Reading with Music

What's it about?

Author Philipp Novak researched six stories of resistance by clergy or confessing Catholics in and around St. Veit an der Glan. His reading focuses on priests such as Anton Koperek and Rudolf Frank: both have close ties to the ducal city, both lost their lives - for different reasons. Ferdinand Frodl, most recently rector of the St. Georgen am Längsee seminary, survived. Frodl was active with the Kraigerberg teacher Franz Bernthaler in the resistance group of Father Anton Granig. While Frodl survived with skill and luck, Bernthaler and Granig paid for their Catholic, anti-fascist stance with their lives - both were executed shortly before the end of the war. The lives of the misguided monk Switbert Lobisser (with strong connections to St. Veit) and the Protestant pastor and lyricist Gerhard Glawischnig are also illuminated. Lobisser was considered a painter and woodcutter of the Nazi ideology, Glawischnig was torn between social democracy and the völkisch gymnastics club. Lobisser died in the war, Glawischnig became the creator of Carinthia's secret state anthem with "Is schon still uman See". Novak also reads about Maria Stromberger: the girl from Wohlschartwald became the "Angel of Auschwitz". Her path crossed in the Klagenfurt district hospital with that of Ottilie Schellander, presumably Austria's greatest mass murderer - a woman from St. Veit.