DDr. Heinrich Maier

Heinrich Maier is the son of a k. k. official of the Austrian State Railways. He first visits the Gymnasium in St. Pölten and then in Leoben. After the Matura in 1926 enters the Viennese Seminary and will shortly thereafter be held in November Nibelungia recorded. He studies at the University of Vienna in 1926 to 1928. He then moved to Rome in 1928 to 1930 to study the scholastic philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University;Here he holds his doctorate in philosophy and his colleague Franz König (1905–2004), the later archbishop of Vienna and Cardinal. Returning to Vienna, he continued his theology studies in 1930 to 1932. In 1932 he receives the priesthood in the Vienna St. Stephen's Basilica. Between 1932 and 1939 he works as a Kaplan in Schwarzau am Steinfeld and Mödling - St. Othmar in Lower Austria. On September 1, 1935, he arrives at his last pastoral post in the parish of Gersthof, St. Leopold (Vienna XVIII). In addition, he takes care of the young student and, from 1936, teaches religions at the Technical-Profit Lehranstalt in Mödling and at the Realgymnasium of the „Albertus-Magnus-Schulwerk der Marienbrüder“.

In 1938 he filed his teaching examination. With the violent suppression and dissolution of the confessional schools by the National Socialists, his teaching as a pedagogue also ends. He remains Kaplan in St. Leopold and uses the time to complete his doctorate as Dr. theol., which takes place on 25.7.1942. He is a member of the VF and the Austrian Young People.

Since 1940 he has been working with a loose network of resistance groups that maintain contacts with the US secret service OSS. He founded his own group, the group “Maier-knife-Caldonazzi‘. The tasks of subsoil work are: to carry out sabotage acts, to spread leaflets, to create dangers across the border, to obtain necessary funds, to let people appear unfit for the defence and to establish contacts with the Allies. Heinrich Maier has a middle man in Switzerland, the theologian DDr. Otto Karrer (1888–1976). In 1942 he sends a message to the English ambassador in Bern:

Since the American OSS staff is a double agent, the group “Maier-knife-Caldonazzi“ undetected. After an ad, Heinrich Maier will be on 28. March 1944 after the morning Mass in the sacristy of the Gersthof parish church of the Gestapo arrested and interrogated on Morzinplatz. In interrogation on 27. In April 1944, he announced, among others, that he hoped, through information on the "Armaments in the East“to prevent further air raids on Austrian cities and thus to spare the other industries, which would be absolutely needed after the war, as well as the civilian population.

In the main proceedings before the 5th meeting in Vienna. Senate of the VGH he will then be together with the other defendants on the 28th October 1944 due to "Preparing for high treason‘Participation in a separatist merger“ guilty spoken and sentenced to death. The reasons for the VGH include:

Despite the death sentence, he will be from 22 November 1944 to 18. March 1945 KZ Mauthausen because one hopes to be able to squeeze out of him with the possibilities available there, details of his resistance group by torture. He takes up all the harassments and the most horrific tortures – such as being tied to the cross of the window – to cover his friends. On 18 March 1945, after the report of the eyewitnesses, Heinrich Maier will be assisted by Lois Weinberger together with Felix Hurdes and Leopold Figl brought back to the regional court to Vienna. Until the execution of the judgment, it is used several times to compensate for unexploded bombs and explosives in the various districts of Vienna. On 22 March 1945, the last execution day before the liberation of Vienna by the Allies, Heinrich Maier is murdered in the Grey House by the Fallbeil. He called his fellow prisoners on the way to the sheep, while he blessed them in passing:

In the assessment of the episcopal firm, among others:

The body originally buried in a manhole grave at the Central Cemetery is embed in an honorary grave after the war at the cemetery in Neustift am Walde.