Franz Josef Fischer

Franz Josef Fischer was born in Vienna as the legitimate son of Franz Fischer, a wagon loader, and Josefa, née Hradec. Nothing has been preserved about his childhood and youth. After finishing school, he became an accountant. In 1915 he was drafted into the I. World War I in the k.u.k. Infantry Regiment No. 81 'Freiherr von Waldstätten', from which he returned home in 1918. He then returned to work as an accountant.

Franz Fischer married the Jewish Margarete Cäcilie Steinitz and subsequently had a son and a daughter with her. On March 12, 1938, he witnessed the demise of a free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. With the occupation of Austria, German legislation was adopted and with it the 'Nuremberg Race Laws', according to which Margarete Fischer was considered a 'Geltungsjüdin'. Due to his marriage, Franz Fischer was not drafted into the Wehrmacht.

The opponent of National Socialism later joined the resistance group Österreichische Freiheitsfront/Gruppe Moosbierbaum, which grew in strength from 1943 and was also active outside the Moosbierbaum factory. From the late fall of 1944, the Gestapo succeeded in infiltrating the V-man Walter Ehart into the resistance group as an informer under the code name 'Paul Wiesmayer'. Even before the Gestapo's big wave of arrests in January 1945, Franz Fischer was arrested on October 17, 1944 and deported to the Dachau concentration camp on November 14, 1944. He was to be put on trial after the final victory. He was liberated there by the US Army on 29 April 1945.

Franz Fischer returned to Vienna after the liberation of Austria and the re-establishment of the Republic in April and May 1945 and joined the newly founded Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich. He returns to work as an accountant.

As an employee, Franz Fischer retires and dies in Vienna at the age of 72.