Heribert (Eduard) Kluger OT

After completing his philosophical and theological training in Olomouc, Eduard Kluger joined the Teutonic Order in 1903 and was given the religious name Heribert. He took perpetual vows in 1905 and was ordained a priest in the same year. From 1911 he taught as a professor of religion at the secondary school in Freudenthal and in 1931 took over the management of the Teutonic Order Hospital there. He also became a member of the Order's General Council in 1936. Nordgau Prag appoints Heribert Kluger an honorary member in 1933.

After the signing of the so-called Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938, which annexes the Sudeten German territories of the CSR to the German Reich, the German Wehrmacht marches into the Sudetenland. A standstill commissioner is appointed with special rights and powers to maintain order. His sphere of influence now also includes the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Standstill Commissioner Albert Hoffmann (1907-1972) decrees the dissolution of the Teutonic Order on February 27, 1939. Father Heribert Kluger is forced to retire as a religious teacher due to his uncompromising public rejection of National Socialism, partly because he expressed his disgust at the Jewish protests on 9/10 November 1938.

On 20 July 1944, he is arrested by the Gestapo.7.1944, the Gestapo arrested him on the basis of a complaint from the principal of a grammar school, Alfred Meissner, for anti-state sermons and allegedly listening to enemy broadcasts and transferred him to the district court prison in Opava. Here he had to work as a forced laborer in road construction.

On 6 January 1945, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp and died on 18 January 1945 after being tortured. An eyewitness from that time remembers: "He was beaten so hard that his blood smeared the floor. When they tried to force him to lick up his blood, he refused. He was then beaten to death by his tormentors."