Memorial Plate for the Men of Resistance and Franz Mair at the Old Town House Innsbruck

Franz Mair, teacher at the Akademisches Gymnasium, was shot during the takeover of the Landhaus by the Tyrolean Resistance on 3.5.1945, and died three days later. The Tyrolean State Government and the „Bund der Tiroler Freiheitskämpfer“ unveiled a memorial plaque for Mair and the Tyrolean Resistance at the Old Landhaus on 8.5.1946 as part of a large ceremony. After complaints from the „Deutschen Reisebüro-Verbandes“ and the German Consul General, it was removed in 1957 and replaced by a plaque with almost unreadable text: „Before this house, Professor Dr. Franz Mair fell in the fight for the freedom of Tyrol in May 1945“. Due to massive protests, the State Government hung up a new plaque on 11.3.1958: with the original text, however with a modification. It was no longer mentioned the NS-era as seven years of oppression, but only of unfreedom. During a special session of the Tyrolean State Government on 5.5.2020 in remembrance of the end of the Second World War, a new wording of the memorial plaque was presented, taking into account the new state of scientific knowledge, authored by Landearchivar Christoph Haidacher. State Governor Günther Platter and Landtag President Sonja Ledl-Rossmann unveiled the memorial plaque on 13.11.2020, only in a small circle due to the regulations to contain the virus Covid-19.