council of the Austrian National Bank. From 1981 to 1988 he was its first vice president.

The statutes of the Linz Art University state: “The Rectorate can revoke academic honors and other awards that have been bestowed if the honoree proves to be unworthy of the honor through his or her behavior.” The Art University has now acted accordingly.