Andreas Hofer (22 November 1767 – 20 February 1810) was a Tyrolean innkeeper and drover who became the leader of the 1809 Tyrolean Rebellion during the War of the Fifth Coalition. Hofer, besides that, led troops in the battles of Bergisel during the rebellion. He was subsequently captured and executed.

Hofer is still today venerated as a folk hero, freedom fighter and Austrian patriot. His great-grandson, Andreas Hofer, was a member of the anti-Nazi resistance group centered around Heinrich Maier.

Andreas Hofer was born 1767 in St. Leonhard in Passeier, in the Habsburg crown land of Tyrol. His father was an innkeeper of the Sandhof inn and Andreas followed in his footsteps when he inherited the establishment. He also traded wine and horses in adjacent Northern Italy and learned the Italian language. He married Anna Ladurner. In 1791 he was elected to the Tyrolean Landtag assembly. In German he was known as a Wirt (innkeeper) and thus ever after Sandwirt.

In the War of the Third Coalition against the French he became a sharpshooter and later a militia captain in the Austrian Imperial and Royal Army. After the Austrian defeat, Tyrol was transferred to the Kingdom of Bavaria (France's ally) according to the 1805 Treaty of Pressburg. During the stern measures of Minister Maximilian von Montgelas and the forced recruitment into the Bavarian Army, Hofer became a leader of the anti-Bavarian movement. In January 1809, he was part of a delegation to Vienna to ask Emperor Francis I of Austria for support for a possible uprising. The Emperor gave his assurances and the delegation returned home.

Hofer begun to secretly organize insurrection, visiting villagers and holding councils of war in local inns. Reputedly he was so much on the move that he signed his messages "Andreas Hofer, from where I am" and letters to him were addressed to "wherever he may be". At the same time other leaders organized their own forces elsewhere in the Alps. Hofer became a leader of a militia contingent in the Passeier Valley.

The Tyrolean Rebellion began on 9 April 1809 in Innsbruck. The previous night, organizers dumped sacks of sawdust into the River Inn as a sign to start the rebellion; floating through the town and down the Inn Valley, it alerted the rebels. Church bells summoned men to fight with muskets and farmyard implements. They soon overran smaller Bavarian garrisons and surprised a column of French infantry that was passing through the area.

On 11 April the Tyrolean militia defeated a Bavarian force in Sterzing which led to the occupation of Innsbruck before noon. Though French forces came across the Brenner Pass as a relief and a united French-Bavarian contingent counterattacked the next night, the Tyroleans fought them in the First Battle of Bergisel until Hofer and his allies won on the morning of the 13th. While Austrian forces under General Johann Gabriel Chasteler de Courcelles moved into the Tyrolean capital and installed a provisional government led by Joseph Hormayr, Hofer advanced south, taking Bozen and Trent.

Hopes of a successful rebellion waned when Napoleon defeated the Austrian forces of Archduke Charles of Austria in a series of battles of Teugen-Hausen, Abensberg, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon, whereafter the Austrian troops withdrew from Tyrol and Hofer had to pull back to the mountains. The French Marshal François Joseph Lefebvre took charge of the Tyrolean theatre, and Bavarian and Saxon forces under the command of Karl Philipp von Wrede on 13 May defeated the Austrians in a bloody skirmish at Wörgl. The Bavarians re-occupied Innsbruck on 19 May. However, when their French allies left, the rebellion flared up again.