Amadeus (Karl) Reisinger OCist

The son of a farmer, Karl Reisinger attended the Petrinum in Linz, entered the Cistercian monastery in Wilhering in 1913 and was given the religious name Amadeus. He studied theology at Stift St. Florian, made his solemn profession in 1917 and was ordained a priest in 1918. He worked at Wilhering Abbey as Convict Prefect and Custos, later as Guest Master and Mission Procurator and as a lecturer in art history at the Linz Diocesan Teacher Training College. Father Eduard was accepted as an honorary member of the Norika Wilhering secondary school fraternity (from 1924: Hilaria Wilhering, later Hilaria Enns) founded at the Stiftsgymnasium in 1923, and from December 7, 1925 he was honorary philistine of the fraternity, in which he actively contributed his artistic talent.

Amadeus Reisinger is recruited by his confrere Gebhard Rath in 1939 for the "Great Austrian Freedom Movement". In total, the Wilhering cell of the Great Austrian Freedom Movement consisted of six priests ( Gebhard Rath, Sylvester Birngruber, Theoderich Hofstätter, Amadeus Reisinger, Eduard Haiberger, Stefan Plohberger). With the exception of Stefan Plohberger, all Wilhering resistance fighters were members of the middle school fraternity Hilaria.

After the group was betrayed by the Viennese actor Otto Hartmann, Amadeus Reisinger was arrested by the Gestapo on July 27, 1940 and taken to the provincial court prison in Vienna; from July 8, 1941 he was imprisoned in Anrath near Krefeld. On July 13, 1944, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison by the People's Court in Vienna and was released the following day due to his pre-trial detention being taken into account.