Hedwig Bodenstein, verh. Leitner

Born:	11-04-1916
Faculty:	Philosophical School
Category:	Expelled student

Hedwig Anna Theresia BODENSTEIN, married LEITNER, teacher and resistance fighter, born on November 4^th, 1916 in Ebensee/Upper Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, Citizenship: Austria), daughter of Ebensee high school professor Walther Bodenstein and Theresia Bodenstein, née Ahamer. In the summer of 1935 she passed her school-leaving examination (Reifepruefung/Matura) at the Realgymnasium in Gmunden. In the fall term of 1935/36 she began to study history and Romance languages at the University of Vienna and lived in the Caritas students' home in Vienna's 9^th district, Servitengasse 3. She was enrolled at the School of Philosophy in the 4^th year until the spring term of 1939. She came from a conservative family sympathetic to Austrofascism, which was seen as a protection against the National Socialist danger rising in Germany. She had been a member of the "Vaterlaendische Front" since 1935, and joined a conservative student anti-Nazi resistance group at the university, the "Austrian Freedom Movement" around the Augustinian priest, religion teacher and poet Karl Roman Scholz. The members printed small leaflets, contacted the Western Allies, held training sessions and tried to convince people. In 1940, mainly pupils and students belonged to the group, which had about 100 members. She was quite active in the group, smuggling training and propaganda supplies from Switzerland to Austria and translating legitimations for soldiers in case of capture by Allied forces.

"The goal was the liberation of Austria. That has been a big goal. We thought we could win the young people over to it, and no one thought that this was such a diabolical system that we would be arrested there and then. We had no experience, not even from outside, from Germany. [...] We thought, yes well, the politicians who were in the system time, they immediately took them away and out into the concentration camp.... And we thought, we young students, they won't do anything to us. I didn't believe that we would ever ... Even when they arrested me, I didn't think that." (Hedwig Bodenstein-Leitner, quoted in DOeW 1992, 317)

But the group was uncovered in the summer of 1940 because one member, the artist from the Burgtheater and Gestapo informer Otto Hartmann, had denounced all the other members. Hedwig Bodenstein was arrested by the Gestapo on August 1^st, 1940 and imprisoned for two years, in the Gestapo prison until December 1940, then in the Vienna-Roßauerlaende and Krems prisons until the end of December 1942. After her release, however, she was no longer able to complete her studies at the University of Vienna and she worked as a domestic helper, later as a translator in her home community of Ebensee. At the trial in December 1943, she was sentenced to two years and three months in prison and two years' loss of honor for aiding and abetting the preparation of high treason. The sentence had already been served by her imprisonment. After the conviction, her mother tried to intervene with the Reich Ministry of Education in Berlin so that her daughter would be admitted to take her doctorate at the University of Vienna after all, but this was rejected by the NSDAP Gauleitung Oberdonau, Gaupersonalamt, Abt. Politische Beurteilung, in August 1944:

"Your daughter, Hedwig Bodenstein, is responsible for her behavior in not being admitted to the doctorate at the present time. It is up to her to prove herself by politically irreproachable behavior and, if necessary, after the end of the war, if she fulfills her duties in the present difficult times, a new application can be made with a chance of success." (Letter from the Gaupersonalamt to Theresia Bodenstein, August 3^rd, 1944, cited in DoeW 1992, 318.)

As late as March 1^st, 1945, the Rectorate of the University of Vienna informed the university secretariat upon request that no further university disciplinary proceedings would be opened against Hedwig Bodenstein, despite her conviction, since she had been completely removed from the list of students. Two months later, the war and the rule of National Socialism were also over in Vienna, and Hedwig Bodenstein was able to complete her studies with the teacher's examination - but a dissertation or graduation is not to be found in the doctoral records of the University of Vienna, neither under her maiden name nor under her married name. She taught as a secondary school professor in Vienna and was in charge of the foreign department for France, Great Britain and the USA in the Federal Ministry of Education from 1951 to 1957, and then returned to teaching until her retirement in 1976. She was married to Ebensee merchant Johann Leitner (1922-2004) and they had one daughter, Hedwig Leitner.

Hedwig Leitner, née Bodenstein died of heart failure on December 13^th, 1994.

Lit: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") PHIL 1935-1940, University Secretariat GZ US 245 ex 1944/45 ONr. 9; DOeW 3.043a, 19.793/9, 20.000/b457, 20.100/966, 20.975; Christine KANZLER, Leitner Hedwig Anna Theresia, née Bodenstein: http://biografia.sabiado.at/leitner-hedwig-anna-theresia-geb-bodenstein/; Karin BERGER et al, eds, DDer Himmel ist blau. Kann sein. Frauen im Widerstand. Österreich 1938–1945, Vienna 1985, 47; DOeW , eds, Erzaehlte Geschichte. Berichte von Männern und Frauen in Widerstand und Verfolgung. Band 2: Katholiken, Konservative und Legitimisten, Vienna 1992, 316; Nina HÖLLINGER, "... Und dann ist es also mit Verhoeren losgegangen". Widerstand der Ebenseerin Hedwig Leitner in der Österreichischen Freiheitsbewegung, in: betrifft Widerstand 129, 2018, 24-27; http://www.doew.at/erinnern/biographien/erzaehlte-geschichte/widerstand-1938-1945/hedwig-leitner-geb-bodenstein-uns-werden-sie-schon-nichts-tun.

Herbert Posch