Dr. Karl Wanner

East Tyrolean Karl Wanner attended the Vinzentinum Episcopal Grammar School in Brixen. After graduating from high school, he studied law in Innsbruck and became active in the student fraternity Tirolia Innsbruck. During the First World War, he had to interrupt his studies, was drafted into the k. u. k. He was drafted into the Imperial and Royal Kaiserjägern and made lieutenant. He completed his studies with a doctorate (Dr. iuris) in Innsbruck. After a year at the bar and court, he returned to his hometown of Lienz and opened a law firm there.

During the corporative state, he was active in the military units of the VF and later commanded the East Tyrolean Home Guard as a battalion commander. In 1934, he moved into Upper Carinthia and actively participated in the suppression of the National Socialist coup attempt.

After the Anschluss, Karl Wanner - and other representatives of the corporative state - was arrested on March 13, 1938, transferred to Greifenburg and from there to Lienz on March 29. Here he had to endure a show trial in the cinema hall, where he was sentenced to four years imprisonment "for breach of security". Due to a so-called "act of clemency by the Führer", the appeal proceedings before the Reich Court in Leipzig are dropped after one and a half years in prison. After his release at the end of June, he has to give up his law firm and goes to Vienna as a "Gauverwiesener". In Vienna, he is "employed as a legal assistant in various law firms", according to the Gestapo - including with lawyer Dr. Hans Gürtler.

Here he begins his underground work and gathers a group of resisters around him, the so-called Lamberti-Runde, named after the Viennese innkeeper Franz Lambert [today: PÜRSTNER]. He established contacts with the Carinthian resistance group that formed in 1941 around pastor Anton Granig and the provincial parliament member Karl Krumpl and has called itself the Antifascist Freedom Movement of Austria (AFÖ) since 1942. Karl Wanner became aware of them through leaflets that read, among other things:

"Carinthians, our homeland is in trouble! Brown criminals have betrayed our homeland [...]. Carinthia and our Austria must be free again from the Prussian yoke. All united against the brown criminals! Long live Carinthia!"

He and his group joined the AFÖ. Joint assassination attempts were planned, such as "blowing up the entire Carinthian Gauleitung" according to Eduard Pumpernig's ideas. Attempts were also made to free the Federal Chancellor Kanzler Kurt von Schuschnigg, who was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After prolonged observation by the Gestapo and supported by the incriminating material obtained by the infiltrated confidant Karl Rumersdorfer, the "Lamberti Round Table" was uncovered in February 1943. The Gestapo in Vienna records the following:

"At the suggestion of Dr. Anton Granig, a meeting took place on 15 March 1942 in Franz Lambert's inn [...] between the Carinthian sympathizers and Dr. Karl Wanner's group. Dr. Granig, Krumpl [...] and others took part in this meeting, which was held under the guise of participation in the sport fishing conference being held in Vienna at the same time. He explained the purpose and goal of the 'AFÖ' to the other attendees and called on them to get in touch with like-minded people in order to get them to form a group."

From the daily report of the Gestapo Vienna No. 5, 12-15 February 1943. 1943:

"The aforementioned, who all belonged to the Heimwehr during the system era in Austria and are already known to the state police as opponents of the Third Reich, met on average once a week in a Viennese inn as a regulars' table and on this occasion expressed their anti-state attitude through defeatist slogans, grumbling of the worst kind and spreading atrocity tales, the origin of which is probably to be found in listening to the enemy radio.

Further investigations revealed that the case in question involved a reactionary secret organization whose aim was to re-establish the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.Hungarian monarchy under the regency of Otto von Habsburg."

Karl Wanner was provisionally arrested on 8.2.1943 and was remanded in custody until 7.4.1945 "for separatist high treason", as Dr. Kaltenbrunner ordered on 14.5.1943:

"According to the findings of the state police, he endangers the existence and security of the people and the state through his conduct by participating in constant meetings of former members of the Heimwehr, ... making speeches detrimental to the state, spreading rumours of the worst kind and news from enemy broadcasters."

He is torturously mistreated during the interrogations. In the indictment of 9 June 1944, the public prosecutor accused him and his 13 co-defendants of:

"At the beginning of 1941, an illegal group formed in Vienna under the leadership of the defendant Dr. Wanner, which sought the collapse of the National Socialist state and the separation of the Danube and Alpine regions from the empire as well as the establishment of an independent Austro-Hungarian monarchy including southern Germany and South Tyrol with Otto von Habsburg as ruler. The members of this group were mainly former members of the Heimatschutz. From spring 1942, this group joined the 'Anti-Fascist Freedom Movement of Austria' (AFÖ), which was based in Klagenfurt and led by the Catholic clergyman Dr. Anton Granig [...]. Anton Granig [...] and the private civil servant and current marksman Karl Krumpl (prosecuted in 7(8) J 208/43), which set itself the goal of uniting all like-minded illegal groups in the Danube and Alpine regions from the camp of the former Heimatschutz of the Christian Socialists and the Marxist parties."

The main trial in August 1944 took place without Karl Wanner. Karl Wanner himself describes this process as follows:

"I was [...] in political prison for 3 1/2 years under the Hitler regime and in the end even a candidate for death in the People's Court [...] in Vienna because I had led a resistance group and organized several. Unfortunately, this group (the Lamberti Circle) was exposed and had to mourn the same eight executions. The two other groups I belonged to were purely academic groups; one in the "Stieglbräu" [...] and the other in the "Dominikanerbräu" (consisting largely of former CVers) were not exposed despite spying, which I am very happy about. I only escaped the death sentence because I was seriously injured by a steel rod blow to the head at the Gestapo and suffered a balance disorder as a result, which brought me to the closed ward of the neurological clinic. There I was held back by like-minded academics (doctors and nurses) until the collapse of the Nazi empire."

After the war, Karl Wanner returned to work as a lawyer and retired to his hometown of Lienz.