Dr. Adolf Hörhager

Adolf Hörhager from the Zillertal attended the Vinzentinum in Brixen. After graduating from high school, he went to Innsbruck in 1904 to study law and became a member of the student association Austria Innsbruck in 1904. In 1910 he received his doctorate in law. During his studies, he does his one-year voluntary service and becomes a reserve officer. He then worked as a trainee lawyer in various law firms in Innsbruck. However, as he refused to fight a duel due to his ideology, he was stripped of his officer's commission during the First World War.

After the end of the war, he opened a law firm in Innsbruck on March 1, 1919 and worked primarily as a business consultant. He was also politically active and spent a year in the so-called Tyrolean National Council in 1918. He led the Tyrolean Academic Association for several years and in 1936 became head of the Vaterländische Front for the Innsbruck City district.

Adolf Hörhager was arrested by the Gestapo on the night of March 11-12, 1938 and deported to the Dachau concentration camp on May 30, 1938. Due to the evacuation of Dachau concentration camp for the SS in September 1939, he was transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp on September 27, 1939. Here he was assigned to the work detail in the quarry. Due to the deprivations and hardships in the quarry, he was no longer able to go out to work and fell ill in the winter of 1939/40. He was then sent to Block 20 of the epidemic ward, where Karl Maria Stepan, former governor of Styria, worked as a paramedic. He cares for him on a bed of straw and tells him about his last wish.

The next morning, February 1, 1940, Adolf Hörhager died. According to the entry in the Mauthausen concentration camp death register, he died of 'flu, heart and circulatory weakness'.

His body was handed over to his family and buried in the cemetery of his birthplace, Ried.