Hermann Lackner

Having returned home from the First World War, he completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter in Weiz in Styria between 1918 and 1921 and then worked as a carpenter's assistant in Bruck an der Mur and Vienna. He left the Catholic Church in 1921. From 1925 to 1928, he was the provincial secretary of the woodworkers' association, before subsequently working as secretary of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SPÖ) Bruck an der Mur from 1928 to 1934. During this time, he is active as a functionary of the Republican Protection League in Bruck an der Mur and is imprisoned in Graz-Karlau prison after the socialist February Uprising in 1934 until the end of 1935, during the authoritarian corporative state under the chancellor dictatorship of Kurt von Schuschnigg.

In freedom, he witnessed the downfall of a free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht on March 12, 1938. He was arrested on the day of the invasion and deported to the Dachau concentration camp on April 2, 1938 on the so-called Prominent Transport. There he met his former opponents from the period 1934 to 1938, such as Alfons Gorbach or Leopold Figl. During the period of joint resistance and shared suffering at the hands of the National Socialists, the antagonisms of the interwar period dwindled towards a common togetherness, which would ultimately form the basis of the Second Austrian Republic.

After the start of the Second World War, Dachau concentration camp was cleared for the SS at short notice and Hermann Lackner was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp on September 27, 1939. From there, he was transferred back to Dachau concentration camp on March 2, 1940, where he remained until the liberation by American troops.

After the liberation of Austria and the establishment of the Second Republic, Hermann Lackner was once again active in the SPÖ. He was district secretary of the SPÖ Bruck an der Mur, a member of the Styrian provincial parliament from 1945 to 1949 and a member of the National Council from 1949 to 1962. He was also a long-standing member of the Styrian SPÖ provincial party executive.