Anna Johanna Hahn

Anna Johanna Hahn was born in Vienna as the legitimate daughter of the housekeeper Franz Josef Hahn and his wife Anna, née Meßner. After finishing school, she worked as an accountant. Nothing has survived about her from the 1920s and 1930s.

On March 12, 1938, she witnessed the downfall of free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. She then worked in the Wehrmacht's foreign correspondence office in Vienna. From 1942, she joined the resistance movement Gruppe Freies Österreich/Gruppe Karl Gruber (FÖ). The resistance movement was founded by Karl Gruber, who was born in 1888 in Altmünster am Traunsee in Upper Austria. The aim of this non-partisan group, which was more in line with the Christian Social camp, was to liberate Austria from National Socialist occupation and re-establish its independence.

From November 15, 1943, members of the Gruppe Freies Österreich/Gruppe Karl Gruber (FÖ) secretly published the campaign newspaper 'Freies Österreich! Blätter für Friede, Freiheit und Fortschritt' at the Viennese publishing house Vorwärts Verlag. In a total of six issues, in addition to the demands for the re-establishment of a free and independent Austria and the overthrow of the National Socialist terror regime, it reported on the theaters of war and the defeats of German troops.

The group had its meeting place in premises at Stuckgasse 6 in Vienna's 7th district. In the early fall of 1944, the group was finally uncovered and many members were arrested by the Gestapo. Anna Hahn was arrested on October 6, 1944. Only the defeat of the Third Reich saved her from a trial for 'treason'. Anna Hahn was released on 6 April 1945.

In freedom, Anna Hahn experienced the liberation of Austria and the re-establishment of the Republic on April and May 1945. She joined the newly founded Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) and the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich