Dr. Norbert Ortel

Norbert Ortel attends the Schottengymnasium in Vienna. As a 15-year-old pupil, he took part in the preparations for the Rosary Festival on 7 October 1938 together with around twenty young people. On 15 September 1938, they were able to convince Cathedral Vicar Dr. Martin Stur (1905-1987) that the youth celebration should take place regardless of Austria's annexation to the German Reich. Stur had 200 posters printed, but they did not reach everyone:

"Catholic youth! The bishop calls you to the ceremony in St. Stephen's Cathedral on October 7, 1938, 8 pm."

There were no written invitations. The "Diözesanblatt" contains this note:

"This ceremony will inspire the best of our young people for the coming working year and awaken a sense of togetherness. The Cathedral of St. Stephen and the presence of the bishop will give our youth the joy of work and the courage of conviction, especially in these hard days."

Norbert Ortel classmate Wolfgang Müller-Hartburg (1923-2001) remembers:

"We already knew the regime and the Gestapo so well at the time that we suggested to Dr. Stur that he invite us not in writing, not by telephone, but only in person and verbally. 20 young lads who owned a bicycle each went to 10 to 12 parishes and invited the youth and their chaplains. Everyone was enthusiastic and so word got around in Vienna."

Norbert Ortel is also out and about on his bike, spreading the necessary information about the planned celebration.

"Spread the word: On October 7 in the cathedral!"

"We had strict instructions to only speak to the priest or the youth chaplain."

In the run-up to the celebration, the young people have been warned on posters:

"Attention! Any youth seen in this church from now on will be strictly monitored! We warn!"

Why Norbert Ortel took part in this action anyway and how he personally felt about it, he says:

"The devotion was intended as a commitment of the Catholic youth to the so-called 'old-fashioned things' such as the rosary. The associations had been taken away from us, we were forced into the parishes, into the pastoral hours and of course we also wanted to show with a rally that we were still here."

No one could have foreseen that this rosary festival would unexpectedly become a demonstration of Vienna's Catholic youth against National Socialism, nor the consequences.

"What I remember most is the phrase 'Christ is your leader', because our jaws dropped, because at the time it was a crime against the Reich to say something like that."

Unnerved by the events of the last few months since the Anschluss and the bishops' stance on the referendum, the young people in St. Stephen's Cathedral will now hear Cardinal Innitzer in person:

"Perhaps some of you, dear young Catholics, have not understood everything the bishops have done in the last few months. You know what it is all about. But we can be witnesses that the bishops were very keen to do only what they could do to the best of their knowledge and conscience, that they are aware that they bear a heavy responsibility before the Lord God."

Norbert Ortel recalls in retrospect:

"We were totally enthusiastic about his speech, also because he moved away from his previous behavior."

There has never been a similar, public and such a large manifestation against the Nazi regime as that of the Catholic youth on October 7, 1938 in Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral in the entire German Reich.

For some Catholics, participation in this celebration was not without consequences: In the days following the ceremony, members of the Bund Neuland Hans Eis, Egon Hanel and Hermann Lein as well as members of the Reichsbund der katholischen deutschen Jugend Österreichs Josef Kaspar, Franz Ranftl and Franz Riesenhuber and Ferdinand Habel are arrested.

Together with his classmate Wolfgang Müller-Hartenburg, Norbert Ortel is arrested in the classroom by the Gestapo in December 1939 on suspicion of possessing forbidden writings. After a week in the police detention center, he was released and was able to continue attending grammar school. In 1941, he graduated from the Vienna I state grammar school - after the dissolution of the Schottengymnasium, the Wasagymnasium in Vienna 9 moved into its premises - and, like his politically endangered friends, enlisted in the German Wehrmacht in order to be protected from further persecution by the Gestapo. He served with the mountain troops in Norway, where he was taken prisoner of war. His older brother Alexander was killed in action in Russia in 1943.