Painful memories of Nazi Germany

Fritzl wanted his daughter to grow up into a 'perfect' housewife, a notion he had inherited from Austria's Nazi past

Mehru Jaffer Vienna

It seems Austria was so busy seducing tourists with the superior air and water found on picturesque mountain tops here that it overlooked what was going on in windowless dungeons below its own bedroom. This picture postcard country was rocked when the lurid tale of Josef Fritzl came out. Fritzl, a 73 year old electrician, had imprisoned his daughter, Elisabeth, for 24 years in the cellar of his house in Amstetten, a little town west of Vienna sourrounded by orchards and endless vineyards. In the airless premises, Fritzl fathered seven children from his own daughter, the youngest of whom is five years old. All this while Fritzl continued to live upstairs with Rosemarie, his 68 year-old-wife, and mother of seven grown up children.

In August 1984, Elisabeth, then 18, was reported missing from Amstetten. Word was spread that she had run away from home to join a sect. In consecutive years three children appeared on the Fritzl doorstep with notes written by Elisabeth that she was unable to care for them. These three children were adopted by the 'grandparents' and lived like other children in the neighbourhood. Three other children remained in the cellar with their mother. In fact, they had never even seen daylight until their rescue in April this year. Police say Fritzl confessed to burning the body of a seventh child shortly after it died in infancy.

Fritzl further confessed that Elisabeth was wayward and disobedient as a teenager. That she hung out till late at night in the company of friends he did not approve of. He was forced to act and to do something about Elisabeth to discipline her. He created a place where Elisabeth was separated from the world Fritzl did not like and he used force to do so. Fritzl allegedly drugged, handcuffed and locked Elisabeth up when she was 18. For nearly quarter of a century after, she was repeatedly raped by her own father.

 Franz Polzer, head of the police investigation team, told the Austrian news agency, Austria Presse Agentur, that for the first nine years of Elisabeth's imprisonment, the cellar had just one room, implying that acts of incest were committed before the couple's young children. Gradually, the living premises — behind two heavily reinforced concrete doors that were fitted with electric locks — were enlarged.

 The crime came to light only when Kerstin, 19, Elisabeth's eldest child, fell seriously ill and was rushed to hospital on April 19. Fritzl's neighbours and acquaintances had expressed shock at the allegations, saying he treated his grandchildren affectionately and appeared to be a good grandfather. Even former colleagues described him as hard working and polite. But Ernst Berger, a Vienna-based psychiatrist, told reporters that criminals like Fritzl often show no sign of their psychological disturbance. They can appear to be quite normal. Fritzl aroused little suspicion, as he seemed no different to most Austrian men.

Fritzl is an extreme case but he is still the product of a society that remains largely authoritarian. In this incident, sexuality is used only as an excuse to exert complete power and control over a woman. 

 In a similar case, Natasha Kampusch, 21, who was abducted by a man at the age of 10 and imprisoned in a similar way — in a cellar — for eight years before her miraculous escape two years ago, told BBC television that Austria's history plays a part in cases of abuse that occur in the country. "I think this exists worldwide, but here (Austria) it's also a ramification of World War II and its connection to education. At the time of National Socialism, the suppression of women was propagated. An authoritarian education was very important," Kampusch explained, saying that her own traumatic experience and suffering will stay with her for the rest of her life.

National Socialism was a Pan-Germanic movement formed at the beginning of the 20th century. Most of the followers and members became supporters of Hitler, and were one of the chief elements leading the pro-Nazi coup in 1938 that brought about the Anschluss — the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany, by the Nazi regime.

"I grew up in Nazi times and that meant the need to be controlled and respect authority," said Fritzl. Elisabeth, he said, was a wild girl, constantly partying and mixing with the bad crowd. He saw his daughter as wayward and in need of discipline and so devised the ultimate punishment. ”It is true that the landscape in Austria is very pretty. But people here have problems like people elsewhere in the world,” said Professor Elke Mader, Cultural Anthropology department of Vienna University. Professor Mader feels that a problem with Austrians is that they have been living in fear for a long time. World War I had reduced the mighty Austrian empire to a stub. The inter-war period was full of fear of the future. During World War II, Austria chose to ally with Germany and later was fearful of its reputation for doing so. Professor Mader recalls growing up in a society that feared a war between America and Russia at the doorstep of Europe. “It was not unusual for homes built three or four decades ago to have bomb shelters in the basement. During the Cold War everyone around Europe built nuclear protection cellars,” she says.

That is one reason why authorities and neighbours raised no alarm when he decided to build a basement. However, Fritzl's fear was not a nuclear attack, but that his daughter would grow up to be wild and irresponsible. He wanted to tame her and to groom her into a “perfect” wife and mother so that society could be proud of her. 

This is a value he inherited from the Nazi period. The fear at that time was that the blue-eyed, blonde hair people would vanish along with the ideal of the 'perfect' family if women were not taught by the authorities to be 'perfect' mothers and wives of a society of the pure race. 

Fritzl told the police of his “beautiful idea” to have a perfect, large second family with his daughter. In a statement he wrote that in time his daughter Elisabeth became just as good a housewife and mother as his wife Rosemarie upstairs. “I grew up in the Nazi times and that meant the need to be controlled and respect authority,” admits Fritzl. To punish, to lock up in dark rooms and to physically and psychologically hurt those who do not obey is an old habit here.

A beloved phrase in Austria remains, mehr schein als sein (more appearance than reality). “I am a victim and not a monster,” Fritzl says from custody, an echo of what many here say about the role of Austria during World War II. In most discussions on 1938, when Austria voted in favour of annexation by Nazi Germany, it is not rare for an Austrian to insist that the country was a victim of Nazism and not a partner in crime.

Today Austrians fear that the reputation of their country as a 'perfect' place in the world is soiled. Therefore, the head of the country has a new budget to rewrite the image of Austria tarnished by Fritzl. It is little consolation to Austrians that incest, child molestation and domestic violence are a worldwide problem that have to be talked about so that they can be prevented. Prominent Indian psychologist Sudhir Kakar thinks this is a global phenomenon. “This is a pathology of patriarchy which is not limited in time and space to Central Europe in the 21st century. In some periods and places, such incidents did not even carry the stigma that is attached to them today. People even justified Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, who was suspected of having incestuous relationship with his daughter, by saying that the king should not be denied fruits of a tree he himself has planted. That said, the difference in India would be that given the curiosity, interest and general closeness of people to each other and the disregard of privacy as a desirable virtue, something like this would have come to light much sooner,” he says.

I tried to talk about the Fritzl affair at a dinner recently. The response of even the most sophisticated was that they did not follow the “sick” incident. “Do you believe that Rosemarie, Fritzl's wife, had no clue as to what was going on for 24 years in the basement of her home?” was the question. “You know these people in the countryside… they are a bit slow in the head. It is quite possible that the wife suspected nothing,” a former opera singer said, changing the subject from dungeon dads to dollars. “Do you think the dollar will ever recover? All my savings are in dollars you know”. 

However the media cannot get enough of Fritzl. "How can it happen here?" Die Presse, a popular Austrian daily asked. This is something that makes Sarah Habersack, a student of International Development at Vienna University, really mad. “Now that Fritzl is exposed everyone is talking like a pseudo psychologist. But when these things are going on nobody wants to find out more. The media does not investigate,” Habersack complains. She finds some of the reactions pathetic. Fritzl revives familiar feelings of fear…once again women feel like victims. 

Ideally Habersack would like to take this terrible incident as a starting point for open discussions on taboo topics like sexuality in a fearless, fruitful environment.