1930s: Industry in Vorarlberg and the Nazi Party

Starting in the 1930s, the majority of the traditionally liberal and German nationalist oriented textile industrialists in Vorarlberg provided massive financial and organisational support to the Nazi Party. Dornbirn especially, the centre of Vorarlberg’s textile industry, with large companies such as F. M. Hämmerle or Franz M. Rhomberg, was considered a “brown nest” (breeding ground for the Nazis). In these companies, members of the Fatherland Front and the Home Guard were threatened with dismissal because of their political convictions even during the period of Austrofascism.

The authorities felt mostly powerless. In May 1934, the Vorarlberg security director reported to the Federal Chancellery that the employers had created “an atmosphere in which the population did not even” dare “to breath”, as “workers, innkeepers and business people of all kinds depended” on them.

Following the “Anschluss” (“annexation”), the textile employers were rewarded for their support: They had careers in the Party and the administration, they benefited from “Aryanisations”, for instance of the large department store Herzmansky in Vienna, and they received many armaments orders. The Vorarlberg industrialist Hermann Rhomberg, for example, was responsible for assigning such contracts as “Air Force Commissioner” of the Reich Aviation Ministry. His company as well as most other textile companies subsequently shifted to arms production.