Dr. Angelus (Eduard) Steinwender OFM

Eduard Steinwender was born the son of a miner in Maria Lankowitz in Styria. In 1913, he entered the Franciscan order as a high school student and was ordained a priest in 1920. He took the religious name Angelus. In addition to his pastoral work, he enrolled in theology at the University of Graz. From 1928, Angelus Steinwender worked as head of the Franciscan monasteries in Graz, St. Pölten and then in Vienna. In 1939, he was provisionally appointed provincial of the Vienna Franciscans.

As a member of the Patriotic Front, he was a staunch opponent of National Socialism. At the time of his subsequent arrest by the Gestapo, two cases were already pending against him.

In the fall of 1941, Eduard Pumpernig approached Angelus Steinwender, as provincial of the Franciscan monastery in Vienna, and asked him to help the AFÖ with the duplication of flyers. Angelus Steinwender does this and provides the monastery's own proofing machine. He also proofread printed material and made his typewriter available.

On July 6, 1943, Father Angelus Steinwender was arrested by the Gestapo at the Franciscan monastery in Vienna. He spent over a year in pre-trial detention in the Rossau prison in Vienna. The trial against Angelus Steinwender and twelve other members of the AFÖ should have taken place on July 20, 1944, but the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on the same day was the decisive factor in the trial being postponed until August 11, 1944. He is sentenced to death. Pleas for clemency from Cardinal Theodor Innitzer remain unheard.

Until April 1945, Angelus Steinwender sits on death row in the Vienna courthouse. When the Red Army was only a few kilometers from Vienna, he and 45 other prisoners sentenced to death were sent on a death march via Stockerau and Maissau to Krems on the night of April 4-5, 1945, where the group arrived at Stein an der Donau prison on April 9, 1945. Six days later, on April 15, 1945, the SS ordered all prisoners to be executed, including Father Angelus Steinwender.