Richard Schmitz

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Richard Schmitz" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (December 2009) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Richard Schmitz (CS)]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Richard Schmitz (CS)}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Richard Schmitz
Schmitz in 1934
Vice-Chancellor of Austria
In office 30 September 1930 – 4 December 1930
Chancellor	Carl Vaugoin
Preceded by	Carl Vaugoin
Succeeded by	Johannes Schober
Personal details
Born	14 December 1885 Müglitz, Moravia, Austria-Hungary
Died	27 April 1954 (aged 68) Vienna, Austria
Political party	Christian Social Party

Richard Schmitz (14 December 1885 – 27 April 1954) was an Austrian politician who served as the eleventh Vice Chancellor of Austria from 30 September to 4 December 1930.^[1]

As a member of the Christian Social Party, Schmitz also served as Minister of Social Affairs as well as Federal Commissioner of Vienna. On 6 April 1934, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss appointed Schmitz Mayor of Vienna.^[2]

He succeeded elected Mayor Karl Seitz. Ardently anti-Nazi, Schmitz was Mayor four years later when Austria was absorbed into the Third Reich in the Anschluss. Until that point, Schmitz spoke out publicly against Nazism and its tactics.

Along with thousands of other prominent Austrians, Richard Schmitz was arrested and taken to Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria where he remained for the length of the war. In late April 1945 Schmitz was, together with other prominent concentration camp inmates, transferred to Tyrol where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by American troops on 5 May 1945.