Rosa Hofmann

Rosa Hofmann (27 May 1919 – 9 March 1943) was an Austrian Communist Youth leader who became a resistance activist during the 1930s. In 1943, she was arrested and taken to Berlin where she faced trial, conviction and execution.

Life Family provenance and early years Rosa "Ratzi" Hofmann was born in Wilhering (near Linz) and grew up in the Maxglan quarter of Salzburg. Josef Hoffmann, her father was a Social Democratic trades unionist and a member of the "Schutzbund" paramilitary organisation established during the 1920s to protect the young republic against a surge in political extremism. The children imbibed their socialist beliefs from their parents as they grew up.

Politics After leaving school Rosa's brothers, Josef and Anton, trained respectively as a painter and as a locksmith. The eldest of the four siblings, Therese, worked as a housemaid. Rosa Hofmann became an assistant seamstress, though records indicate that she never went through a formal apprenticeship. While they were children all four had been involved with the Red Falcons, a socialist organisation for young people that arranged expeditions and other free-time group activities. In February 1934 Austria's post-democratic government placed a ban on the hitherto mainstream Social Democratic Workers Party. The Hofmann siblings very soon became involved with the (now illegal) Austrian Revolutionary Socialists which quickly emerged after the ban. The group organised meetings that featured "political lectures".