Josef Fritzl - An Austrian Model?

Insane acts but not an insane man

After I read an article by Peter Millar in the Daily Mail, I found many answers to the questions I raised about Austrian in my earlier blog about Josef Fritzl – This is really a rehash of that same article interspersed with my views.

The case of Josef Fritzl and his incestuous relationship with his daughter for at least 31 years and the consequent imprisonment of his daughter for 24 years read like unprecedented insanity that is almost unthinkable.

Any lawyer for Josef Fritzl would confidently argue that his client should be committed to a psychiatric ward rather than to prison for what is general terms are heinous crimes.

It would be extremely convenient for the people in charge of the image that Austria projects to the world to legally acquiesce to that thinking and pigeonhole the matter to the case of a deranged and unstable mentally ill man then move on swiftly.

Fritzl a keyhole into Austria

Unfortunately, I am not one of those who would buy that cop-out that easily, I think Mr. Fritzl offers an opportunity for Austria to review their history and address some serious issues about their nation, their identity and possible misrepresentations of who they really are.

To allow Mr. Fritzl to get away with pleading insanity rather than taking complete responsibility for his carefully detailed meticulous and Machiavellian scheming that has sorrowfully damaged many lives would be outrageous to say the least.

For every detail we have learnt of Mr. Fritzl, he appears to have been of seriously sound mind and very aware of what he required for his pleasure and did what it took to achieve those ends – he cannot have been mentally ill by any stretch of the imagination.

Joining their German folk

Though Austria has a history dating back to the 9^th Century, the present Austria came about at the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the First World War, the people of that country comprised most of the German-speaking parts of that empire that the French refused to allow to merge with German in the fear that a Greater Germany might lead to another great war.

One badly kept secret is the fact that Adolf Hitler was born in Austria but beyond that, one of Hitler’s goals was to bring together all the German speaking people into one greater Germany it lead to the annexation of Austria and the forceful acquisition of Sudetenland in the old Czechoslovakia.

The government of Austria somehow realised the annexation would be inevitable and planned a plebiscite to determine if the people would want to retain independence or be subsumed into the greater Germany dream.

Before the people were presented with that choice the Austrian National Socialist Party had routed the government and presented an opportunity for Hilter to take over Austria – the Anschluss – without as much as shooting a gun.

No von Trapp resistance

The Nazis then presented the people with the plebiscite and it was favourably passed with 99.73% accepting Nazi rulership.

There was no resistance in Austria like the kind we know of in France; in fact the story of the von Trapp family as popularised in the Sound Of Music was a radical exception rather than the rule.

An unfortunate accident of history lead to the allied powers considering Austria a victim of Hitler’s actions rather than a willing acquiescent people, this designation was supposed to help a simply non-existent resistance but it played well into the post-war exculpation of Austrians from involvement in the Nazi machinery.

A false history

Austria finally became independent in 1955 and have kept their victim status since – the election of Kurt Waldheim as President in the 1980s after finding out that he had omitted parts of his Nazi career past and we all bought his story especially after he had been the Secretary General of the United Nations for two terms.

Austrian cosiness with a Nazi past that is deeper than presented and accepted is legendary unlike the Germans who have had a complete catharsis; they have been respectably Catholic with very conservative values that keeps the woman in the kitchen, in the church and caring for the children like the beautiful Nazi wives of old.

My experience of this was quite notable in that on a trip round Europe in 1999, I visited Vienna in June and to discover the city I tried to hire a bicycle. The man refused to give me a bicycle for the simple reason that he thought I might end up in the wrong part of town.

Presumably, there was a part of Vienna that would have put me in real danger for my welfare, safety and life – much as other residents of Vienna denied there could ever be the possibility of coming across such a mishap – the evil was either lurking as racism from the bicycle hire shop or a more sinister right-wing element ready to pounce in some Vienna back street.

Suppressed Women of Austria

Natascha Kampusch touched a raw nerve when she suggested that what happened to her and Elizabeth Fritzl were a result of authoritarian education and the suppression of womenfolk in the name of strict Christian family values and more importantly the Austrian Nazi past.

It makes one wonder if there are not many more abuses in Austria but not to the extremes that we have learnt of those two ladies.

When I go back to answer the questions I asked about Austrian soul-searching, questions I had no idea of being able to answer when I first wrote them, I find that I can without much persuasion answer Yes to all of them.

Would the Austrians be able to face up to their past and make all the amends necessary to bring their society round to both the truth and civility expected of countries that too conveniently cavorted with Nazism?

We would have to wait and see if they would seize that opportunity.

Reference

Peter Millar – In the shadow of the Swastika

Josef Fritzl: A man apart, an arch-demon indeed

The alternative evolution of man

When men plumb the depths of depravity that it is impossible to fathom the realities of what gets narrated as truth, have we come to crossroads on the evolution of humanity?

We are disgusted and reviled by stories of children being sexually abused by adults; it becomes unspeakably repulsive when that adult is the parent of the child.

There is no field of psychoanalysis that can confidently explain why a father should find his daughter so sexually attractive that he would indulge in incest.

A man apart – an arch-demon in truth

The news waves are regaling us with stories of Josef Fritzl who lured, captured, drugged and handcuffed his daughter at 18 and imprisoned her in a dungeon below his home where he engaged in enforced incestuous domination of the girl for 24 years and produced 7 children by her.

The strongest word the criminal justice system can find for such acts are adjectives of the word crime, but this is more than a crime, it is an abomination, an aberration, a taboo conceived and carried out by a man who could well be an arch-demon deep in the vortex of what leads to the core of hell.

No parental control should get this far

It would be speculation to suggest that Josef Fritzl had not previously sexually abused other young girls till it got to a time that he thought his daughter had come of age for abuse at 11 years of age.

The power of choice, freedom and life that he exercised over his daughter and his children by his daughter should be a subject for serious analysis, nobody should because they have parental rights exercise such untrammelled control over their children to their utter detriment as we have witnessed with this case.

One can only wonder what appealed to that iota of humanity that he had left that he allowed his very sick child to go to hospital for treatment and now the saga has opened as an almost unbelievable tale.

This is the same man who on finding out that one of the twins his daughter gave birth to had died unceremonious dumped the body in an incinerator.

We find ourselves shocked at what our humanity would abhor but has been enacted by one of our species.

God save the children

The children whose split identity would call on the widest available amelioration resources are caught in a maelstrom they cannot begin to understand – being siblings of their mother and grandchildren of their father – this could very well lead to the onset of severe mental illness.

One can only hope that the goodness of humanity, the compassion of the community and the succour of many would help those children escape the damaged existence this unconscionably evil man brought them into.

Theories abound about the man’s secrecy, deception and machinations that even those under his roof did not know of his family below, in the cellar.

Questions abound

Austrians have to ask themselves some serious soul-searching questions because this is a rupture in their society one that has replaced the norm with some ethereal nightmare that does not seem to be near its end.

Have the Austrians becomes so satisfied, so contented and so respectable that their duty of social enquiry has been stunted by the need to maintain civility and polite coexistence?

Is there a traditional complacency of comfort that allows for them to accept political liaisons in their government that gives legitimacy to extreme right-wing parties?

Is this, almost too many already – one similar case happened 2 years ago with Natascha Kampusch – abuse of girls and women inadvertently woven into some fabric of their developmental process that some unstable men are playing it out, in reality?