Theoderich (Josef) Hofstätter OCist

Josef Hofstätter - son of a worker and nephew of Wilhering Abbot Bernhard Burgstaller - attends Wilhering Abbey Grammar School and, as a sixth grader, is one of the founding members of the Norika Wilhering secondary school fraternity founded there on 15 December 1923. December 1923 [from 1924: Hilaria Wilhering, later Hilaria Enns]. After graduating from high school, he entered the Cistercian monastery in Wilhering and was given the religious name Theoderich; he made his solemn profession in 1931 and was ordained a priest in the same year. He studied theology in Linz and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna; in Wilhering, he served as a philosophy professor and prefect of the convent.

Theoderich Hofstätter, like his confrere Gebhard Rath, was ordained in 1939 by Johann Blumenthal, a leading member of the "Großösterreichische Freiheitsbewegung", the resistance movement around the Viennese lawyer Jakob Kastelic, recruited for this resistance group. Working as a cooperator (chaplain) in Schörfling am Attersee since 1938, the Attersee area was to be his area of operation. He was also tasked with making contact with the workers at the Lenzing pulp factory. 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, Theoderich Hofstätter was arrested on July 28, 1940 and sent to Anrath Prison near Krefeld/Lower Rhine. On July 13, 1944, he was sentenced to seven years in prison by the People's Court in Vienna; he remained imprisoned in Straubing Prison until his liberation by American troops on May 3, 1945. After the war, Theoderich Hofstätter worked as a pastor in Zwettl an der Rodl, Vorderweißenbach and Theras; he was also buried in the last place where he worked after his death on 27 January 1981.