Dr. Franz Rupertsberger

Franz Rupertsberger initially attended the Bischöfliches Petrinum in Linz-Urfahr and then transferred to the state grammar school in Ried im Innkreis, where he graduated in 1920. He initially decided to join the order of the Augustinian canons in St. Florian. After seven months, he completed the novitiate and began studying law and political science at the University of Vienna. In 1921, he joined the student fraternity Austria Wien.

In order to finance his studies, he worked part-time as secretary of the Christian-social faction of the Federal Council from 1925-1929. After obtaining his doctorate in 1925 and passing the state examination in 1929, he applied for a position in the civil service. The then Federal Chancellor, Prelate Dr. Ignaz Seipel (1876-1932), approved his application. In 1929, he was accepted as a concept officer at the Vienna Federal Police Directorate. In 1932, he was assigned as a state police officer "to combat the Nazi movement" at the Vienna Police Directorate, where he "had a decisive influence on the punishment of members of the NSDAP during the prohibition period." - according to the later accusation in the Stapo file.

He has been a member of the VF since the beginning of 1934. At the time of the assassination attempt on Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß, Franz Rupertsberger was seriously ill. At the end of 1934 he was appointed to the Federal Chancellery, Directorate-General for Public Security, and in 1936 he was taken on as a member of the BKA staff. In 1937, he was put in charge of the Department for Combating Marxism.

After the Anschluss, Franz Rupertsberger was taken into protective custody on March 15, 1938 and transferred to Dachau concentration camp on April 1, 1939 on the Prominent Transport (Gestapo list no. 67). After an interim stay in Flossenbürg concentration camp, he was released from Dachau on April 22, 1940. The reasons given for his immediate dismissal as a civil servant in the BKA and his imprisonment were, on the one hand, his activities as a consultant at the time, which were "so pernicious for the National Socialist" and, on the other, that his wife, the daughter of HR Dr. Bernhard Pollak, head of the Vienna State Police, was half-Jewish on her father's side ("half-breed of the first degree"), as expressly noted in his Stapo file. After his release from the concentration camp, he worked as an insurance agent and then became the manager of a small construction company.