1880The cemetery in Wiener Straße opens, the last Jewish cemetery to be built in Krems after the medieval cemetery in the Gaswerkgasse and the cemetery on Turnerberg hill.
1894The synagogue in Dinstlstraße is consecrated. After years of resistance by the Krems municipal council, construction goes ahead based on a design by the architect Max Fleischer. There are around 300 Jewish people living in Krems at this time.
1920The Sappers and Pioneers Memorial is erected in the Krems city park to commemorate soldiers who fell in the First World War.
1929In his capacity as regional leader of the Lower Austrian Heimwehr militia, Julius Raab gives a speech in front of the Sappers Monument in which he threatens the destruction of the Social Democratic movement.
1930On the day of the regional party rally of the NSDAP, citizens gather under the swastika on the Pfarrplatz.
1932NSDAP-member Karl Rohrhofer is elected mayor of Krems. This means Krems is the first Austrian city to have a National Socialist mayor.
1933The official building for the Krems District Court is completed. The architect is Franz Sturm, future “Gau office leader” for Lower Danube.
5. März 1933Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß orchestrates a coup to neutralise parliament.
26. Mai 1933The Communist Party of Austria is banned by Engelbert Dolfuß’s Austrofascist regime.
19. Juni 1933In Alauntal near Krems, two SA men carry out a raid on the auxiliary police in which the auxiliary policeman Franz Blamoser dies. The NSDAP is banned throughout Austria immediately after the attack.
14. Februar 1934The Austrofascist regime bans the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria and its organisations.
1934After the February Uprising, a wave of arrests targets mainly Social Democrats and Communists. Over the next few years, up to 200 political dissidents are detained in the new Krems District Court.
1934The pre-school teacher and resistance fighter Therese Mahrer is imprisoned for two months because of her political activities.
1935The pre-school teacher and resistance fighter Therese Mahrer is again imprisoned for two months because of her political activities.
1936The Jewish cemetery on the Turnerberg hill is abandoned because of large-scale desecration. The bodies are moved to the cemetery in Wiener Straße.
12. März 1938Austria becomes part of the German Reich. The “Anschluss” is proclaimed by Adolf Hitler on the Heldenplatz in Vienna and confirmed by an undemocratic referendum on 10 April 1938.
1938A large number of the 30 Jewish-owned businesses are looted and some of them destroyed. Among them is the Neuner underwear shop at the Steiner Gate. Many owners sell up or are forced to sell.
1938The murals by Leopold Schmid, Herbert Dimmel and Gustav Steinschorn in the Krems Regional Court are declared “degenerate art” and painted over.
1938National Socialists stop workers at the gates of the tobacco factory and question them about their political views.
1938The Jewish Community of Vienna is forced to hand over the synagogue to the Nazi city administration. While the temple is being “cleared”, the Jewish people of Krems have to take part in a humiliating antisemitic spectacle.
1939STALAG XVII B Krems-Gneixendorf is built. It is one of the largest prisoner of war camps of the “Third Reich”. At times there are up to 66,000 prisoners of war of various nationalities held here.
1940Göttweig Abbey has its assets seized. The Museum of the City of Krems takes possession of much of the expropriated art collections. After the war they are given back.
1940The Brauhof hall is opened. It is the only new civic building erected by the Nazi city administration of Krems.
30. September 1942The Communist resistance fighters Franz Zeller, Johann Hoffmann and Ferdinand Strasser, all from Krems, are executed in Vienna.
1943Ernst Neuner, one of the sons of the family who owns the Neuner underwear shop that was looted in 1938, starts sending food packets to friends and relatives in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He will continue to do so until the end of the war, despite the risk of being deported himself.
1942The tobacco factory worker Leopoldine Puhl refuses to give the Hitler salute. She and other members of a resistance group are accused of “high treason” and sentenced to up to five years’ imprisonment.
1944An informant betrays the deserter Richard Ott to the authorities. He escapes arrest in front of the church on Pfarrplatz and is shot dead.
