Georg Kofler

Georg Kolfler was born in Fresach near Villach, the son of a master binder. After attending elementary school, he worked in agriculture until the First World War. He volunteers for the Imperial and Royal Army on the day war is declared. He was deployed on the Italian front until the end of the war. After the war, he became a gendarme.

During the July coup attempt by the National Socialists in July 1934, in which Chancellor Dollfuß was murdered, Georg Kofler was wounded by National Socialists and had to retire as a result.

With the beginning of the Second World War, he started working again and became an accountant at the Kosmos insurance company in Klagenfurt. In March 1943, Georg Kofler introduced Franz Bernthaler to Karl Lossmann. The three of them wanted to produce leaflets, take them abroad and distribute them on the radio. Georg Kofler also tells his work colleague Sophie Jörgl, in whose family the head of the AFÖ, Father Anton Granig. Sophie Jörgl tells Anton Granig about these plans, which he not only supports but also encourages.

Georg Kofler subsequently acts as an intermediary, receiving pamphlets from Karl Loßmann and passing them on to Ferdinand Frodl via Franz Bernthaler. According to the plan, they were to be smuggled abroad via the Papal Nunciature. This did not happen in the end, as Ferdinand Frodl destroyed them.

On August 24, 1943, Georg Kofler was arrested by the Gestapo. He spends over a year in pre-trial detention in the Rossau prison in Vienna. The trial against him and twelve other members of the AFÖ should have taken place on July 20, 1944, but the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on the same day was the decisive factor in the trial being postponed until August 11, 1944. He was charged with "aiding the enemy" and sentenced to death.

Georg Kofler sat on death row in the Vienna courthouse until April 1945. When the Red Army was only a few kilometers from Vienna, he and 45 other prisoners sentenced to death were sent on a death march via Stockerau and Maissau to Krems on the night of April 4-5, 1945, where the group arrived at Stein an der Donau prison on April 9, 1945. Six days later, on April 15, 1945, the SS ordered all prisoners to be executed, including Georg Kofler.