Dr. Max Foresi Edler von Weinfeld

Max von Foresi attended the Franciscan grammar school in his home town of Bolzano. There he was a member of the secondary school fraternity Gaudeamus igitur. After graduating from high school in 1912, he began studying law in Graz and was accepted into the Carolina student fraternity in 1912.

At the beginning of the First World War, he was initially deferred from military service due to an arm injury, but then enlisted in the "Voluntary Carinthian Rifle Regiment No. 4" in Arnoldstein in 1915, where he performed border service duties and was soon promoted to lieutenant. In 1916, he was transferred to the military catering service in Innsbruck, where he remained until the end of the war. In Innsbruck, where he became a member of the student fraternity Austria Innsbruck, he completed his studies after the war in 1919 with a doctorate in law. He then worked as a substitute notary in Bolzano.

In 1931, Fascist Italy banned membership of a student association, forcing Max von Fioresi to formally resign from the CV. After continuing to work as a substitute notary in Bruneck, he was able to become an independent notary in July 1940 on the basis of a separate Italian law ("Lex Fioresi").

During the Third Reich, Max von Fioresi did not shy away from opening the eyes of his fellow countrymen to the Nazis' betrayal of the South Tyroleans, despite being warned several times. He was an opponent of the Hitler-Mussolini Pact, the resettlement agreement for South Tyrol. After the overthrow of Mussolini and the occupation of Italy by German troops, the Gestapo obtained the arrest of Max von Fioresi in Bolzano on September 10, 1943. He was taken to the Innsbruck provincial court and, after several months in custody, transferred to Landshut prison without interrogation or trial.

On August 3, 1944, he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp. There he was liberated by the Americans on April 29, 1945 and was able to return to Bolzano in June.