Maria Eckert

Maria Eckert was born in Wassersuppen [today: Nemanice] in what is now the Czech Republic, the daughter of a very devout Roman Catholic housekeeper. After attending elementary school, she found work as a domestic help. In 1912, she moved to Vienna to live with her widowed sister, where she helped her as a sales clerk in her tobacconist's shop and in the household.

The devout Catholic was opposed to National Socialism. In the 1930s, she joins the Patriotic Front.

As a sales clerk in her sister's tobacconist, she also witnesses the downfall of the Republic of Austria when the German Wehrmacht invades on March 12, 1938.

In the tobacconist's, she met the siblings Marie Schönfeld and Franz Schönfeld

After several stages, Maria Eckert was finally sent to Jauer prison, where she experienced liberation and was released on May 9, 1945. She experienced physical suffering in prison.

After the war, she returned home to Vienna, but did not work in her sister's tobacconist's shop again, but lived with her again in the apartment they shared in Gymnasiumstraße and organized their household. She joins the newly founded Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich.

She died single and childless in Vienna and found her final resting place at the cemetery in Vienna-Gersthof.