Mauthausen-Studien 17: Andreas Kranebitter

‘Die Konstruktion von Kriminellen. Die Inhaftierung von “Berufsverbrechern” im KZ Mauthausen’ (‘The Construction of Criminals. Theimprisonment of “career criminals” in the Mauthausen concentration camp’) by Andreas Kranebitter was published as Volume 17 of the series ‘Mauthausen-Studien’.

The Nazi state deported people to the concentration camps for a variety of reasons. The criminal police were authorised to take people into ‘preventative detention’ and send them to a concentration camp. Those with previous convictions were labelled ‘career criminals’ by the police and SS. After 1945 they were not classed as victims. They were spoken of in hushed tones, and were never the subject of research.

But who were the ‘criminal’ prisoners of the concentration camps? What was the legal basis for their deportation? For what crimes did they have previous convictions? How did the criminal police apply the label ‘career criminal’? What role did those labelled ‘criminals’ play in the structure of ‘prisoner society’? The book focuses not only the Nazi era but also on the history of criminal policy in Austria and the continuing stigmatisation in the (family) biographies of this group of victims after 1945.

Using a range of historiographical and sociological methods and concepts, the author traces the biographies of 885 Austrian ‘career criminals’ of the Mauthausen concentration camp. The history of the concentration camp is thus illuminated from a hitherto neglected perspective.

Andreas Kranebitter is the director of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW) in Vienna.

The book is available from the Mauthausen Memorial Book Shop and via the website of the new academic press.