Franz Hofer

Franz Hofer was the most powerful figure in the region. He was head of the party apparatus as “Gauleiter” and in charge of the civil government as “Reichsstatthalter”. A ruthless power monger, he was responsible for the crimes of the Nazis in Tyrol: the expulsion and murder of the Jewish population, the persecution of the Roma, Sinti and Yenish, the murder of mentally ill people, the massive exploitation of forced labourers, and the radical crackdown on those who did not conform to the Nazi worldview.

Hofer started work as a salesman and ran a radio shop in Innsbruck. From November 1932, when he was only 30 years old, Hofer headed the Nazi movement in Tyrol. After the NSDAP was banned in June 1933, he was arrested. Two months later Hofer managed to escape to Germany. In Berlin he assumed responsibility for the National Socialists who had fled Austria.

At the end of May 1938 Hofer returned to Tyrol as party leader (“Gauleiter”) and Governor (with the title “Reichsstatthalter” from 1 April 1940). The construction of the Gauhaus was his first project with major external visibility. His office was in this room. From September 1943 onwards, following the occupation of Italy by the German Wehrmacht, Hofer spent most of his time in Bozen as Supreme Commissioner of the Operation Zone of the Alpine Foothills.

The US army arrested Hofer on 3 May 1945 and held him in various internment camps in Germany. In October 1948 he escaped. He was not prosecuted in Tyrol; as a German citizen he was not extradited. In Munich, a court sentenced him in absentia to ten years in a labour camp and forfeiture of his assets. The sentence was later reduced. Since the time he had already spent in prison was taken into account, Hofer was thus able to live as a free man until his death in Mühlheim an der Ruhr in 1975.