Employee at the health insurance company

Wilhelm Hierländer

Wilhelm Hierländer was born in Graz, the son of an accountant. After attending school, he works as a salesman and joins the First World War in 1914. After his return in 1918, he first works as a salesman again before becoming an employee at the health insurance company in 1929.

In the same year, he joins the Christian trade union, later the Vaterländische Front and the monarchist Reichsbund der Österreicher. He has three children with his wife, whom he married in 1921.

After the occupation of Austria in March 1938, Wilhelm Hierländer, an opponent of National Socialism, is dismissed for political unreliability and, after a year of unemployment, finds work as a payroll accountant in a wagon factory.

At the end of 1939 or beginning of 1940, Wilhelm Hierländer met with Markus Leyrer and Emil Ertl, whom he already knew from the time before the invasion, to discuss a possible restoration of the House of Habsburg in Austria. During this meeting, they considered founding a legitimist organization, but this never came to fruition.

In the spring of 1941, Emil Ertl finally visited Wilhelm Hierländer in his apartment together with Eduard Pumpernig. There, Eduard Pumpernig reports on the founding of the Antifascist Freedom Movement of Austria (AFÖ) and commissions Wilhelm Hierländer to form and lead a cell in Graz.

At Easter 1941, Eduard Pumpernig visits Graz again and meets with a small group around Wilhelm Hierländer to discuss the objectives of the AFÖ once more. Participants in this group included master shoemaker Simon Riedler and gardener's assistant Franz Ganster. He did not reveal any other participants during subsequent interrogations by the Gestapo.

After this meeting, Eduard Pumpernig did not visit Graz again, which is why there were no further activities by the Graz cell of the AFÖ.

On August 25, 1943, Wilhelm Hierländer was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to two years and six months in prison by the People's Court on April 22, 1944 for preparation for high treason. He remained in prison until the end of the war.