On Thursday, October 30, 2025, the market town of Neumarkt invites you to a reading and lecture by Stefan Karner about the book "Gauleiter Uiberreither – Two Lives" in the Raiffeisensaal at the main square. The event shines a light on the life of Sigfried Uiberreither, who exercised political power over the Reichsgau Styria during World War II and lived in Germany for decades under a new identity, unknown after the war. Admission: voluntary donation
The Salzburger Sigfried Uiberreither was, as Gauleiter, Landeshauptmann, and Reichsstatthalter from 1938 to 1945, in charge of the Reichsgau Styria (including Burgenland) and the "Untersteiermark," (co)responsible, among other things, for hostage shootings, death sentences, and the construction of the Southeast Wall. He was the son-in-law of Alfred Wegener (continental drift) and the brother-in-law of the mountaineer Heinrich Harrer. After fleeing Graz at the end of the war and being captured in Neumarkt, he was a defense witness for major war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. Before his planned deportation to Yugoslavia, he escaped from the US camp in Dachau, assumed a new identity, brought his family to him, and lived almost 40 years unnoticed in Germany, where he managed a business. Many believed he was in South America, having fled in exchange for his father-in-law's research papers. None of this is true.
The book traces the two lives of Sigfried Uiberreither: the first in the public eye as Hitler's paladin and the second, unnoticed until his death in 1984 in Sindelfingen. Stefan Karner Longtime director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for War Consequences Research, longtime board member of the Institute for Economic, Social, and Business History, head of the media course at the University of Graz. www.bik.ac.at