Dr. Martin Anton Groder

Martin Anton Groder was born the son of a small farmer and only went to study at the Borromäum grammar school in Salzburg at the age of 15. In 1916, he enlisted in the I Tyrolean Kaiserjäger Regiment and then returned to the 7th grade.

He went on to study law and graduated in 1926. In 1920, he joined the Austria Innsbruck student fraternity. Martin Anton Groder becomes a journalist. There is hardly a topic on which he does not take a critical stance in his idiosyncratic style. He remained unemployed for a long time.

In 1933, he was appointed to Vienna by the VF and became editor of the "Telegraph" in 1937. He emigrated to Switzerland in 1938. His "Roman der Mutter", published in 1940, was not a success, his work permit was not renewed, and so he returned "home to the Reich" in August 1941.

The Gestapo received him at the border; he was highly suspicious, as many thousands of VF membership cards bore his distinctive signature. After weeks of interrogation in the police prison in Innsbruck and the Bregenz provincial court, he was finally released and immediately drafted into the customs border guard.