Graz-Karlau Prison () is located in Gries, the 5th district of the city of

Graz Graz () is the capital of the Austrian Federal states of Austria, federal state of Styria and the List of cities and towns in Austria, second-largest city in Austria, after Vienna. On 1 January 2025, Graz had a population of 306,068 (343,461 inc ...

, capital of the Austrian state of

Styria Styria ( ; ; ; ) is an Austrian Federal states of Austria, state in the southeast of the country. With an area of approximately , Styria is Austria's second largest state, after Lower Austria. It is bordered to the south by Slovenia, and cloc ...

. With a capacity of 552 inmates, Graz-Karlau is the third-largest prison in Austria.

History

Built between 1584 and 1590 in late

Renaissance style Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 16th centuries in different regions, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of Ancient Greece, ancient Greek and ...

to designs by Antonio Tade and Antonio Marmoro, it was used as a summer hunting residence for Archduke Karl II of Austria. Originally, it was called "Dobel Castle". The German word "Dobel" is also written "Tobel", a deep, ravine-like valley or can also be a place and field-name. Because the castle's name was similar to the nearby "Tobel hunting-lodge" situated in

Haselsdorf-Tobelbad Haselsdorf-Tobelbad is a municipality in the district of Graz-Umgebung in the Austrian state of Styria. It was the birthplace of Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. Geography Haselsdorf-Tobelbad lies about 10 km southwest of Graz Graz () is the ca ...

, it was renamed as "Karlau", after the archduke. From 1769 it was used as a

workhouse In Britain and Ireland, a workhouse (, lit. "poor-house") was a total institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. In Scotland, they were usually known as Scottish poorhouse, poorh ...

and in 1794 started to keep French

prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...

. In 1803, it became a provincial prison for inmates who had sentences of up to 10 years of imprisonment. In 1847 to 1848 and from 1869 to 1872, it was greatly enlarged. Toward the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

the prison was bombed twice, which killed 14 guards and 107 prisoners. In 1946, the British executioner

Albert Pierrepoint Albert Pierrepoint ( ; 30 March 1905 – 10 July 1992) was an English Executioner, hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. His father Henry Pierrepoint, Henry and uncle Thomas Pierrepoint, Th ...

travelled to Karlau to train an Austrian executioner and two assistants in the British method of long drop executions. Until then, condemned prisoners were hanged with short drops, effectively strangling them to death. Under the British method, Pierrepoint, the Austrian executioner and the two assistants hanged eight young displaced people for common crimes on 24 September 1946. A method which was continued until Austria abolished

capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence (law), sentence ordering that an offender b ...

on 30 June 1950. The prison was renamed Graz-Karlau on 1 November 1993.

Notable inmates

Among the prison's inmates, it houses or housed prisoners such as the serial killer

Jack Unterweger Johann "Jack" Unterweger (16 August 1950 – 29 June 1994) was an Austrian serial killer who committed at least twelve murders in Austria, West Germany, Czechoslovakia and the United States. Initially convicted in 1976 of a single murde ...

; the letter and pipe bomb terrorist Franz Fuchs; the six-time murderer Udo Proksch; the suspected serial killer Wolfgang Ott and terrorist Tawfik Ben Chaovali, who was involved in the Rome and Vienna airport attacks.

References

Prisons in Austria Buildings and structures in Graz {{Prison-stub Extraction 2 2023 Execution sites