Oberstudienrat Valentin (Josef) Pötscher OCist

Josef Pötscher entered the Cistercian monastery in Wilhering and was given the religious name Valentin; he made his solemn profession in 1915 and was ordained a priest in the same year. From 1925 to 1928, he completed a teaching degree in German and English at the University of Vienna with distinction and subsequently taught at Wilhering Abbey Grammar School. On 1 November 1930, he was accepted as an honorary member of the Hilaria Wilhering secondary school fraternity [later Hilaria Enns], which was based at the Stiftsgymnasium. From 1938 to 1940, he served as a cooperator (chaplain) in Pabneukirchen, then as chaplain in Neumarkt bei Freistadt.

Although Valentin Pötscher was not part of the group founded by his confrere Gebhard Rath in Wilhering Abbey, he was not part of the Upper Austrian group of the Großösterreichische Freiheitsbewegung, but was also in internal opposition to the Nazi regime. On January 4, 1943, he is arrested for listening to foreign "enemy stations"; he is remanded in custody in the Gestapo prison in Linz/Mozartstraße, then in the Linz provincial court. On May 31, 1943, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, which he spent as a clerk for the workshops. Alongside his fellow brothers Gebhard Rath, Sylvester Birngruber, Theoderich Hofstätter, Amadeus Reisinger and Eduard Haiberger, making him the sixth member of the Hilaria secondary school fraternity from the monastery to suffer persecution by the Gestapo.

He was released early on April 30, 1944 and then worked as a chaplain in Altenfelden, Leonfelden and Zwettl/Rodl. From 1946 to 1965, he taught again as a teacher at the Stiftsgymnasium, where he was awarded the title of Oberstudienrat on December 23, 1955. Valentin Pötscher died on September 7, 1969.