Ernst MUNDL was born in Salzburg on April 19, 1909 and was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church. He was the third child of Maria Mundl, née Schnelldorfer, and Jakob Mundl, a baker in Salzburg’s Maxglan neighborhood.
Their son Ernst learned a skilled trade and became a master watchmaker. He was married, and in 1942 Ernst MUNDL was enrolled in the Wehrmacht’s XVIII Mountain Corps.
Ernst MUNDL was a 33-year-old senior lance-corporal when his life ended violently near the Finnish-Swedish border during the Nazi’s war of plunder and annihilation.
The Corps Command’s report on »war losses« states that Ernst MUNDL shot himself on June 9, 1942, between 9 and 10 p.m. in the Finnish border town of Alatornio – »suicide after a failed desertion«.
The possibility that Ernst MUNDL was actually shot by the Secret Field Police during his attempt to escape to neutral Sweden cannot be ruled out.
Those of his wartime experiences that led him to desert remain unknown. What is beyond doubt, however, is that his grave lies in the German military cemetery in Rovaniemi-Norvajärvi.1
His parents, siblings and widow all survived the years of terror in Salzburg.
In liberated Austria after the war ended, however, none of his surviving relatives had the right to claim any victim’s compensation fund support because Wehrmacht deserters were denied recognition as »victims of the struggle for a free, democratic Austria«.
What is certain is that Ernst MUNDL was one of a number of victims of the Nazi terror who were not recorded in either the documentation Widerstand und Verfolgung in Salzburg 1934-1945 (published in 1991) nor in the online databank of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance.
1 Josef Haigermoser, born in 1913, was a laborer from St. Georgen near Salzburg and a member of the 20th Mountain or Lapland Army who was also buried in the German military cemetery in Rovaniemi-Norvajärvi.
He was sentenced to death after his »failed desertion« and executed on November 18, 1943.
Sources
- Registration books in the archives of the Salzburg Archdiocese
- Salzburg city and state archives: police registration files and local citizenship records
- Division 188 Court Martial: Report to the Wehrmacht Information Office
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid at Salzburg, Siezenheimer Straße 5
