Location: Eibiswald 36, 8552 Eibiswald
The doctor and writer Dr. Hans Kloepfer had been a member of the NSDAP with the number 6,109,231 since 1 May 1938. He wrote propagandistic election appeals aimed at the rural population for the “referendum” on 10 April 1938. At his funeral in 1944, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels laid wreaths on his grave.
The life and work of the doctor and writer Dr. Hans Kloepfer (1867-1944) has given rise to recurring debates. The debate is sparked by his “Anschluss” and Hitler-friendly poems as well as his membership of the NSDAP. Research has now clearly established Kloepfer’s objectively ascertainable involvement with National Socialism. These are: Kloepfer had been a member of the NSDAP with the number 6,109,231 and the Reichsschrifttumskammer (RSK) since May 1, 1938. After the Anschluss in 1938, Kloepfer called on the conservative rural population to vote for “our much-loved leader Adolf Hitler” in the so-called referendum in April 1938 with “a loud ‘yes’” in an appeal entitled “Farmers!”, which was printed in several daily newspapers. According to Kloepfer, Hitler would focus above all on the needs of the peasantry (“Germany will be a peasant kingdom or it will not!”). Kloepfer donated a text to the “Confession Book of Austrian Poets” in which he described Hitler’s invasion as a “festive bridal run”. In July 1938, he welcomed Hitler to Austria with the “Styrian Mountain Farmer’s Greeting”, which was also printed in several newspapers (“Schreibm tuat er si Hitler, und uns so guat gsinnt, wie ma weit in der Welt net an liabern wo findt” – He writes himself Hitler, and he is so well-disposed towards us, as we find no one better in the world). As his letters to the Eibiswald school principal Fritz Fuchs testify, Kloepfer remained an ardent supporter of Hitler until his death on June 27, 1944.
In 1939, Kloepfer was awarded the Goethe Foundation Prize, one of the most important cultural prizes in the German Reich. Kloepfer was virtually courted by the Nazi regime; in September 1938, for example, he was a guest of honor at the Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg. His funeral was staged in grand style by the Nazi regime: “Miners carried the coffin covered with the swastika flag. The wreaths of the Führer, the Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels and the Gauleiter became symbols of how the new Germany knows how to honor great human and artistic achievement, both accomplished in the service of the community,” according to the report in the Weststeirische Rundschau.
After 1945, Kloepfer’s works continued to be popular in Styria and his involvement with National Socialism was not an issue. Kloepfer’s birthplace in Eibiswald has been home to the Kloepfer and Local History Museum since the end of the 1950s, and a Kloepfer fountain has also been erected. In recent years, the question of how to deal with streets bearing Kloepfer’s name has become virulent. The city of Graz decided not to rename streets or alleyways named after Kloepfer, but to put up information boards. One such plaque has already been installed in Hans Kloepfer-Gasse in Leoben, for example. In Eibiswald, where Kloepfer is also an honorary citizen of the market town, a similar contextualization has not yet taken place.
Literature: Uwe Baur/Karin Gradwohl-Schlacher, Literatur in Österreich 1938–1945. Band 1: Steiermark. Wien u. a. 2008, 180–188. Harald Salfellner, „Aber Arzt bin ich geblieben“. Bilder aus dem Leben Hans Kloepfers. Prag 2017. Stefan Karner/Karin Schmidlechner, Endbericht der ExpertInnenkommission für Straßennamen in Graz. Graz 2017. URL = https://www.graz.at/cms/dokumente/
Text: Markus Rieger-Roschitz / Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences
