Imprisonment March 1938 - 01.04.1938, Dachau concentration camp 01.04.1938 - 13.03.1939, Imprisonment March 1944 - 15.02.1945, Wehrmacht remand prison

Dr. h. c. Friedrich (Fritz) Eckert

Friedrich Eckert, known as "Fritz", trained as a businessman after attending a commercial academy. He was also involved in various Catholic organizations, in particular the Reichsbund and the Kolping movement, and later, from 1933, in the Vaterländische Front.

Shortly after the Anschluss, he was arrested by the Gestapo in March 1938 because of his unbending commitment to a free and independent Austria and transferred to the Dachau Concentration Camp on April 1-2, 1938, 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. In March 1944, he was arrested again, as was his fellow priest Chaplain Heinrich Maier, and transferred to the Vienna Provincial 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; he only escaped execution in April 1945 when Vienna was liberated.

After the war, he co-founded the ÖVP. 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.