DI Stefan (Reinhold) Plohberger OCist

Reinhold Plohberger was born in Alkoven in Upper Austria, the son of a farmer. After elementary school, he attended grammar school in Linz. After graduating from high school, he was drafted into the First World War as a soldier.

After returning home, he entered the Cistercian monastery in Wilhering in 1919 and was given the religious name Stefan. In 1923, he made his perpetual profession and, after completing his theological studies, was ordained a priest in 1924. He then enrolled in forestry at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, where he graduated in 1928. From 1930, he held the office of forester at Wilhering Abbey, was involved in pastoral care and worked as a religion teacher.

With these duties, he witnessed the downfall of a free and independent Austria when the German Wehrmacht invaded Austria on March 12, 1938. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Stefan Plohberger was drafted as a lieutenant on August 26, 1939, but was made "uk" (unabkömmlich) on October 25, 1939.

Stefan Plohberger was supported by his fellow brother Gebhard Rath in 1939 for the Großösterreichische Freiheitsbewegung around the Viennese lawyer Jakob Kastelic. In total, the Wilhering cell of the Great Austrian Freedom Movement consisted of six fathers ( Gebhard Rath, Sylvester Birngruber, Theoderich Hofstätter, Amadeus Reisinger, Eduard Haiberger, Stefan Plohberger). With the exception of Stefan Plohberger, all Wilhering resistance fighters are members of the middle school fraternity Hilaria Enns.

In collaboration with Gebhard Rath, Stefan Plohberger is able to win over the three Linz Reichsbahn locksmiths Franz Labek, Josef Tomschi and Karl Mitterbauer for the Great Austrian Freedom Movement. The conspiratorial group met regularly in Stefan Plohberger's office in Linz.

After the group was betrayed by the Viennese actor Otto Hartmann, Sefan Plohberger was arrested on July 27, 1940 and imprisoned alternately in Linz, Vienna and Anrath near Krefeld. On July 13, 1944, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison by the People's Court and transferred to the Straubing prison in Bavaria. He was liberated there on April 29, 1945, returned to Wilhering Abbey on May 23, 1945 and resumed his position as forester.

He finally retired in 1971 and died in Linz in 1977 at the age of 79.