Ing. Carl Hirnschrott

The South Tyrolean Carl Hirnschrott initially attended grammar school in Meran and, after his family moved to Innsbruck in 1919, secondary school there. In 1923, he transferred to the Innsbruck Higher Technical College, specializing in electrical engineering. In the same year, he was accepted into the Ambronia Innsbruck secondary school fraternity. In 1927, he interrupted his school education and did three years of military service in the Austrian army. From 1930-1932 he returned to the HTL and graduated. He then joined the postal and telegraph administration and was employed in the direction finding service of radio surveillance. During this time, he came into contact with the Ostaricia secondary school fraternity, which awarded him a ribbon in 1935.

After the Anschluss, he was suspended from service due to his membership of the Christian trade union and his openly patriotic views. However, a house search does not yield any incriminating evidence. As a result, he was reinstated on March 22, 1938, but to an inferior post in the postal service. On January 2, 1939, he was transferred to Berlin and later to Gumbinnen/East Prussia. From the summer of 1943, he was employed at the Reich Central Post Office in Berlin.

During this time, a group of anti-Nazi postmen and a larger circle of Austrians loyal to their homeland came together under the leadership of Karl Gruber and called themselves the Anti-Fascist Front [AGFA]. In the fall, Carl Hirnschrott became head of the Berlin-Beelitz jamming office, which was tasked with disrupting German-language broadcasts from the enemy powers. Here he succeeds in replacing fanatical German officials with reliable Austrians. In this way, a center of the resistance movement is created in this office, in which the jamming offices in Paris, Copenhagen and Milan can also be included from Berlin.

Carl Hirnschrott carries out various activities in radio monitoring and in the jamming service. He is deployed at various locations: in Berlin, Munich, Prague, Melnitz and Beelitz-Mark and most recently in Lobenstein-Thuringia. From here he returned to Innsbruck on April 17, 1945, where he met Karl Gruber at the Kreuzschwestern sanatorium. During his vacation in Innsbruck in 1944, Carl Hirnschrott had already begun to set up a resistance cell in the telecommunications service, which he mobilized and expanded after his return in 1945. This Reichspost group under his leadership was now given the task of maintaining the telecommunications systems undamaged and setting up a bugging service. With his 14 employees, he was instrumental in occupying the Landhaus, the Reichspost headquarters and the police headquarters in Innsbruck as well as the radio station in Aldrans before the Americans marched in. Eduard Grünewald read out an appeal over the Aldrans transmitter, which he repeated over and over again:

"Austrians! Tyroleans! Innsbruckers! the hour of your liberation has come. the entire southern front has surrendered. The Allied troops are in front of Innsbruck. Any further resistance would not only be futile, it would be a crime against the people and the state."

Even if the reported total capitulation was a deliberate false report, this call, according to Karl Gruber, had the effect of "a bright fanfare of freedom". When the American telecommunications officer arrived at the post office at 10 p.m. on the evening of 3 May, the mission of the resistance had been accomplished and the war was over.