“Roter Stern über Graz”: Barbara Stelzl-Marx's book about the Soviet occupation in 1945

In her book "Roter Stern über Graz", Barbara Stelzl-Marx describes how the people of Graz experienced the 75 days of Soviet occupation in 1945. Photo: BIK

When the Styrian capital was occupied by the Red Army on 9 May 1945, fear and uncertainty mingled with relief at the end of the war for the majority of the population. The British had actually been expected. They took over eleven weeks later. Although the time under Soviet occupation was short-lived, it left deep traces in the collective memory and in personal life stories. Based on archive documents and interviews with contemporary witnesses, historian Barbara Stelzl-Marx describes the everyday life of the people in the first weeks after the war in her new book "Roter Stern über Graz" in a well-founded and detailed manner.

During the night of 8 to 9 May 1945, units of the 57th Army of the 3rd Ukrainian Front liberated Graz. The Styrian capital was handed over to the Red Army without resistance. Graz was subsequently under Soviet occupation for 75 days before the British took over the administration of Styria as part of the zone exchange on 23/24 July. "It was a social and emotional state of emergency that people in the former ‘Stadt der Volkserhebung’ found themselves in at the time," says Barbara Stelzl-Marx, contemporary historian at the University of Graz and head of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on Consequences of War. In her new book "Roter Stern über Graz", she impressively describes how people experienced every day as a challenge.

For the first time, she drew on in-depth analyses of archive documents, newspaper articles and diary entries as well as interviews with 80 contemporary witnesses. "For the research project, we used the media to find people who experienced the end of the war and the eleven weeks that followed in Graz as children or young people and wanted to tell us about it. Many more came forward than we had expected," reports Stelzl-Marx. The result is a captivating narrative non-fiction book with elements of oral history.

Book presentation:
Barbara Stelzl-Marx: Roter Stern über Graz. 75 Tage sowjetische Besatzung 1945, Molden Verlag 2025
Thursday, 10 April 2025, 7:30 pm
Moser bookshop, Am Eisernen Tor 1, 8010 Graz
Please register at veranstaltungen(at)styriabooks.at.

A cooperation event between Styria Books, the University of Graz and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on Consequences of War

https://www.styriabooks.at/shop/gesellschaft-geschichte/roter-stern-ueber-graz

⇒ If you are interested in how the past affects our present and future, you can study History at the University of Graz.

Gudrun Pichler

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