Anton Stahl SJ

Anton Stahl is the eldest of nine children born into a farming family in the Bohemian town of Pollschitz in the Bischofteinitz district. At the age of nine, he barely survives a very serious kidney infection. At the age of 12, his parents send their talented son to grammar school in Mariaschein [today: Bohosudov in the Czech Republic]. From there, at the age of 16, he entered the Jesuit novitiate in St. Andrä in Lavanttal, as was often the case at the time. After the novitiate, he continued his education as a scholastic at the Kalksburg College for the remaining three grammar school years and graduated there in 1912. He then studied philosophy for three years in Innsbruck. From 1915-17, he was already employed as a teacher of Latin and Greek at the Aloisianum College on the Freinberg in Linz.

After completing his theology studies, Anton Stahl was ordained a priest on July 26, 1920. He then taught Greek and Latin in Mariaschein, becoming principal of the school a year later and soon afterwards principal of the grammar school. In 1934, he moved to Duppau and became the director and head of the Jesuit college there.

There, Anton Stahl experienced the occupation of the so-called "Sudentenland" by the National Socialists. In February 1939, all Jesuits were expelled from the college for political reasons. Anton Stahl went to the Jesuit College in Innsbruck until it was dissolved in October 1939. He then returned to the Prague archdiocese.

In political terms, he made no secret of his opposition to National Socialism. He was arrested by the Gestapo when he was in Vienna to preach in May. His brother-in-law reported him for listening in on foreign broadcasts. He was transferred to Karlsbad and subjected to numerous interrogations. After being convicted of "listening to enemy broadcasts", Anton Stahl was deported to Dachau concentration camp on September 29, 1944. He remained there until his liberation on April 29, 1945.

After his liberation, he briefly returned to Bohemia, but then moved to the Aloisianum College on Freinberg in Linz. In the summer of 1949, he moved to the Kollegium Kalksburg as a teacher, where he was soon promoted to principal.

In 1954, Anton Stahl was diagnosed with bowel cancer, from which he eventually died two years later in the "Zum Göttlichen Heiland" hospital in Vienna-Dornbach.