Dr. Josef Andreas Feuerstein

Josef Andreas Feuerstein was born the son of a farmer and innkeeper. After elementary school in Andelsbuch, he attended the Vizentinum grammar school in Brixen (boys' seminary), where he graduated in 1912. He then completed the Abitur course in Graz in 1912/13.

During this time, he joined the Traungau student fraternity. In the fall of 1913, he began studying at the Faculty of Law at the University of Graz, where he was called up to the Imperial-Royal Army (Standschützen) in 1915 and then deployed to the South Tyrolean front until 1918. During this time, he was able to continue his studies at Innsbruck University, where he graduated in 1919.

After the war, Josef Andreas Feuerstein began practicing law at the Bregenz District Court at the beginning of 1919 and joined the law firm of Vorarlberg Governor Otto Ender in Bregenz as a trainee lawyer at the beginning of August 1919. He took over the firm in 1923 and worked as a lawyer - with an interruption during the Nazi era - until 1965. From 1926, he became involved with the Christian Social Party and was, among other things, editor of the Vorarlberger Bauernzeitung and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Vorarlberger Landes-Hypothekenanstalt from 1929 to 1938 and from 1945 to 1959.

As Josef Andreas Feuerstein was married to a "quarter Jewish woman", he was faced with the alternative of either divorcing her or giving up his profession after the Anschluss. He opted for his wife and therefore worked as an unskilled laborer until 1944, including at the Dornier aircraft factory in Friedrichshafen (Württemberg). At the end of 1944, he was called up to the Volkssturm.