Codename Brooklyn

A commemorative plaque in Innsbruck tells a story of persecution, resistance, and liberation: the story of Margarete Kelderer and her sister Eva Weber, who played a decisive role in Operation Greenup but are absent from the collective memory. If anything, the two American agents and a Tyrolean resistance fighter who parachuted over the Stubai Glacier on February 26, 1945, are known—Fred Mayer, Hans Wijnberg, and Franz Weber from Oberperfuss. They were tasked with providing the U.S. intelligence service with information from the “Nazi Alpine Fortress.” Numerous women and families also helped them, including Weber’s sisters, his fiancée Anni Niederkircher, and her mother Anna. The Gestapo tortured and killed, seeking to expose the network. Yet Innsbruck was ultimately liberated without a fight under the code name “Brooklyn,” an event that inspired Quentin Tarantino’s film *Inglourious Basterds*.

On the 80th anniversary of Operation Greenup, the Tyrolean State Theater explores the history of the Tyrolean resistance, in which women also played a central role. Through research, archival material, and collaboration with historians and experts on everyday life, an emotional and vivid theatrical bridge is built from the past to the present, challenging national postwar myths from both global and local perspectives and breaking with the traditional masculine narrative of heroism. Let’s finally tell the stories of the many heroines and delve deep into the gaps in our memory of Tyrolean contemporary history!

In cooperation with the City Archives / City Museum of Innsbruck, erinnern.at, the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck, the Absam Municipal Museum, and the Austrian-American Society