Heinrich Maier

Heinrich Maier (16 February 1908 – 22 March 1945) was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, pedagogue, philosopher and a member of the Austrian resistance, who was executed as the last victim of Hitler's regime in Vienna.

The resistance group he led is considered to be one of the most important for the Allies during World War II.

Heinrich Maier was born on 16 February 1908 at Großweikersdorf.

His father, also named Heinrich Maier, was an official on the Imperial Royal Austrian State Railways.

His mother Katharina Maier, born Giugno (apparently from the Italian-speaking part of Austria-Hungary), was the daughter of a policeman.

His sister was born in 1910 near Gmünd.

His sister was educated by his grandmother and his aunt in Moravia.

He received strong financial support from his relative Gabriele Maier.

His early education was at a Volksschule.

He then was sent to a Gymnasium in Sankt Pölten between 1918 and 1923.

Maier then went to a Gymnasium in Leoben from 1923 to 1926.

He did his theological degree at the University of Vienna (1926–1928).

Heinrich Maier was chaplain of a Scout group of the Österreichisches Pfadfinderkorps St.Georg, the Catholic Austrian Scout association between 1926 and 1938 in Austria, in Vienna.

He was also a chaplain of the altar boys and the Präses of the Marianischen Kinderkongregation, a youth group of the Christian life community.

Maier "impressed" with charisma and enthusiasm, he had a high level of intelligence and scientifically sound training, was interested in art and politics and felt deeply connected to his home country.

Enthusiastic contact, coupled with a warm and open personality, made many friendships open to him all social classes; however, he paid special attention to the care and upbringing of children and adolescents to independent and mature personalities; “dealing with them was uncomplicated and comradely..." According to contemporary witnesses, Maier was "a real buddy", "a happy person” and an “accurate soccer player.”

Before continuing his studies at Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum (1928–1930) and the University of Vienna.

The subject of his dissertation was "The struggle for the correct concept of church in the late Middle Ages. Represented using Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis and Torquemada's Summa de Ecclesia".

As part of his dissertation, he dealt with the then explosive topic, the relationship between state and church.

During his time as an active student he became a member of the K.Ö.St.V. Nibelungia im ÖCV.

His student name was "Wolf".

It was the only ÖCV student association loyal to the Habsburg Kaiser (Emperor) in the interwar period, whose “patron” was Otto von Habsburg, the last crown prince of Austria-Hungary.

Maier worked as a priest in Schwarzau, Reichenau, Mödling and later in Gersthof, a part of Währing in Vienna.

With the abolition of religious instruction by the Nazi regime, Maier also lost his job as a religion teacher at the Albertus Magnus School in Vienna Währing in 1938, but remained chaplain in the parish of Gersthof-St.

Maier had been actively involved in the idea of resistance since 1940 and saw himself as a priest committed to it.

His Christian faith and his humanistic worldview forced him to take action, against the advice of his superiors, against Nazism.

As early as May and June 1940, he contacted resistance groups around Jakob Kaiser, Felix Hurdes, Lois Weinberger, Adolf Schärf and Karl Seitz.

Out of his conviction, the Catholic faith and Austrian patriotism, he was a resistance fighter, who ultimately did not rule out militant means to suppress the Nazi regime.

He founded the resistance group Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi together with the Tyrolean Catholic-monarchist resistance fighter Walter Caldonazzi from Mals in South Tyrol and later from Kramsach in North Tyrol, who already led a resistance group with a few hundred members in Tyrol with the policeman Andreas Hofer (a direct descendant of the Tyrolean freedom hero of the same name, Andreas Hofer), and Franz Josef Messner, the Tyrolean director of the Semperit works.

It was Maier who brought the very different members of the resistance group together and was able to build on a large network of his contacts.

This Catholic Conservative group is called "perhaps the most spectacular single group of the Austrian resistance."

The aim of the group was to bring about an end to the horrific regime by military defeat as soon as possible and to re-establish a free and democratic Austria.

Maier advocated the following principle: "Every bomb that falls on armaments factories shortens the war and spares the civilian population."

The group (also called CASSIA or Maier-Messner group - opposite the OSS, the resistance group called itself the Austrian Committee of Liberation - the Americans codenamed Arcel using the acronym ACL) took care, among other things, of collecting and passing on information about locations, employees and productions about Nazi armaments factories to the Allies.

This information for targeted bombing by the Allies was partly passed on to middlemen in Switzerland to the British and Americans.

Leopold in Vienna Währing, deepened his theological studies and received his doctorate in July 1942 (second doctorate - theology).

He then violated the orders of his ecclesiastical authorities in that he not only acted "purely as a pastoral" but also politically.

Maier was very involved in the resistance against the Nazi Party.

Heinrich Maier stated, in the interrogation of the group's strategy on 27 April 1944, that he had hoped to prevent further air strikes on Austrian cities by providing information about the "armaments factories in the Ostmark" and "that this would prevent the other industries that we had after the war absolutely needed, and the civilian population was spared. (...) Shortly thereafter I familiarized Dr. Messner with my plan and talked to him about which armament centers we wanted to reveal to the enemy powers' (- such as Steyr, Wiener Neudorf and Wiener Neustadt) eye."

Via Walter Caldonazzi, the group had contacts with Italian resistance groups through Italian construction workers.