Die Presse, May 13, 2020
German original: https://www.diepresse.com/5811231/das-ns-entbindungsheim-im-wienerwald
The home of the National-Socialist outfit Lebensborn in the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald) today is a ruin, a dark spot in a side valley of the Piesting. The historian Barbara Stelzl-Marx illuminates its history for the first time in detail.
“Na servas (oh boy)” comments a young man on what he captures with his phone camera in one of many YouTube videos from inside the former NS-home in the Wienerwald. “Unbelievably creepy” said another young man. Over the past years, the decayed building has been attracting adventure seekers and right-wing extremists alike. Many sprayed-on swastikas bear witness. The hallways and rooms are full of trash, the walls are smeared, the windows broken, and furnishings demolished.
The run-down complex is situated in the Lower-Austrian village of Feichtenbach, hidden in the landscape. The five-story structure was built by two Jewish physicians in the early 20th century as a sanatorium for lung diseases and has since gone through a vivid history. A project of historian Barbara Stelzl-Marx (University of Graz), who also heads the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the Consequences of War, now investigates one chapter of this history: The use of the sanatorium as a Lebensborn - home after its aryanization in 1938. The project is supported by the Jubilee Fund of the National Bank and the state of Lower Austria.
The goal of Lebensborn, an SS – organization founded in 1935, was an increase of the birth rate of “aryan” children through special maternity hospitals. Within those hospitals, unmarried women, who got pregnant by SS officers or Wehrmacht soldiers were allowed to give birth anonymously. In addition, the adoptions, preferably to members of the SS, were also administered here. This measure was designed to keep these women from terminating the pregnancies – illegitimate children were considered a dishonor, says Stelzl-Marx. What is more, the organization kidnapped children from occupied territories if they were considered “aryan.” They were given to families loyal to the party.
Anonymous Births
Between 1936 and 1945, Lebensborn maintained nine maternal institutions on the territory of today’s Germany and another 15 in Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium, France, and Norway. An estimated 1,300 children were born in the Wienerwald – outfit, the largest such institution of Lebensborn. “There was only one other institution in the Ostmark, the one in Oberweis Castle in Upper Austria, explains Stelz-Marx. “However, no births were administered there, it was used for the germanification of the kidnapped Polish children.”
For the researcher, the way that the organization implemented the connection between sexual- and population policies of the National Socialist ideology is particularly interesting from a historical perspective. Namely analogous to Reichsführer-SS Himmler’s motto: “every mother of good blood should be holy to us.” Stelzl-Marx: “One one hand you have the annihilation of “worthless” live, the murder of the Jews, of Soviet prisoners of war, euthanasia, and on the other hand the targeted promotion of the hereditarily healthy offspring.” The Lebensborn - institutions were not, as if often erroneously claimed, “hatcheries.”
Next to the possibility to give birth to illegitimate children, the wives of SS – members were allowed to give birth at the homes. The mothers of the Wienerwald home came from all parts of the Reich. They had to apply and were assessed on their ”racial” criteria via a questionnaire on location. For the two-year project, Stelzl-Marx and her colleague, Lukas Schretter, analyze documents previously not considered in research. She hopes to find more detailed results regarding the social structure of the mothers and regarding the criteria on which they were admitted in the Wienerwald home.
Besides the history of the maternal institution and the handling of the village after the war, the historian is not just interested in the mothers, but also in the 50 employees that worked there, as well as in the fathers of the children who were born there. Specifically regarding the latter not much is known. The names were often kept secret and were tabooed towards the children. Finally, attention is also being devoted to the children themselves and their lives.
“Dealing with the children who were not born healthy is a sensitive topic,” says Stelzl-Marx. “We want to retrace what happened to them.” In order to answer the many questions surrounding the Wienerwald home, she not only wants to examine historical documents, but is also searching for contemporary witnesses (contact: 0316/380-82 72, or lukas.schretter@bik.ac.at).
Decayed and barricaded
After the end of the war, the maternity home was used as a children’s recreation home, it was later purchased by the Federation of Trade Unions and was used as a hotel. Since the early 2000s, the building has been sitting empty and continues to deteriorate. Today it is barricaded and cannot be entered. And even the adventurous explorers no longer feel tempted: in order to get in, one has to climb, which is “risky, and it is not worth it, because it has already been destroyed so much”, says one person.