Hofrat Dr. Franz Rehrl

Franz Rehrl attended the k. k. Staatsgymnasium in his hometown of Salzburg. There he joined the middle school fraternity Almgau Salzburg in 1906. In 1910, he became chairman of the then illegally existing MCV and was also granted membership of the South Tyrolean middle school fraternity Waltharia (Habsburgia) Bozen.

After graduating from high school, he began studying law in Vienna in autumn 1910 and was accepted into the student fraternity Austria Wien in 1910. He was exempted from military service due to his diabetes. He graduated in 1914 and, after completing his court clerkship, joined the Salzburg provincial administration. In 1915, he obtained his doctorate in law. Politically, he quickly found access to Christian-social circles.

In the fall of 1918, he was a member of the provisional Salzburg provincial assembly as a CSP deputy, and in April 1919 he was appointed deputy governor. In 1922, the provincial parliament elected Franz Rehrl as governor of Salzburg with the votes of the Social Democrats, an office he held until 1938. On May 13, 1929, he was "unanimously appointed an honorary citizen on the occasion of the opening of the motorway to the Gaisberg, built at his suggestion, in recognition of his outstanding services to the economic life of the city"; revoked during the Nazi era, appointment confirmed on April 9, 1946.

He turned down an offer from Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß to join the federal government because he had certain reservations about the authoritarian course. After a series of National Socialist attacks in Austria, leading NSDAP leaders should have been arrested on June 13, 1933, but they were able to go into hiding [including Adolf Eichmann] because they had been warned by a police officer. The police had already been infiltrated by National Socialist party supporters before the Anschluss.

February 1934 was a quiet month in Salzburg. Franz Rehrl campaigns for arrested Salzburg Social Democrats and secures their release. This brings him into opposition with the Heimwehr associations, who openly demand his release. In 1935, the Grossglockner High Alpine Road was opened, a construction project for which Franz Rehrl had invested a great deal of personal commitment.

Before the German Wehrmacht crossed Austria's borders, the previously illegal Gauleiter of Salzburg, Anton Wintersteiger (1900-1990), had already announced the Anschluss [as "Anschluss from within"] on the evening of March 11, 1938. Franz Rehrl hands over the reins of office to his successor on March 13, 1938. On March 16, he is relieved of his position as director of the Landeshypothekenanstalt and arrested in May 1938, taken to the police detention center and later transferred to the provincial court. A committee of inquiry to investigate the political conduct of the state official attempts to prove irregularities. A preliminary report on the investigations yields no concrete results. The Gestapo describes him as a "leading politician of the Schuschnigg system in the province of Salzburg and ... as the political leader of Salzburg Catholicism." He is also portrayed as a "miserly beneficiary of political Catholicism" who "only looked out for his own welfare during his time in government."

Franz Rehrl is transferred to the Inquisitenspital due to his poor state of health. On December 24, 1938, he is released from prison and transferred to the district. He chooses Karlovy Vary as his place of residence, where he has often been for treatment due to his diabetes. There he has to report to the Gestapo every day. On June 1, 1938, he is dismissed and transferred to permanent retirement. From January 1, 1939, he is no longer entitled to a retirement pension, citing § 4 (1) of the Ordinance on the Reorganization of the Austrian Civil Service. On September 6, 1939, the National Socialist regime announces that a criminal complaint has been filed against the former governor. A tax penalty of 96,514 RM was levied against the former governor in accordance with the decree of November 18, 1938. On 12.12.1939 he is arrested again for foreign currency offenses and transferred to Salzburg. For months, meticulous investigations were carried out to convict him of corruption, but the main trial on August 18, 1941 acquitted him of all charges, so he was released from prison and isolated in St. Peter's Monastery. There is no mention of his rehabilitation in the Nazi press. With reference to the "Decree on the confiscation of anti-people and anti-state assets in Austria" of 18.11.1938 [this decree mainly affects Jews], Franz Rehrl's entire assets are confiscated "for the benefit of the province of Salzburg", and his house, Bürglsteinstraße 4, is also confiscated and then used as accommodation for the commander of the SS-Oberabschnitt Alpenland Alfred Rodenbücher (1900-1980) and the "Gaukämmerer" Dr. iur. Robert Lippert (1902-1966). Franz Rehrl was not a tax fraudster, but a victim of revenge who was to be financially ruined and ostracized.

In August 1943, through the mediation of Salzburg Archbishop Rohracher (1943-1969), Franz Rehrl made contact with the men of July 20, 1944; he probably had no knowledge of the assassination plans. Immediately after the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, Franz Rehrl was arrested again on July 25, 1944 in Zell am Ziller, taken to Salzburg for more rigorous Gestapo interrogation and on August 19 sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a prisoner of the "July 20" special commando in the RSHA under the leadership of Ernst Kaltenbrunner [from Ried im Innkreis] (1903-1946). According to a report by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Franz Rehrl was supposed to work as a "political representative" in military district XVIII (Salzburg) after the successful assassination attempt, but he refused. At the beginning of 1945, he was transferred to the prison in Berlin-Moabit, where criminal proceedings awaited him.

Here he met the former governor of Lower Austria, Josef Reither. Franz Rehrl is now accused of failing to report Helmuth James Graf von Moltke after the conversation with him in August 1943. The VGH's indictment reads: "Failure to report a highly treasonous undertaking" and is dated 11.4.1945.