Otto GRIESBERGER was born in Salzburg on February 3, 1905 and baptized in the Roman Catholic Church. He was the younger son of Aloisia Griesberger née Balde, and Josef Griesberger, a prominent property holder in Salzburg (Hotel Stein and a Villa on the Giselakai).
Josef’s son Otto left few traces of his life in Salzburg: He remained single, was a musician, pianist, lived for a long time in the Getreidegasse and finally in the Linzer Gasse.
In 1943 the 38-year-old Otto GRIESBERGER was called up for service in the German army and was deemed fit for the front as a stretcher bearer. However, he was not sent to the front, but to a psychiatric clinic in Innsbruck, where he committed suicide on July 1, 1943, driven to his death at the age of 38.
It is noteworthy that his older brother Max was sentenced to one year in prison by a military court in Salzburg that same month, in July 1943, for »undermining military morale«. Unlike Otto, Max was able to survive the years of Nazi terror.
Otto GRIESBERGER is one of the victims who wasn’t counted in the 1991 publication Dokumentation Widerstand und Verfolgung in Salzburg 1934-1945, and doesn’t appear in the Online-Databank of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance.
Sources
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- Salzburg City- and State Archives Police Registration Files and Local Citizenship records
- Archive of the Salzburg Archdiocese: Birth reregistration books
- Widerstand und Verfolgung in Salzburg 1934-1945, vol. I, Vienna 1991, p. 579f. (Max Griesberger)
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 08.10.2025 at Salzburg, Linzer Gasse 27
Source: Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes(Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance)