Dr. Hans Wölfel

Hans Wölfel was born in the Upper Austrian spa town of Bad Hall. His father was a native of Franconia who ran a nursery in Bad Hall and operated the Wölfl flower pavilion in the town center. From 1913 to 1915, he attended the Benedictine grammar school in Kremsmünster as a boarder and then transferred to the old grammar school in Bamberg. He spent the summer and vacation months with his godfather, the priest Johann Wölfel in Langensendetbach near Erlangen. In 1919, he served in the Berthold Free Corps for several months. After graduating from high school in 1922, he began studying law in Munich, where he joined the Ottonia student fraternity. In the winter semester of 1922/23, he moved to Würzburg and became a member of the Rheno-Frankonia student fraternity. Together with like-minded people, he founded the Catholic Academics' Association (KAB) in 1924 as a counterweight to the Hochschulring.

On October 12, 1943, Hans Wölfel was arrested and, after four weeks of interrogation by the Gestapo in the Bamberg district court prison, was transferred to the Moabit prison in Berlin. On May 10, 1944, the main trial took place in Potsdam before the 6th Senate of the People's Court. The verdict is: "Death and loss of honor for life for undermining military strength". After a plea for clemency was rejected, he was transferred to Brandenburg-Görden prison and executed there on July 3, 1944 as the last of the 14 death row prisoners.