About this place
The Kolpinghaus at the corner of Langgasse and Gesellenhausstraße was completed in 1930 to designs by Hans Steineder as a hostel for young Catholic journeymen, and is regarded as one of Austria's finest buildings of the New Objectivity. Within days of the Anschluss in March 1938 it was seized and became the Gestapo regional headquarters for Upper Austria, later the Reichsgau Oberdonau. Political opponents, priests, Jews, Roma and foreign forced labourers were interrogated and tortured in the building's own cells; many were sent on to Dachau or to nearby Mauthausen, where some were murdered. Franz Stangl, later commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka, began his career in the Jewish affairs desk here. On 25 April 1945 an Allied bomb hit the building, killing Gestapo chief Leopold Spann and many of his staff. After the war the house was returned to the Kolping association; today it holds a hotel and a children's theatre, and since November 1988 a copper plaque with the Linz coat of arms commemorates the victims of the Gestapo.
Key facts
- 1930 year — The Kolpinghaus was completed to plans by architect Hans Steineder
- 20 km — Distance to Mauthausen, the concentration camp where many Gestapo prisoners from Linz were sent
- 1988 year — The City of Linz unveiled the memorial plaque, fifty years after the Anschluss
📍 Langgasse 13, 4020, Linz