Rudolf Hirschfeld was born on December 31, 1877 in Salzburg, the son of Theodor Hirschfeld and Hedwig Moser. After the death of his child and his first wife, Theodor Hirschfeld had moved from Hohenems to Salzburg, where he converted to the Catholic faith in order to be able to marry Hedwig Moser from Southern Tyrol. After a brief emigration to the US, Theodor Hirschfeld finally returned to Hohenems – and to Judaism – in order to die in the Jewish poorhouse. His son Rudolf Hirschfeld, who remained Catholic, also went to Vorarlberg with his mother, and lived in Dornbirn, Lauterach, Bregenz and finally in Hard, where he worked as a greengrocer, but also as a distiller and embroiderer. After 1938 he came under the scrutiny of the National Socialists because of his Jewish origins, but he escaped deportation. Probably the local authorities protected him. His son, also called Rudolf, fell in Poland in January 1945 as a German soldier. He himself died in Hard in 1956.