During 1936 Anton and Emilie Tolnay were arrested by the government authorities on suspicion of having been politically active on behalf of the (by this time illegal) Communist Party.
Most of the surviving evidence on their political activism comes from the indictment presented on 22 December 1943 by the Chief Prosecutor, when the Tolnays faced trial at the Vienna branch of the special People's Court.
The case was also made that Emilie Tolnay had successfully recruited Rosalia and Johann Graf to work with the illegal "Communist Opposition".
The charge on which they were convicted was the usual one of "preparing to commit high treason and favouring the enemy" ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat und Feindbegünstigung").
On 5 July 1944 Emilie Tolnay was executed on the guillotine which had been moved into the Vienna district court complex in 1938, shortly after the German take-over.