Roman Karl Scholz

Roman Karl Scholz (16 January 1912 – 10 May 1944) was an Austrian author and Augustinian canon regular at Klosterneuburg. He became a resistance activist after attending a Nuremberg Rally in 1936. He was arrested in 1941 and executed in 1944.

Early life The illegitimate son of a textile worker, Josefa Scholz, Karl Scholz was born in Mährisch Schönberg (now Šumperk), a prosperous manufacturing town in the northern part of Moravia, in Austria-Hungary. When he was six, Austria-Hungary was broken up and his home town was transferred to the new republic of Czechoslovakia. It remained overwhelmingly German in terms of language and ethnicity, but in a period of heightened nationalism, the growth of the Czech-speaking minority became a source of tension, and it was part of the regions which politicians were beginning to identify as the Sudetenland.

Scholz grew up with his grandparents, and attended the Gymnasium (secondary school) in his home town. As a schoolboy he joined a local Catholic youth group, becoming a group leader. Sources relate that he wrote poems, loved nature and took an interest in politics. Some of the recruits were drawn from among the older school students whom Scholz taught. In the end, there were around 300-400 members. The movement also incorporated a women's group, organized around Luise Kanitz. There were contacts with the western allies and with Czechoslovak resistance groups. Hartmann suggested that the group should embark on a programme of terror and sabotage, but Scholz rejected the idea, which would have run counter to his Christian principles. In June 1940, Hartmann reported everything that the resistance movement had been discussing and planning directly to the Gestapo.

Scholz was arrested at the monastery on 22 July 1940, along with four others. He was held pending trial for more than three years. He was repeatedly interrogated during that period and was transferred several times to prisons both in Vienna and further afield, but he betrayed no accomplices. An intervention by a sister of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, with whom a friend of Scholz had a connection, proved fruitless.

Scholz faced the special People's Court in Vienna in February 1943. The indictment stated that he had brought about "the bringing together of people inclined to [political] opposition and drawn them into an organisation hostile to the state, for the purpose of splitting the Greater German realm". A public defender was assigned to his case and entered an "extenuating circumstances" plea that Scholz was a fantasist, but did not contest his guilt. Scholz was condemned to death on 23 February 1943. Cardinal Archbishop Innitzer of Vienna submitted a personal plea for clemency by telegramme to Adolf Hitler, who failed to reply.

Scholz was one of approximately twenty resistance activists executed by guillotine on the scaffold at the district courthouse in Vienna on 10 May 1944. His final words were "Für Christus und Österreich!" (For Christ and Austria!).