Würthle Group and Flora Circle Gruppe Würthle und Flora-Kreis

The Gruppe Würthle was one of the most active resistance groups in Tyrol. It was founded in Tyrol by the writer and journalist Fritz Würthle, who came from Salzburg. Fritz Würthle, who had worked as a journalist for the "Berliner Tagblatt" in Berlin in 1933, was familiar with National Socialism from this period and had written an anti-Nazi brochure in 1936, which was found without Würthle's name but with his own handwritten corrections on the desk of the then provincial school inspector of Tyrol, Dr. Hans Gamper, a member of the student fraternity A.V. Vindelicia, was found by the Gestapo.

Würthle therefore joined the Wehrmacht for security reasons and was eventually assigned to the military registration office in Innsbruck in 1940, where a cell of staunch opponents of National Socialism had already been formed at the time. The later head of the Vienna State Police, Dr. Peterlunger, and Dr. Leo Praxmarer, a member of the student fraternity A.V. Austria Innsbruck, were among the members of this cell. They often succeeded in saving opponents of National Socialism from being conscripted into the Wehrmacht or preventing them from being sent to the front.

Through Hans Bator, the leader of the Bruder-Willram-Bund, the inner circle around Fritz Würthle was in close contact with members of the so-called Flora Circle, which was centered around Dr. Hermann Flora sen., a member of the A.V. Raeto-Bavaria, a respected Catholic doctor in Innsbruck, to which the Jesuit priest Steinmayr also belonged. Through Dr. Melzer and the well-known Tyrolean writer and Kaiserjäger officer of the First World War, Dr. Skorpil, there was also a close connection between the Flora Circle and the Mittwoch Group and thus to the group around Fritz Würthle.

Fritz Würthle was increasingly keen to lay the foundations for possible later armed actions and to this end had also established links with the communist-left socialist circle around Josef Ronczay, who again had channels to communist circles in Linz and Kufstein. On June 20, 1942, a large meeting was held in Josef Ronczay's apartment, at which many questions were discussed that could arise in the event of a sudden turnaround. In the knowledge that an ever tighter network would have to be laid across Tyrol in order to meet the demands that Day X would make, the connection with several other groups, apart from those already mentioned, was sought with increasing determination. In fact, in 1943 it was possible to establish closer contact with the group that was becoming active in Tyrol under the leadership of Toni Haller, as well as with the groups around father and son Grünewald, and Dr Hans Gamper, a member of the student fraternity A.V. Vindelicia, and through him with the leading socialist and Innsbruck lawyer Dr Gottfried Uffenheimer.

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While the circle around Würthle was gradually joined by the well-known Innsbruck doctor Dr. Stricker, the later state councillor Ing. Ortner and the physics professor March, various external connections were established, including through Paul Flora with the Munich student group of the Scholl siblings, the so-called circle of the White Rose, whose propaganda material was also distributed via the circles of Dr. Hermann Flora Sr. and Fritz Würtle in Innsbruck. There were also connections with socialist groups in Vienna via Ing. Ortner and with Luxembourg resistance circles via Armand Mergen, who was living in Innsbruck at the time, half as a foreign worker and half as a student. The young doctor Dr. Emil Eckel and the architect Jörg Sackenheim were also close to the Flora Circle and the circle around Fritz Würthle.

In 1943, a meeting was held at the Hungerburg near Innsbruck, attended by Dr. Leo Praxmarer, a member of the student fraternity A.V. Austria Innsbruck, Ing. Ortner, Fritz Würthle and Jörg Sackenheim, among others, at which the question of intensive preparations for military action by the resistance movement was discussed for the first time. Consideration was also given to possibly bringing activist groups to be formed into closer contact with similar groups already existing in Munich. Shortly after architect Jörg Sackenheim, who was most active with Fritz Würthle in calling for the formation of armed task forces, had succeeded in using false papers to forge closer links with the Luxembourg resistance movement, as well as establishing contact with some senior military officers in Munich, the circle around Dr. Hermann Flora Sr. was broken up by the Gestapo and Hermann Flora himself, Father Steinmayr and others were arrested. Before this, Fritz Würthle had his first meeting in Innsbruck with Dr. Karl Gruber, a member of the middle school fraternity Vindobona II and the student fraternity Austria Wien, who was employed in Berlin, but led a Viennese resistance group from there and, as a native Tyrolean, was now also anxious to establish contact with the Innsbruck resistance forces, after he had already worked with the radio specialist Carl Hirnschrott, member of the middle school fraternity Ambronia Innsbruck and member of the Haller group.