Memorial Birner Augsburg

An "Erinnerungsband" (memorial pole) was placed in the city center of Augsburg on January 23, 2019 for Dr. Adam BIRNER.

"Lived here
Dr. Adam BIRNER
Born 6-10-1897
in Altenmarkt (Traunstein District)
Died on 13-4-1941
in Augsburg as a result
of interrogation methods
of the gestapo."

Adam Birner studied philosophy and theology and was ordained a priest in 1922.
He gained experience as a preacher in Memmingen, Neuburg an der Donau and in Rome.
In 1926 he was appointed parish priest in the parish of St. Moritz and after five years as cathedral minister. He was a religious teacher at the Augsburg trade school and was also the head of all Catholic workers' associations in southern Germany.
When the National Socialists wanted to abolish these associations, he became a staunch opponent of Hitler.
After a heated conversation with a former student, a member of the Hitler Youth, he was arrested in his apartment in 1934 for critical statements about the state and figures such as Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Hermann Göring and Wilhelm Frick.
After a month in prison he was released.
He was exiled from Augsburg and now became a city priest in Günzburg.

When the Second World War broke out in 1939, he sympathized with the peoples that Germany had invaded. He regularly had conversations with Catholic prisoners of war from Poland and France. He did not trust the German reporting and listened to an English radio station. Together with an old school friend, mayor of Augsburg, he discussed the latest news and looked for forms of resistance.
On April 4, 1941 he was arrested in the church in Günzburg and on April 9 the Gestapo took him to the Augsburg court prison II (Katzenstadel).
On April 13, 1941, he died in the city hospital with signs of torture all over his body.