Hofrat Dr. Helmut Pontesegger

After the collapse of the monarchy, the Pontesegger family moved from northern Bohemia to Feldkirch. Here Helmut attended the Bundesgymnasium, where he graduated with distinction in 1927. In 1925, he joined the Clunia Feldkirch secondary school fraternity. He studied law in Vienna and Innsbruck and became a member of the student fraternity Austria Innsbruck in 1929. In 1934, he joined the provincial administration, initially as a police officer in Bludenz and from 1935 as deputy director of the Bregenz Security Directorate, whose main task was to combat illegal Nazi activities.

After the Anschluss, he was taken into protective custody for three weeks and escaped an assassination attempt by chance. After a short stint with the district administrator in Bregenz, he was declared unsuitable for service due to his anti-Nazi attitude and was forcibly transferred to the Prussian Rhine Province in Aachen in 1939 "for political re-education and adaptation to Reich conditions" on the basis of the Nazi Civil Service Act. Here he was active in the resistance until the end of the war and was entrusted with its affairs by the American military administration as "acting mayor". He succeeded Franz Oppenhoff, who was killed by a werewolf commando on March 25, 1945.