Dr. h.c. Friedrich Wilhelm (Fritz) Eckert

Friedrich Eckert, known as "Fritz", was born in Vienna as the legitimate son of the market commissioner Karl Eckert and Emilie, née Nigrin.

After attending elementary school and lower school, he attended the commercial academy and learned the merchant's trade. He was also involved in various Catholic organizations, in particular the Reichsbund für Jungend und Sport and the Kolping movement, and later, from 1933, in the Vaterländische Front, where he became the managing national secretary of the Vaterländische Front in Vienna. In this role, he played a key role in the fight against National Socialism in Vienna.

On March 12, 1938, despite his intensive struggle, Fritz Eckert witnessed the demise of free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. On March 16, 1938, he was arrested by the Gestapo for his unbending commitment to a free and independent Austria and deported on the first transport, the so-called Prominententransport, to the Dachau Concentration Camp on April 2, 1938, from where he was released on March 13, 1939, according to the Dachau Concentration Camp Records. He then organized aid campaigns for other victims of Nazi persecution, especially for priests and religious. On December 13, 1944, he was arrested again, as was his wedding priest, Chaplain Heinrich Maier, and transferred to the Vienna Regional Court as a prisoner on remand.

From February 15, 1945 until the end of the war, he was imprisoned in the Pichlarn Wehrmacht remand prison. The People's Court charged him with aiding and abetting high treason, subversion of military power and aiding and abetting the enemy, and he only escaped execution in April 1945 when Vienna was liberated.

After the war, he co-founded the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and joins the ÖVP Comradeship of the Politically Persecuted and Confessors for Austria. On 6 April 1946, he was awarded honorary membership of the student fraternity Amelungia. The President of the Austrian Economic Association and later Federal Chancellor Julius Raab appoints Fritz Eckert as his Secretary General, a position he holds until 1971.