Lest we forget
With the memorial wall in the foyer of the Faculty building at Währinger Straße 42, the Faculty of Chemistry commemorates chemistry professor Jacques Pollak, who died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp; university assistants Dr Kurt Horeischy and Dr Hans Vollmar, who were shot in the Faculty of Chemistry building; and members of the University of Vienna’s chemistry community who were persecuted, expelled or murdered for racial or political reasons during the Nazi era.
Designed by Bele Marx & Gilles Mussard, the wall places two older memorial plaques in context. It was officially unveiled on 13 March 2018, 80 years after Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany.
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Historical background
The murder of university assistants Dr Kurt Horeischy and Dr Hans Vollmar on 5 April 1945 was investigated by the Institute of Contemporary History at the initiative of the Faculty of Chemistry and the University management. A master’s thesis by Stephanie Carla de la Barra, supervised by contemporary historian Univ.-Prof. Oliver Rathkolb, uncovered further details about the case. It was published by Mandelbaum Verlag in 2018.
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Artistic design
The project Tabula rasa? Gedächtnis und Tafel – was bleibt? places two older plaques in a contemporary context. The unveiling took place at a memorial event organised by the Faculty of Chemistry, attended by Rector Heinz Engl, the University of Vienna’s newly appointed honorary doctors Isaac Witz and Robert Shaw, the artists, and other distinguished guests.
Jacques Pollak (1872-1942)
Born in Budapest, Jacques Pollak received his doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Vienna in 1893. In 1896, he became an assistant to Hugo Weidel and Rudolf Wegscheider at the First Chemical Laboratory. After qualifying as a Privatdozent in chemistry in 1901, he was awarded the title of associate professor in 1908 and became a full professor in 1920. From 1923, he headed the Laboratory for Chemical Technology at the University of Vienna, whose establishment he had initiated. His research focused primarily on organic dyes. He retired in 1935 but continued his research at the First Chemical Institute.
Because of his Jewish heritage, Jacques Pollak was persecuted by the Nazis on racial grounds. On 22 April 1938, he was removed from his position and banned from teaching. On 10 July 1942, he and his wife Wilhelmine were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he died less than a month later. His wife died in September 1942.
Kurt Horeischy (1913-1945)
Kurt Horeischy studied physics and chemistry at the University of Vienna from 1932 to 1937. On 12 April 1938, he received his doctorate in physics. He was drafted into the German Wehrmacht but was soon discharged because of a serious lung condition. After returning to the University of Vienna, he became an assistant at the First Chemical Institute, where he headed the Microchemical Laboratory from 1941.
On 5 April 1945, he and his colleague Dr Hans Vollmar were shot by Professor of Physical Chemistry Dr Jörn Lange. They had been part of the resistance group “Tomsk” and were attempting, along with other members of the group, to stop Lange from disabling a valuable electron microscope.
Hans Vollmar (1915-1945)
Hans Vollmar was born in 1915 in Baden-Baden, Germany. He studied and completed his doctorate at the Faculty of Engineering in Karlsruhe. He then left Germany to pursue a master’s degree at the Case Institute of Technology in University Circle, Cleveland, which he completed in June 1938. He travelled across the United States from east to west, then continued through Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India and Ceylon. He paid for most of his passages by working as a coal trimmer on cargo ships.
Before the tragic events of 5 April 1945, he had worked for several years at the First Chemical Institute of the University of Vienna. He and his colleague Dr Kurt Horeischy were shot by Professor of Physical Chemistry Dr Jörn Lange while attempting, together with other members of the resistance group “Tomsk”, to stop Lange from disabling a valuable electron microscope.
Source: Letter from Doris Maaßen, daughter of Hans Vollmar, to the Faculty of Chemistry, 12 March 2018.
A few days after their murder, Hans Vollmar and Kurt Horeischy were buried in a funeral plot in the garden behind the First Medical Clinic. During the legal proceedings against Jörn Lange after the war, both men were exhumed and autopsied. On 23 August 1945, they were reburied at Baumgartner Cemetery.
The initiative to erect a memorial stone for Dr Vollmar, almost 80 years after his murder, came from Annette Marchl, granddaughter of Prof Ludwig Ebert, then head of the First Chemical Institute. After discovering the tragic events of 1945 in family papers, she began investigating:
While researching at the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, I came across the fact that Dr Hans Vollmar had been moved from Baumgartner Cemetery to the Central Cemetery in May 1987. After an exhaustive search for his final resting place there, I had to conclude that Dr Vollmar did not appear to have a marked grave.
Ms Marchl contacted the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Dr Vollmar’s remains were identified and buried in a grave in Section 40 of Vienna Central Cemetery, among the graves of honour. The simple black gravestone, unveiled on 8 May 2023 in the presence of Federal Minister Gerhard Karner, bears the inscription:
Dr. HANS VOLLMAR · Chemiker · 8.6.1915 – 5.4.1945 · (ermordet)
(Dr HANS VOLLMAR · Chemist · 8 June 1915 – 5 April 1945 · (murdered))
Kurt Horeischy still has a grave of honour at Baumgartner Cemetery (Section E1, Grave 170).
Federal Minister Gerhard Karner at the grave of Dr Hans Vollmar
