The last surviving member of the International Brigades, which fought on the side of the left-wing bourgeois republic against the rebellious fascist troops around General Franco during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), died last weekend in France at the age of 101, according to Spanish media . Almost 85 years ago, around 1,400 Austrians also took part in the “Guerra Civil” in the International Brigades.
26.05.2021 a 17:08
The Spanish Association of Friends of the International Brigades recently confirmed the death of Josep Almudéver Mateu to the news agencies Reuters and EFE. “It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Josep, the last of our admired brigadiers who are still alive,” said the chairman of the association, Almudena Cros, on his website.
Josep Almudéver Mateu was born in Marseille in May 1919 and was a citizen of both Spanish and French. In 1936, at the age of 17, he joined the Republican Army and fought in the Battle of Teruel before being injured. After recovering, he joined the International Brigades, whose exploits achieved legendary status through the works of writers and filmmakers such as Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, George Orwell and Andre Malraux.
Mateu was captured in Alicante in 1939 when the Republican side lost the war and spent time in prison camps and prisons. Between 1944 and 1947 he was active as an anti-fascist underground fighter before going into exile in France.
The deployment of the International Brigades, founded in October 1936, is the best-known and most extensive expression of foreign participation in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, alongside the Condor Legion, which gained notoriety on the Franco side through the bombing of the Basque city of Guernica (Gernika).
On October 22, 1936, their formation was formally agreed under communist leadership at a meeting of Comintern representatives with the Spanish Prime Minister Largo Caballero. From a military point of view, their use was only significant in the defense of Madrid, but as a moral factor the participation of 35,000 volunteers from over 60 countries was unsurpassed.
The interbrigades took the place of the international units of spontaneous militias of the various political parties, groups or trade unions. These consisted primarily of athletes and spectators who had traveled to Barcelona for a workers’ sports festival held as a counter-event to the Olympic Games in Berlin. It was organized by the French Communists, who set up offices to recruit volunteers and propaganda for entry into the brigades.
Within a few months five brigades consisting of foreigners (XI.-XV.) were set up, which were structured according to linguistic and national aspects. In June 1937 the founding of its own Austrian battalion took place in the largely German-speaking XI. Brigade was incorporated. The first use took place in the Brunete offensive. Schutzbund, revolutionary socialists and communists, most of whom had taken part in the February fights of 1934, gathered in the “February 12, 1934” battalion. 1,380 Austrians known by name fought in Spain, some of which were also deployed in other units. For example, the Schutzbund chairman and member of the National Council, Julius Deutsch, headed the organization of coastal protection near Valencia as General of the Republic. Around 43 women were also among them, most of them were involved in the medical service.
On September 21, 1938, the International Brigades were disbanded. A part of the interbrigadists came to a second mission shortly before the end. After the collapse, those who could not return home were interned in France. Many Germans and Austrians later ended up in concentration camps. But also around 5,000 republican-minded Spaniards, they came to Mauthausen as a matter of urgency. The Spanish Civil War ended in April 1939 with the victory of Franco, who ultimately ruled Spain as dictator until his death in 1975.
Hans Landauer, the last of the Austrian “Volunteers for Freedom”, died on July 19, 2014, as their self-image according to the central organ of the International Brigades called “El Voluntario de la Libertad” was. He went to Spain in 1937 at the age of 16. However, it was a great achievement of the later police officer that from the early 1980s onwards he worked as a volunteer employee of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW) to find the traces of his former comrades, and thus the “world’s largest archive of a national contingent of Spanish fighters “, as can be read in a volume edited by the DÖW in 2016 with the title” 80 Years of International Brigades “.
On the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the civil guerra in 1986, the book “For Spain’s Freedom” was published under his aegis, which represented the first comprehensive review of this chapter in the history of the Austrian labor movement. Ten years later, the “Lexicon of Austrian fighters in Spain”, published together with the writer Erich Hackl, was to follow.
For a long time it was hardly known that around 140 Austrians were active in the camp of the National Franco troops. This is documented in a book published in 2015: “On Franco’s Side”. The slightly more than 220-page work with the subtitle “Austrians in the ranks of the fascists in the Spanish civil war” undoubtedly plowed historical wasteland. That this was still possible at all speaks for the instinct of the author Jakob Matscheko, who was born in Styria in 1986, as the literature on the “Guerra Civil” easily fills several libraries both in Spain and outside of it.
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