Ing. Karl Hans Karasek

Karl Hans Karasek was born in Vienna, the son of a master carpenter. After attending elementary school, he attended secondary school and then the State Trade Institute for Building Construction and Arts and Crafts. He worked in technical professions, for example as a construction manager in Linz. In 1930, he joined the Styrian Heimatschutz.

After the occupation of Austria by the Third Reich, he was classified as a "Mischling of the first degree", as two of his grandparents were Jewish. Karl Hans Karasek is a regular at Franz Lambert's inn [today: Pürstner]. There he met the lawyer Karl Wanner at the end of 1940. Through him, he joins the Lamberti Circle, which he subsequently attends every week. Although he was briefly called up for military service and later employed in Linz, he came to the meetings as often as possible. He was a convinced legitimist and advocated the idea of an independent Austria after the collapse of the unjust National Socialist regime. Karl Hans Karasek wanted to gather both former members of the Heimatschutz and Marxists in order to become active against National Socialism.

"He was present and one of the spokesmen alongside Dr. Wanner in dealing with political and military issues of the day, so that he was even regarded as Dr. Wanner's deputy", according to the verdict of the People's Court.

In January 1942, when the Lamberti Round Table of the Antifascist Freedom Movement of Austria (AFÖ) around the pastor Anton Granig and the former Member of Parliament Karl Krumpl, Karl Hans Karasek is present at the talks with Karl Wanner. He also had contact with Eduard Pumpernig, who told him, among other things, about his contacts with the wife of Kurt von Schuschnigg, the former authoritarian chancellor during the chancellor dictatorship between 1934 and 1938. The accusation that Eduard Pumpernig had promised to procure explosives for attacks could not be proven.

When the AFÖ was exposed in 1943, Karl Hans Karasek was immediately arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison for preparation for high treason in the trial before the People's Court on August 15, 1944. He was imprisoned until the end of the war, until April 6, 1945, in Dachau concentration camp.