On May 26, 1937, Nelböck was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, but only two years later - after the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938 - asked for a pardon. In his application he pointed out "that by his act and the result elimination of a Jewish teacher who propagated doctrines alien and detrimental to the nation he rendered National Socialism a service and also suffered for National Socialism as a consequence of his act. Since the world-view, the rightness of which he recognized even then and out of which he committed his act, is now the ruling national ideology, he considers it a hardship if he still has to remain in a disadvantaged position because of an act which sprang from his world-view."