Franz Xaver Gradner

Franz Xaver Gradner was born in Vienna as the legitimate son of Johann Gradner, a saddler's assistant, and his wife Maria, née Starnitzbichler. After elementary school, he attended a secondary school and worked first as an office trainee and later as an assistant and casual laborer. In 1909, he married Anna Sturm.

In 1915, Franz Gradner was drafted into the First World War. He fought on the Russian and Italian fronts and was taken prisoner of war in Italy. As a prisoner of war, he witnessed the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the dismantling of the Dual Monarchy and the expulsion of the Habsburgs. In the autumn of 1919, he returns from captivity to his homeland and starts working as an unskilled laborer again.

While Franz Gradner initially joined the Marxist metal and construction workers' association, he changes his political opinion over time and turns to the legitmist, Habsburg-loyalist camp. In 1934, he joins the Vaterländische Front and the Eisernen Ring.

On 12 March 1938, he and