2. April 1945Krems station is the target of an air raid by US forces. Around 100 civilians die in the bombing.
5.–13. April 1945The Red Army defeats the National Socialists in Vienna.
6. April 1945In the Stein Prison and the surrounding area, the SS, Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht carry out a massacre of around 600 released prisoners on the pretext of crushing a revolt. These troops are supported by the local gendarmerie, the Volkssturm and the general public.
6. Mai 1945Two days before the end of the war, Gauleiter Hugo Jury delivers a eulogy at the Sappers and Pioneers Memorial to the recently dead dictator Adolf Hitler.
1945The pre-school teacher and Communist resistance fighter Therese Mahrer is elected the first woman city councillor in Krems.
1946The Greek Antifascist Committee Vienna erects a memorial in front of the Stein Justice Institution commemorating around 150 Greek prisoners who were murdered in the massacre on 6 April 1945.
1947The Soviet administration has the bodies of 1,640 Soviet prisoners of war exhumed from the forest cemetery of STALAG XVII B and reburied on Südtirolerplatz. A monument is dedicated to them in the centre of the city in the form of an obelisk with a red star.
1950A tombstone for the people murdered in the Stein massacre on 6 April 1945 is erected in the Stein cemetery.
1952The Jewish Community of Vienna successfully reclaims ownership of the synagogue that was expropriated in 1938.
1959The veterans’ organisation Kameradschaftsbund St. Pölten-Krems erects a monument to the Wehrmacht general Karl Eibl on the Wachau bridge near Krems. In the 1970s it will be moved to its current central location in the city park.
1960The Soviet prisoners of war buried on Südtirolerplatz are exhumed and reburied in the Krems cemetery. The monument and grave site in the city centre are removed.
1969Max Thorwesten, who was mayor of Krems for five years after the “Anschluss” of 1938, is elected again and takes office as mayor for another seven years.
1971Funerals take place in the Jewish cemetery on Wiener Straße in Krems. These will remain the last burials there to this day.
1978The synagogue is torn down. Today, a betting shop stands on the site of the temple.
1982Leopold Schmid uncovers and restores his own paintings in the Krems Regional Court. They had been painted over in 1938 as “degenerate art”.
1990A street in Krems is named after the poet Maria Grengg, who worked in the Heimat (“homeland”) genre. She was a member of the NSDAP and openly declared her allegiance to National Socialism and her veneration of Adolf Hitler.
1993The Brauhof hall is demolished. It is replaced with a large shopping centre.
1995The artist Hans Kupelwieser designs an artwork for the Jewish cemetery in the form of text cut out from a strip of sheet metal with the names of 127 of the deported or murdered Jewish people from Krems.
2000The artist Christian Gmeiner marks the corners of the former prisoner of war camp STALAG XVII B with four signs with “?” cutouts.
2004The artist duo Clegg & Guttmann install an artwork called The Jewish Metaphysics of Death in the form of three public bookcases in the Jewish cemetery.
2015The route connecting Steiner Landstraße and Steiner Donaulände is named after the Greek resistance fighter Gerasimos Garnelis.
2015The Polish government erects a memorial to the Polish victims of the Stein massacre of 6 April 1945.
2016A memorial to Julius Raab is erected in the Krems city park to mark the 60th anniversary of the Austrian State Treaty.
2019Franz-Zeller-Platz, the only square in Krems named after a resistance fighter, is renamed “Museumsplatz”.
2021As one of the first initiatives of the Krems Historians’ Advisory Council, a supplementary plaque is attached to the Karl Eibl Monument that explains Eibl’s role as a Wehrmacht general.
2021A park is named after Hedwig Stocker, who as a prison warder during the time of Nazi rule prepared and supported the escape plans of political prisoners.
2021105 images of carpets are painted with distemper on pavements and streets in Krems. The work I am here by Iris Andraschek commemorates Jewish women who were deported from Krems and the surrounding area and murdered by the Nazis.
2021The street Maria-Grengg-Gasse, named after a National Socialist, is renamed Margarete-Schörl-Gasse after a progressive educationalist who was active in Krems.