Messner-Maier-Caldonazzi Group Gruppe Messner-Maier-Caldonazzi

By Wolfgang Neugebauer

The importance of the group operating between 1942 and 1944 around the Währing chaplain Heinrich Maier and Semperit general director Franz Josef Messner lay above all in their contacts with the US wartime intelligence service OSS, which was supplied with important information about the armaments industry in Austria. At the request of the Americans, locations of industrial plants were also passed on, which were then bombed by the Allies, with the resistance group arguing that in this way the bombing of residential areas could be avoided.

The group was uncovered by the Gestapo between February and April 1944. On October 28, 1944, ten of its members stood before the VGH. The defendants Maier, Messner, Hofer, Caldonazzi, Wyhnal, Klepell, Ritsch and Pausinger were sentenced to death for "preparation for high treason" and "participation in a separatist organization", the defendant Legradi got away with ten years in prison, one defendant was acquitted.

Klepell was particularly accused of attempting to "help French prisoners of war or a German soldier to escape abroad across the Reich border". The doctor Wyhnal was accused of "providing members of the Wehrmacht and Schutzpolizei with drugs or using them to make them at least temporarily unfit for the war effort." Caldonazzi and Hofer had also given fever-inducing drugs to soldiers who were about to be examined by the military. Legradi's mission to Switzerland was also highlighted in the VGH ruling: