Adolf Mayer (resistance fighter)

Adolf Mayer (born June 11, 1918 in Nüziders , Vorarlberg , † March 17, 1996 ) was an Austrian resistance fighter and interbrigadist .

youth

Mayer grew up in Bludenz . His father Christian Mayer was the owner of a hardware store, his mother, Josephine von Rauchsteiner, came from Freilassing. From 1928 Adolf Mayer attended grammar school in Feldkirch.

resistance

As a well-known opponent of National Socialism , on the eve of the annexation of Austria to the German Reich on March 13, 1938, he fled on skis over the Silvretta to Switzerland and then on to France , as he had been threatened with arrest the next day have calculated.

In Paris he immediately volunteered with the International Brigade for the Spanish Civil War to fight against the fascist Franco regime .

Mayer was seriously injured in the Ebro offensive in 1939 and transported to a hospital in France. In order to escape the deportation by the National Socialists , he registered with the French Foreign Legion and entered the same under the name Pablo Silva as a "Cuban". He fought in Senegal , Madagascar and Indochina .

Life and career

Starting in the winter semester of 1944, Mayer studied Montanistik at the École polytechnique in Paris . In 1946 his daughter was born. 1948 Mayer headed one in northern France uranium - mining and works with Irène Joliot-Curie together. From 1949 he worked in Algeria , Morocco , Madagascar and India . In 1964 he married Ratanbai Kharegat, and directed construction projects in Argentina, Chile, Nigeria and Central Africa. In between he also worked several times at short notice in Vienna and Zurich . His son was born in 1977.

Mayer has been prepared by Austrian President the Decoration for Services to the Liberation of Austria awarded. France honored him for his war effort with the award of the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur .

Adolf Mayer died in 1996 after a serious illness.

Web links

• Mayer, Adolf in the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance