Emil Ertl

Emil Ertl was born in Kirchbach, the son of a gendarme. After school, he completed an apprenticeship as a hairdresser and took part in the First World War as a volunteer. He left the army in 1919, married the Feldbach widow Juliana Reicher in 1922 and took up employment at the local savings bank in Feldbach in the same year. He had a daughter with Juliana. In the interwar period, he is a member of the Christian trade union, the Reichsbund der Österreicher and the VF.

After the occupation of Austria by the Third Reich in March 1938, the opponent of National Socialism is dismissed through forced retirement and is unemployed until 1941. He then found a job in the provincial civil service in Feldbach.

At the end of 1939 or beginning of 1940, Emil Ertl met with Markus Leyrer and Wilhelm Hierländer, 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 did not materialize. However, Emil Ertl remained in contact with Wilhelm Hierländer.

In spring 1941, Markus Leyrer invited Emil Ertl to his apartment for a meeting with Eduard Pumpernig. At Easter 1941, Markus Leyrer, a certain Moser, former mayor of Eisenerz, Emil Ertl and Eduard Pumpernig met in Leyrer's apartment. Eduard Pumpernig tells them about the plans to found a legitimist resistance group, the Antifascist Freedom Movement of Austria (AFÖ). Leyrer, Moser and Ertl agree to found a cell of the group in Feldbach. Subsequently, a certain Mödlhammer and Alois Gingl from Feldbach also joined this cell, but were soon killed in the war. The Gestapo was later unable to prove that savings bank employee Josef Hermann was a member of this cell.

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

It was also Emil Ertl who introduced Wilhelm Hierländer to Eduard Pumpernig in the spring of 1941. At a meeting between the three in Hierländer's apartment in Graz, the apartment owner agreed to Pumpernig's plans to found the AFÖ and agreed to set up and lead a cell in Graz.

On August 25, 1943, Emil Ertl was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to two years 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.