At work she came into contact with people who later because operatives and members of Austrian Resistance groups which would emerge after 1938 under the leadership of , and Roman Scholz. She also acquired a fiancé, a deputy inspector with the Vienna Electricity Company, Rudolf Wallner. It was at the end of 1939 that she was persuaded by Wallner to become a member of the which had been set up a year earlier in the wake of the 1938 annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. The group's origins lay in a commitment to the creation of a separate "Danube federation", a catholic grouping of states in the Upper Danube region that would include Bavaria and Austria (as defined after 1919). As the oppressive nature of Nazi government became increasingly apparent, the movement became more simply an anti-government operation. It never numbered more than a few hundred members, but its existence threatened the Nazi state which was a one-party state.