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.Christoph Thurner, "The CASSIA Spy Ring in World War II Austria: A History of the OSS's Maier-Messner Group" (2017), p. 14.Fritz Molden: Die Feuer in der Nacht. Opfer und Sinn des österreichischen Widerstandes 1938-1945. Amalthea, Vienna 1988, p. 122.
Early life 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),Ralf Siebenbürger "Heinrich Maier - Ein Seelsorger im Widerstand", In: Der Freiheitskämpfer 2014/2015, p. 8. 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 was then 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). 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.
Youth group chaplain 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.
Opposition to Nazism
Maier, "impressed" with charisma and enthusiasm, 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 across 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".Hecht, Rauch, Rodt: Geköpft für Christus & Österreich, (1995), p. 93.
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 a chaplain in the parish of Gersthof-St. 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.Hansjakob Stehle: Die Spione aus dem Pfarrhaus. In: Die Zeit. 5 January 1996.
Maier was very involved in the resistance against the Nazi Party. 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,DÖW: Widerstand und Verfolgung in Tirol 1934–1945, Band 2. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1984, ISBN 978-3-215-05369-6, pp. 444–448. 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),Horst Schreiber, Christopher Grüner "Den für die Freiheit Österreichs gestorbenen: Das Befreiungsdenkmal in Innsbruck. Prozesse des Erinnerns.", Innsbruck 2016, p. 72. 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.Franz Loidl: Kaplan Heinrich Maier - ein Opfer des nationalsozialistischen Gewaltsystems in: Herbert Schambeck: Kirche und Staat. Fritz Eckert zum 65. Geburtstag. Duncker & Humblot, Vienna 1976, pp. 271–292. Maier advocated the following principle: "Every bomb that falls on armaments factories shortens the war and spares the civilian population."Paul Vecsei "Der Priester, der unter das Fallbeil kam" In: Wiener Zeitung, 13 March 2021.
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. 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 familiarised 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.DÖW "Widerstand und Verfolgung in Tirol 1934–1945" Band 2. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1984, ISBN 978-3-215-05369-6, pp. 444–448.
The exact drawings of the V-2 rocket, the production of the Tiger tank and Messerschmitt Bf 109 and others could be passed on via Maier's relationship with the Commandant of Vienna, Heinrich "Rico" Stümpfl. Lieutenant General Stümpfl, a former officer of the Austro-Hungarian Army and Austrian Army, knew about the activities of the resistance group and was always ready to help them comprehensively.Peter Broucek "Militärischer Widerstand: Studien zur österreichischen Staatsgesinnung und NS-Abwehr" (2008) p. 408. As a result, precise location sketches and production figures for steel mills, weapons, ball bearings and the German production situation for synthetic rubber (Buna) and aircraft factories soon reached Allied general staffs. Maier's saying, based on Shakespeare's Richard III, "A kingdom for a ball bearing" has come down to us in this regard.Bernhard Kreutner "Das Leben des Heinrich Maier - Mann Gottes und unbeugsamer Widerstandskämpfer" (2021) p. 195. Via Walter Caldonazzi, there were contacts to numerous armaments factories in Tyrol, such as the Heinkel factories in Jenbach, where drive components for the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet and V-2 rockets were manufactured. The information about the aircraft factory in Wiener Neustadt, the most important and largest German factory for the production of fighter aircraft at the time, was particularly important.
In some cases, Maier had received information from front-line soldiers on leave about the industrial facilities. American and British bombers were able to strike armaments factories such as the secret V-rocket factory (V-1 and V-2) in Peenemünde and the Messerschmitt plants near Vienna. These contributions by the resistance group via the defense industry and production sites (crucial for the Operation Crossbow and Operation Hydra, both preliminary missions for Operation OverlordOperation Crossbow - Preliminary missions for the Operation Overlord) were later to prove to be 92% correct and were thus an effective contribution to Allied warfare. On the one hand, the Allies were able to target the arms industry and on the other hand, this information and the subsequent air strikes decisively weakened the supply of the German Air Force, which together also had the effect of shortening the war. In this regard, it is often stated that if the war against Nazi Germany had lasted longer, the first atomic bomb would have been used over Berlin or the industrial centers of Ludwigshafen am Rhein and Mannheim.Groves, Leslie "Now it Can be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project." (1962) New York: ISBN 0-306-70738-1, p. 184.
Messner provided the first information about the mass murder of Jews from his Semperit plant near Auschwitz - a message the enormity of which amazed the Americans in Zurich. However, the Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi resistance group's plan to bring an American transmitter of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from Liechtenstein to Austria failed. In 1943 the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) was in contact with the Austrian resistance group through an SOE officer in Istanbul, G. E. R. Gedye, but Gedye was not convinced of the reliability of the group’s local contact person, Semperit-Istanbul branch director Gustav Rüdiger (sometimes incorrectly identified as “Franz Josef Riediger”) and, because of these security concerns, decided not to cooperate with the group.
In addition to establishing contact with Allied secret services, the resistance group also tried to educate its own countrymen in order to prepare them politically for a future peace order. To this end, a central committee or preparatory groups in the event of a collapse of the German Reich and a future independent state of Germany with a monarchical form of government were planned, which, in addition to Austria, should also include Bavaria and South Tyrol.