Alois Getzinger trained as a waiter and opened a junk shop at Turnergasse 28 in Vienna's 15th district. Between 1935 and 1938 he was also an expert in effects and furniture. After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich, he was able to considerably expand his antiques and furniture business at Mariahilferstraße 165/167 in the 15th district, particularly following the liquidation of the businesses of the furrier Alexander Melion, the fur trader Malvine Rispler and the jeweller Julius Epstein, by using the premises as a warehouse "for Jewish-owned second-hand furniture". Getzinger, who was regarded by the Nazi authorities as "unpolitical" and was not a member of the NSDAP, had a "bad reputation because he used Jewish business methods" and was not therefore supported by the Gau personnel department when it came to renewing his qualification as an expert in January 1941. A short while later, however, he was described as being of "unobjectionable moral and political character” and "generous with collections". As a result of this sudden change in the personal assessment, he was after all once again appointed as a court-sworn expert and assessor of the Deutsche Rechtsfront for both effects and furniture and antiques. Getzinger is mentioned in provenance research in connection with the valuation of the interior furnishing of Hans Abel and his wife Else before their escape from Austria and of the art collector Armin Reichmann shortly before he moved to collective housing.

It was established in the post-war trial of the Aryanizer Karl Buchheim before the Vienna Volksgericht that Getzinger had drawn up an inventory of the contents of the private residence of the jeweller Jakob Futterweit, who had died in March 1938. A number of testimonies were heard stating that Getzinger had profited enormously during the Nazi era by putting a very low price on the furniture of Jews who had to flee or were threatened with deportation and then purchasing it himself. In spite of what was said at Buchheim's trial, Getzinger was never prosecuted under § 6 of the War Criminals Act.