text: Arrest, trial and execution The group around Maier was the special focus of the Gestapo and the Nazi judiciary, especially since the goal of the resistance group, on the one hand the overthrow of the NS regime and on the other hand the restoration of an independent Austria under Habsburg leadership, was a special provocation for the NS regime. Hitler hated the Habsburg family and was diametrically opposed to the centuries-old Habsburg principles of "live and let live" in relation to ethnic groups, peoples, minorities, religions, cultures and languages. Some members of the group were gradually arrested in February 1944 after being betrayed. Heinrich Maier was arrested on 28 March 1944 by the Gestapo in his parish in Vienna-Gersthof in the sacristy after the holy mass and taken to the prison in the former Hotel Métropole on Morzinplatz. During the hours of interrogation by the Gestapo, confessions were obtained through torture (according to interrogation protocols: "stated after detailed questioning"). During the Gestapo interrogations, Maier managed on the one hand to conceal the actions of the group and on the other to exonerate the other members. Overall, the Gestapo was unable to uncover the great importance of the resistance group. Maier was later transferred to the police prison house on the Elisabethpromenade (now Rossauer Lände) or on 16 September 1944 to the prison of the Landesgericht I in cell number E 307.