Dr. Josef Marschall

Josef Marschall attended secondary school and joined the Donaumark Vienna secondary school fraternity, which had only recently been founded, in 1922 and the Danubia student fraternity in 1926. From the summer of 1934 to 1938, as a young academic in the customs service, he worked voluntarily without financial compensation for the Federal Commissioner for Personnel Affairs in the Federal Chancellery to uncover illegal NSDAP members and sympathizers among the staff there. This led to much hostility and intrigue.

On March 11, 1938, he and eleven other like-minded friends gathered in the Deutschmeister barracks in Vienna-Rossau to offer armed resistance against the threatened invasion of Austria by the German Wehrmacht. To avoid any bloodshed, the government ordered no resistance to the Anschluss. Josef Marschall and his comrades then went underground as the "Rossau Group".

On June 6, 1938, Josef Marschall was taken "out of service" by the Court of Audit and dismissed. After a temporary loss of income, he was given a job at the newly established pricing office of the Reich Governor in Vienna. Here he maintained contact with the conservative resistance group of Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Karl Domansky (1890-1960), who was imprisoned from 17 to 20 March 1938, until he was drafted into the air force in 1940. From August 13 to September 22, 1940, Marschall was taken into custody by the field court in Luftgau 17 on charges of subversion of military strength, secret society and fighting against National Socialism (case no. 4 K-St-L 539/40) and then handed over to the Gestapo in Vienna. Thanks to the intervention of resistance circles in Air Fleet IV, the proceedings were dropped by Colonel General Alexander Löhr (1885-1947) and Josef Marschall was transferred to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Here he made contact with Dr. Leopold Pospisil, who, after two years in a concentration camp, led a Czech underground movement that scouted out parachute bases for Soviet paratroopers to sabotage the German occupation. From 1942 to 1943, Josef Marschall was deployed in Hungary. Here he was able to help Marcell Herczeg, the former general director of Semperit-Werke AG and organizer of the Jewish refugees in Vienna, with asset transactions abroad. When the deportations of Jews began, Josef Marschall helped at least 60 Jews to escape from Hungary and thus save them from extermination in the gas chamber. Transferred to Belgium, he made contact with the "White Brigade" resistance organization and worked with the "Resistance" in France. Severely wounded, he was saved with their help in the military hospital in Marseille.