(born on October 15, 1864 in Lanškroun, died on April 21, 1932 in Vienna)
He was a native of Lanškroun, the youngest of seven children of a shopkeeper and bookseller.
In 1882 Piffl graduated from the Lanškroun Grammar School, and then he entered the Augustinian monastery and started a brilliant career of a Roman Catholic clergyman (theological school teacher, monastery provost, princely archbishop, Bishop of Vienna, and the cardinal since 1914).
In Lanškroun Gustav attended the primary school and became a grammar school student in 1874. In the summer of 1882 he graduated from the Grammar School in Lanškroun with an excellent final exam. The reference of his probity, which was sent by Bishop of Hradec Králové on September 10, 1883, was no less excellent. Apart from other things it confirmed his religiousness, good reputation, firm character and no previous punishments.
In 1883 Gustav Piffl, as the youngest from four candidates, was accepted by Ubald Kostersitz, the provost, into the Klosterneuburg monastery near Vienna, taking the order name Friedrich. On January 8, 1888, he was ordained as a priest solemnly by Dr. E. Anger, the archbishop and general vicar, in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. Piffl exercised his abilities as an administrator of the Klosterneuburg monastery property on the Hungarian territory and also as the Klosterneuburg monastery office director. In 1907 he was elected provost of the monastery in Klosterneuburg. He then supported science and arts successfully there and attend to further development of the monastery.
In 1913 Emperor Francis Joseph nominated Friedrich Gustav Piffl to the position of Archbishop of Vienna and bestowed him princedom at the same time. After having obtained the pope’s approval F. G. Piffl took on Episcopal ordination at the monastery church in Klosterneuburg. Soon after he was inducted the archbishop of Vienna and installed into his new function on June 8, 1913.
On May 25, 1914, Friedrich Gustav Piffl was bestowed the rank of cardinal by Pope Pius X. In 1922 to his office of Archbishop of Vienna the office of the apostle administrator of the province of Burgenland was added. There is hardly any cultural field which was not supported actively by Friedrich Gustav Piffl. After WWI, Cardinal Piffl devoted himself to charitable activity at full personal strength. For his merits Piffl was decorated the Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold, the Austrian Imperial Order, in 1914.
In 1930 Piffl suffered heart attack for the first time. He served his diocese until his sudden death on April 21, 1932. At his own request Friedrich Gustav Piffl was buried at a lonely forest cemetery near the then summer seat of the archbishops of Vienna in Kranichberg. However, as the water table at the cemetery had risen, the Piffl’s mortal remains were transported into the newly established bishop’s underground crypt of St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna in 1954.
Even if Cardinal Friedrich Gustav Piffl was an important European personality in his time, he had never forgotten his native town of Lanškroun and returned there at various important events and opportunities.