Dr. Alfred Hirsch

Alfred Hirsch attends the humanistic branch of the state grammar school in Angerzellgasse in Innsbruck. Together with his classmate and later fraternity brother Eduard Grünewald, he secretly distributes flyers with Austrian slogans and symbols of the corporative state. They lit forbidden Sacred Heart fires on the Nordkette. They daubed anti-Nazi slogans on buildings and doorways with chalk to make it clear to the public that not everyone was a Nazi.

After graduating from high school, he began studying medicine in Innsbruck in 1942 after being declared "temporarily unfit" for the army with the help of his father's acquaintances and friends from the resistance. He worked in the "barely tolerated" KHG, which was spied on by the Gestapo, where he also met Christoph Probst (1919-1943) from the "White Rose" group. As a student and member of the mountain rescue service, he was able to move around Tyrol relatively freely and unchecked. He served as a courier for several resistance groups and distributed the leaflets of the "White Rose" and the sermons of Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen (1878-1946) of Münster. On March 17, 1944, he joined the Alpinia Innsbruck student fraternity, which was founded underground in 1940.

Towards the end of the war, Franz Mair (1910-1945), an English teacher at the Akademisches Gymnasium in Innsbruck, founded the Mair-Grünewald resistance group, which Alfred Hirsch and other Alpinists also joined. Among other things, this group also published a small magazine that brought news from abroad and reported on the struggle of the resistance movements inside and outside Austria.

Between fall 1944 and spring 1945, the various resistance groups spread throughout Austria and Tyrol gathered and equipped themselves under the symbol 05 [for Austria: 0 and e = 5th letter in the alphabet]. Alfred Hirsch and the other Tyrolean resistance members were in direct contact with the main contact point of the 05 in Innsbruck [Andreas Hofer Str. 42]. From here they made contact with the "Austrian Liberation Committee" in Zurich and the secret services of the Allies. Alfred Hirsch hides Nowacek, a CIA agent from Vienna, in his parents' apartment, who maintains radio contact with the Allies from here and provides them with important information. [He is shot by the SS on the Kemater Alm near Innsbruck in the last days of the war].

From April 21, 1945, the Gestapo arrests and interrogations are carried out following the discovery of some fringe groups of the resistance. On April 25, 1945, Alfred Hirsch was arrested by the Gestapo along with other betrayed resistance members and brutally beaten at their headquarters in Herrengasse. They were then transferred to the Reichenau labor education camp [AEL], where they were to be executed. Gauleiter Hofer (1902-1975) wanted to have them hanged on Rennweg in Innsbruck at the beginning of May as a deterrent. On May 2, 1945, they were freed by a resistance group made up of members of the police and Wehrmacht after the SS and Gestapo leadership made a surprise escape. The following day, Alfred Hirsch and Eduard Grünewald broke into the high-rise building of Innsbruck's public utility company in Salurnerstraße and hoisted the red-white-red flag on the roof under heavy fire - probably from SS units. This was to serve as a sign to the Allies that the fighting was over so that Innsbruck would be spared bombing. Alfred Hirsch takes part in the occupation of the Tyrolean Landhaus - the headquarters of the Nazi regime - from around 2 pm. Shortly after 3 p.m., a red-white-red flag can also be hoisted on the Landhaus balcony in Maria-Theresien-Straße. The transmitters in Aldrans are also conquered in the meantime without any significant resistance. From here, Eduard Grünewald can announce the liberation of Innsbruck to the population. The final fighting with advancing motorized SS units, in the course of which

Franz Mair is seriously injured, ends around 5 pm and Innsbruck is finally in the hands of the resistance movement under the leadership of Karl Gruber. Franz Mair succumbs to his gunshot wounds on May 6, 1945.