Friedrich Öhlinger

Friedrich Öhlinger attended the state grammar school in Linz and graduated in 1897. He then began studying medicine in Innsbruck in the fall of the same year, where he joined the Austria Innsbruck student fraternity in 1897. However, he did not complete this course of study, but transferred to the Faculty of Law and then to the Faculty of Philosophy, where he devoted himself to national-economic, Germanic and historical studies.

In 1906, he moved to Vienna, where he was employed by the newly founded Lower Austrian Farmers' Association. In 1909, Friedrich Öhlinger was then sent to Bohemia by the then Christian Social Minister Albert Gessmann (1852-1920) to activate the Christian Social movement there. He first went to Wamsdorf [Varnsdorf/today: Czech Republic] and then to Trautenau [Trutnov/today: Czech Republic], where he became party secretary for the Eastern Bohemia region. As early as 1911, he was nominated for the Reichsrat as list leader of the Christian Social Party in Braunau-Land and Adlergebirge, but his candidacy had no chance.

In August 1914, Friedrich Öhlinger enlisted in the Landwehr Infantry Regiment "Linz" No. 2 and, promoted to lieutenant, saw the war through from start to finish. He contracted cholera, which he suffered from for the rest of his life. After the war, he returned to Trautenau in the newly founded Czechoslovak Republic [CSR] and became district party secretary of the "German Christian Social People's Party" in Bohemia. In 1925, he stood as a candidate in the elections to the Czechoslovak National Assembly; he held his seat in the Prague parliament for ten years until 1935. In 1935, he lost his seat to the Sudeten German Party [SdP] of Konrad Henlein (1898-1945).

After the "Munich Agreement" of September 29, 1938, the Sudetenland was ceded to the German Reich, and from October 1, it was occupied by the German Wehrmacht. Friedrich Öhlinger had to flee to Prague, where he was finally arrested for a time after the annexation of the rest of the Czech Republic on 15/16 March 1939; however, he remained in Prague during the war.