Maria Cäsar

Maria Cäsar (born Maria Kreith: 13 September 1920 – 1 September 2017) was an Austrian political activist (KPÖ) who after the Anschluss in 1938 became a resistance activist. She was among the survivors: during and beyond the occupation years. After the second World War Maria Cäsar played her part in testifying about her experiences of Austria under National Socialism to younger generations.

Life Maria Kreith was born in Liescha (Prävali) in the Mieß valley district of what was still, at the time of her birth, part of the German speaking province of Carinthia. She was, however, born at the height of the post-war ethnic conflict in the area. Under the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain which the wartime victors imposed on the former Austrian empire a referendum was held in the southern borderlands of Carinthia, including the Kreiths' home village, as a result of which when Maria Kreith was approximately four weeks old the area became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Recent events had inflamed inter-ethnic tensions. In order to remain in German speaking Austria the family relocated to Judenburg in Upper Styria. Her father found work with the local crucible steel plant, although sources recall that during the economically parlous 1920s and 1930s he also experienced frequent periods of unemployment.

The Kreiths backed the Social Democratic Party. As the country transferred to one-party dictatorship, the party was suppressed in the aftermath of the brief but savage uprising of February 1934. As a younger teenager Maria Kreith was a member of the left-wing sports and social youth association. After 1934 she joined the Young Communists and undertook what now constituted "underground illegal political work", Four years later she was still only 18 when she joined an anti-government resistance group. In 1939 the group was discovered by the authorities.

Directly following her release she married Franz Greilberger, her first husband who, like her, was a member of a resistance group. Their son Heinz was born in 1941. As memories of National Socialism receded and her own family responsibilities made fewer calls on her time, the extent of her public mission grew. In 2008, a couple of years short of her ninetieth birthday, she accepted an invitation to address the newly elected Graz . Her thought-provoking speech, delivered on 17 March 2008, was well received: the incident was recalled nine years later when, shortly after her death, the council renamed a children's play park Maria-Cäsar-Park in the city's Liebenau quarter.

Maria Cäsar died in Graz on 1 September 2017 shortly before what would have been her 97th birthday.