Gustav Schwarzenegger

Gustav Schwarzenegger

Gustav Schwarzenegger was an Austrian police chief, postal inspector and a military police officer. He served in the Austrian Army from 1930 to 1937, achieving the rank of section commander. He died of a stroke in Weiz, Steiermark, Austria on 13 December 1972 at the age of 65.

About Gustav Schwarzenegger in brief

Summary Gustav SchwarzeneggerGustav Schwarzenegger was an Austrian police chief, postal inspector and a military police officer. He was the father of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger served in the Austrian Army from 1930 to 1937, achieving the rank of section commander. He married war widow Aurelia Jadrny in 1945, and had two sons, Meinhard and Arnold. He died of a stroke in Weiz, Steiermark, Austria on 13 December 1972 at the age of 65, where he had been transferred as a policeman. In 2021 in a video posted to Twitter, Arnold recalled how his father was frequently drunk and abusive to his young family when Arnold was growing up.

He attributed this behavior to guilt and shame over what Gustav and other Nazis and collaborators had perpetrated or enabled during the war. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in the film Pumping Iron that he did not attend his father’s funeral, but later retracted this, explaining it was a story he had appropriated from a boxer.