Students create database of all Nazis in the district

“The students wanted to know more about the history of their place of residence during the Nazi era,” says history teacher Walter Großhaupt: “So we came up with the idea of ​​recording the former National Socialists of the entire Rohrbach district in a database.”

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The students quickly realized that this would be a comprehensive database. In 1947, all former National Socialists had to register. These files are available in full in the State Archives in Linz. After contacting the State Archives, the young local historians were able to begin planning in more detail. The data was publicly accessible, so it was not subject to any embargo or other restrictions.

Support from the State Archives

“The state archives supported us extremely generously. We were able to work through all the local groups in the district in one working day in Linz,” says Großhaupt. This resulted in a database with more than 1800 names, occupations, ages and places of birth. This database will now be handed over to the Rohrbach local history association. It is also planned that pre-scientific work at the school can be carried out on the basis of this database. This represents an excellent foundation for dealing with the topic. “As far as I know, there is no similar project in Austria that completely covers an entire district,” says Großhaupt, who is an experienced historian. After all, he was a teacher in Graz for 37 years and worked through the Nazi trials there in full. His greatest joy is passing on his enthusiasm for archive research to his students. He has found active supporters in this regard in the head of the high school, Nikolaus Stelzer, who is himself an enthusiastic local historian, and in the state archive director Josef Goldberger.