Dr. Ludwig Mooslechner

Born in Weiser, Ludwig Mooslechner attended the Stiftsgymnasium in Kremsmünster and went to Innsbruck to study medicine after graduating from high school in 1928. In 1929, he was accepted into the student fraternity Austria Innsbruck. In the winter semester 1932/33, he moved to Vienna and became a member of the Austria Wien student fraternity, and in the summer semester 1933 he moved on to Graz, where he joined the Carolina Graz student fraternity. There he obtained his doctorate in medicine in 1934. He then completed specialist training as a dentist. He practiced at the provincial hospital in Graz.

As he had to leave the hospital in 1938 after the Anschluss for political reasons, he settled in Schwanberg in western Styria and opened a practice there as a general practitioner and dentist. As a politically unreliable person, he was not allowed to hold any public posts or have a practice with a health insurance fund, but was nevertheless conscripted into military service as a doctor for nearby St. Martin im Sulmtal. As an upright Catholic and Austrian who always courageously and openly professed his anti-Nazi convictions, he increasingly incurred the hatred of those in power under the Nazis.

In September 1944, a flyer was found in Ludwig Mooslechner's home, whereupon he was arrested by the Gestapo on charges of subversion of military power and aiding and abetting the enemy. He is released for the time being due to illness. Nevertheless, he supports the partisans, deserters and other people in hiding in the area of the nearby Koralpe who have been active in the Carinthia-Styria-former Yugoslavia border region since 1943, providing them with food and medical care. After the betrayal of a person in hiding, Ludwig Mooslechner was arrested again in Schwanberg on March 17, 1945 and taken to the Deutschlandsberg prison. He was accused of supplying the freedom fighters in the Koralpen region with weapons, ammunition and medicines and of treating their sick and wounded. During interrogations, he suffers severe abuse (beaten deaf) at the hands of the SS. On the orders of the notorious Deutschlandsberg district leader Dr. Hugo Suette [(1903-1949) - never convicted!], he was murdered together with 16 men and 2 women on the Hebalm on 10.4.1945 by shots to the neck and stomach, after they had previously had to dig their own graves. Ludwig Mooslechner's wife had to flee with her children to a mountain farmer, as Suette had threatened to exterminate the whole family at a meeting.

On June 10, 1945, Ludwig Mooslechner's body was buried in a hero's grave in Deutschlandsberg.