Eduard (Leopold) Haiberger OCist

The son of a factory worker, Leopold Haiberger attended the Stiftsgymnasium Wilhering grammar school before entering the Cistercian monastery in Wilhering, where he was given the religious name Eduard. He made his solemn profession in 1911 and was ordained a priest in 1912. He worked at the monastery as a prefect of the convent and, from 1917, as rentmaster. Eduard Haiberger is accepted as an honorary member of the Norika Wilhering secondary school fraternity [from 1924: Hilaria Wilhering, later Hilaria Enns] founded at the Stiftsgymnasium in 1923. From 1934, he is the local leader of the Patriotic Front in Wilhering.

Eduard Haiberger is nominated by his confrere Gebhard Rath in 1939 for the Großösterreichische Freiheitsbewegung around Jakob Kastelic. In total, the Wilhering cell of the Greater Austrian Freedom Movement consisted of six priests (Gebhard Rath, Sylvester Birngruber, Theoderich Hofstätter, Amadeus Reisinger, Eduard Haiberger, Stefan Plohberger). With the exception of Stefan Plohberger, all Wilhering resistance fighters were members of the middle school fraternity Hilaria.

After the group was betrayed by the Viennese actor Otto Hartmann, Eduard Haiberger was arrested by the Gestapo on July 27, 1940 and sent to the Vienna state court prison; from 1941 he was imprisoned alternately in Anrath near Krefeld, Mönchengladbach and Düsseldorf. Seriously ill, he underwent surgery in Düsseldorf without anaesthetic and was released in April 1944 because he was unfit for detention.