Therese Margarethe Nickl (geb. Lustig)

Theresa Margarethe Lustig was born the legitimate daughter of Hugo Lustig and Marguerite, née Haim, in Teddington near London. Nothing has been preserved about her childhood and youth.

She later moved to Vienna and married the lawyer Hans Paul Nickl in 1933. A devout Catholic, she witnessed the demise of a free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht.

In 1941, she was suspected of legitimist activities. Although this suspicion could not be substantiated during a Gestapo house search on May 9, 1941, handwritten political prophecies were found, as well as two copies of a Catholic pamphlet that Theresa Nickl had copied on a typewriter. These contain massive criticism of the National Socialist state and its racial theories. Jesus Christ would destroy the system.

Theresa Nickl claims to have received these writings from the Hartmann Sisters (Order of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity) Aloisia Fröhlich, Anna Fröhlich, Josefa Kammermayer and Therese Steinbauer.

Theresa Nickl is arrested in her apartment on 'suspicion of treason' and taken to the police prison in Elisabethpromenade. From there, she was transferred to the Vienna Regional Court I.

Her husband Hans Paul Nickl managed to secure her release through a public prosecutor friend and Theresa Nickl was released without further trial on September 19, 1941.