The activities of the People's Court in Linz

The activities of the People's Court in Linz and the project “Making the people's court files in the Upper Austrian Provincial Archives available with IT-support”

The documentation of the legal proceedings of the Austrian people's courts, which were set up in 1945/46, were barely used as a resource by researchers of history or judicial history until recently. This was also connected to the modest way in which they had been made available. But in recent years the files of the Austrian people's courts have been included in a comprehensive project. This article gives an overview of the activities of the people's court in Linz, based on the files of that court already made available by IT.

These provide information on the so-called last phase crimes, including trials for crimes in Mauthausen concentration camp and its Upper Austrian subsidiary camps, the various death marches to and from Mauthausen, the so-called Mühlviertler Hasenjagd (the Mühlviertel Rabbit Hunt) as well as mass murder in Hartheim. Furthermore it is a source of information on “aryanisation”, other crimes that occurred in the wake of the “Anschluss” in March 1938 as well as the mistreatment and murder of forced
labourers in Upper Austria.