75 years after Seyss-Inquart’s hanging: ‘Grandpa remained convinced of Nazism until after Hitler’s death’
Helmut Seyss-Inquart had not consciously considered it. But indeed, because of the phone call from the Netherlands, Saturday it will be 75 years ago that his grandfather, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, was hanged. The Austrian, appointed by Adol as Commissioner of the Netherlands in 1940, was charged at the Neurenburg trial for war crimes and evidence against humanity.
Unlike much of his family grandson Helmut Seyss-Inquart renounced his grandfather. “There has always been little talk about him in the family, and it never has been. My father and my two aunts (Arthur Seyss-Inquart’s three children, red.) have always maintained that their father had no choice but to do what he did, that he did it right. But after my childhood it has become clear to me through self-study that this is not true. My grandfather was found from Nazism until Hitler’s death. He never expressed any remorse even during the Nuremberg trial.”
Radical Violence
The Austrian historian Johannes Koll wrote a fist-sized bi in 2015 about Arthur Seyss-Inquart, one of the protected Austrian Nazis. Koll found it fascinating how a very intelligent lawyer from a ‘good Catholic family’ could develop into such a fanatical Nazi. “You could say he has been radicalized after his childhood. He was someone who, in terms of character, was perhaps more likely to look for nonviolent solutions. But if he had to, he didn’t hesitate for a second to use radical force. During the years in the Netherlands it got worse. He also ensured that a very large part of the Dutch Jews perished, and he strives with great violence. He was also primarily responsible for the Hunger Winter with a blockade of water transport.”
Arthur Seyss-Inquart has never doubted his objectionable ideals until the last second, Koll established after extensive archival research. “Not even in the letters he wrote to his wife and children from Nuremberg.” That someone who had good personal contact with both Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler did not know what was happening in the concentration camps in the east, as the Reichskommissar in Nuremberg said, including his biographer ‘big nonsense’. “Seyss-Inquart knew the details. He wasn’t a front-row Nazi, but he was on his way in that direction. Hitler appointed him Foreign Minister in his will, that says a lot. There was just no realm left when Hitler died.”
family history
Before Helmut’s birth in 1956, Koll’s biography confirmed what he already knew: that his grandfather was no good. “The book offered even more counterweight to the family narrative that it was all okay. It did me good to read so clearly that I saw it correctly. It has also been important for me to speak out in public. This is how I managed to come to terms with my family past. Although it has made my position in the family more difficult.”
In the house of the Seyss-Inquart family near Salzburg, where Helmut’s aunt Dorothea later lived, a portrait of Arthur Seyss-Inquart in SS uniform remained all the while. “My family has chosen to keep my grandfather close, without asking critical questions. No distance from the past. This is how an entire generation of Austrians has gone.”
Seyss-quarts biographer Koll In that Austria took a long time to recognize that it was not a victim during the Second World War, but that the country made an active contribution to, among other things, the holocaust. “But in general the meaning of names like Seyss-Inquart disappears. Few people still know him.”
Anne Frank House
Helmut Seyss-Inquart has in the past been actively involved in the past of men like his grandfather. In 1987 there was even talk of a collaboration with the Anne Frank Foundation. That fell through because the foundation was afraid of the emotions of survivors of the war. “Of course I understood that. “This is what the grandson mentions, among other things, after the then director of the foundation”. The last Helmut Seyss-Inquart was a ‘falteringly doubting man, not yet finished with the past of his family’ with a ‘actually hardly interesting’ story. “My intentions and integrity were questioned. Like I wasn’t quite right. I really hated that.”
Houwaart literally said that Helmut Seys-Inquart would not be allowed to work for the Anne Frank House until the year 2020. Now it’s 2021. Would the grandson of the dreaded empire deal be open for conversation? “If they want to approach me to talk, or have a concrete idea, I would certainly be willing. I’m not mad at them.”