Dr. Ludwig Bernegger

Ludwig Bernegger attended grammar school in Ried im Innkreis and joined the Rugia grammar school fraternity in the winter semester of 1919/20. After graduating from high school in 1923, he went to Vienna to study law and joined the student fraternity Kürnberg in 1923. After completing his studies and obtaining his doctorate in 1928, he joined the Linz Federal Police Headquarters on September 1, 1930. There he became a senior police commissioner and state police officer for NSDAP matters. His duties included the criminal prosecution of NSDAP supporters and members who had been banned in Austria since 1933, as well as investigating terrorist attacks by illegal National Socialists. Some of the convicted perpetrators were sent to the detention camp in Wöllersdorf, Lower Austria. He was also in charge of the Garsten prison. This made him a "notorious Nazi persecutor" for all NSDAP members.

After the Anschluss, he therefore had to fear revenge from the new rulers. On the night of March 12, 1938, the Linz SS occupied the police headquarters in Mozartstraße. Ludwig Bernegger is taken out of service at midday on 12 March together with police director Dr. Viktor J. Bentz (who is "shot while fleeing" on 14 March). He leaves the apartment with his wife Gerda, née Ullmann, on March 13 and wanders through Linz until the early hours of the morning. When he ventured back to his apartment shortly after three o'clock on March 14, SA and SS men were already waiting for him. He wanted to evade arrest and jumped out of a first floor window onto the street. SS men were already waiting for him there too, and he was brutally beaten up. The parts of his scalp, including the specific reddish-blond hair, were later found on the manhole cover in front of the house in Dinghaferstraße, indicating his serious injuries.

Heavily injured, he was dragged into the detention van in the early hours of the morning and taken to the Linz Federal Police Headquarters in Mozartstraße. The day after the arrest, a shot was suddenly fired in the cell next door. It is unclear whether Dr. B. was still alive at all at the time the shot was fired. These are the recollections of the widow of criminal inspector Josef Schmirl (1987-1938), another victim in Linz, in an interview in 1990.

A cellmate reported that Bernegger was still alive the day after his arrest because the guards, as he had noticed, had come into Bernegger's cell several times and hit him. It is no longer possible to determine exactly when and how Bernegger ultimately died. The investigation into Bernegger's abduction and death was closed by the head of the Linz criminal investigation department, Herbert Schärninger (1890-1944).

An alternative version of the death can be found in the report of the Linz criminal investigation department dated October 7, 1947, which states, among other things:

Witness testimony at the trial of the Special Court in Linz in 1946/47, where the perpetrators were to be brought to justice, shows that the bodies were taken to the crematorium at around 9 p.m. on March 16, 1938. The cremation was completed on March 17 at around 1 a.m. - according to the witness statement. The actual date and manner of death have not yet been established. Bernegger's wife Gerda was stalled. They had her bring fresh laundry to the prison and then handed her the urn with his ashes 14 days later, without any explanations being given. The urn containing Dr. Bernegger's mortal remains was buried in the family grave in Ried on 14 August 1948.