Joseph Maria Casimir Konrad Michael Benedictus Maurus Placidus, Freiherr von und zu Franckenstein (30 September 1910 - 7 October 1963) was an Austro-German philologist, dissident and later US Army Lieutenant attached to the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and to the Austrian 'O5' resistance movement against the Nazi Regime.

[1] He was the grandson of the landowner and Lord of Traunegg, Heinrich Maria Friedrich Karl, Freiherr von und zu Franckenstein, and Helene, Countess of Arco-Zinneberg.

[3] After studying classical philology and completing his doctorate at the University of Innsbruck, he worked as an occasional journalist and mountaineer in Austria during difficult economic times and political turmoil in the 1930s.

In 1944 he was appointed to the OSS and was an espionage agent in Austria in support of the Austrian Resistance against the Nazis, working with the Tyrolean group under the leadership of Dr. Karl Gruber.

They lived in Marburg, Hesse, then Frankfurt am Main, where Franckenstein was the news editor for Die Neue Zeitung, a German-language newspaper overseen by the U.S. State Department that helped bring a free press to postwar Germany.

In October 1952, as part of the communist hunt of US Senator Joseph McCarthy, Franckenstein was interrogated by a hearing board on questions of loyalty and security.