Herbert Braunsteiner

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Herbert Braunsteiner (left) with the Governor of Vorarlberg Herbert Keßler .

Herbert Braunsteiner (born March 10, 1923 in Vienna , † July 25, 2006 in Bad Fischau-Brunn ) was an Austrian medic and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Braunsteiner grew up in a middle-class family in Vienna and attended the Brigittenau grammar school from 1933 . During the time of the authoritarian corporate state he was a member of a free corps .

After the “Anschluss” of Austria , Braunsteiner, as his mother was Jewish, was considered a “first-degree hybrid” according to the Nuremberg race laws . Therefore, he moved to relatives in Paris in April and attended school there. After France declared war on Germany , Braunsteiner volunteered in April 1940 for a volunteer battalion for foreigners. After the armistice in June 1940 , he was arrested by the SD and interned in the Schirmeck forced camp . After a few weeks Braunsteiner managed to escape from there and tried to make his way to Vienna. He was arrested again in Freudenstadt , but he was able to contact his father, who was ultimately able to obtain Herbert Braunsteiner's release through professional connections.

In September 1940 Braunsteiner was back in Vienna, where he graduated as an external graduate in 1941 . As a "half-breed" he was unworthy of defense and was also not allowed to study, so he took up a job in his father's company. Through his former religious education teacher Anton Maria Pichler and Johannes Eidlitz , he came into contact with resistance circles and joined the group “Austrian Combat League”, which is attributed to leaflet campaigns and acts of sabotage in armaments factories. He also got to know Felix Hurdes through Pichler , as well as his later wife Elisabeth Schmitz (daughter of the former mayor of Vienna Richard Schmitz ). In 1944 he came into contact with the O5 group . Through these contacts he was involved in the preparations for the establishment of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) during the final phase of the fighting for Vienna , which took place on April 17, 1945 in the Schottenstift . He was the first secretary of Hurdes and the first youth leader of the ÖVP.

In May 1945 he was commissioned by the ÖVP to make the new party known in the western federal states of the now occupied post-war Austria. To do this, he swam across the Enns as a border between two occupation zones. In Linz , Salzburg and Innsbruck he met the provisional governors appointed by the Allies , Heinrich Gleißner , Adolf Schemel and Karl Gruber, and was able to ensure that the ÖVP emerged as a unified national party and prevented a counter-government to that in Vienna from being established in the west.

In the autumn of 1945 Braunsteiner was able to start studying medicine , which he completed in just three years. In 1949 he received a scholarship to a cancer research institute in Paris, where he stayed until 1950. Back in Vienna he worked at the university clinic, in 1953 he went to a cancer research institute in New York City for a year with a further scholarship . In 1958 , Braunsteiner completed his habilitation with Karl Fellinger for internal medicine in the hematology department with a thesis on thrombasthenia . In 1964 he was appointed professor of internal medicine at the medical faculty of the University of Innsbruck . From 1967 to 1972 he was dean of the faculty, from 1979 to 1981 he was rector of the university. From 1964 to 1993 he was also the director of the Innsbruck Medical University Clinic in Anichstrasse. In the field of research he was able to prove that lymphocytes can transform into plasma cells and that monocytes originate from the bone marrow . He was the author of over 400 specialist publications and a member or honorary member of numerous national and international academies and scientific societies. In 1978 Herbert Braunsteiner was elected a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina in the Internal Medicine and Dermatology Section .

In 1993 he retired and returned to Vienna. Then he was President of the Supreme Medical Council of the Republic of Austria .

Herbert Braunsteiner died in 2006 in the family's summer house and was buried at the Grinzing cemetery .

Private life

Herbert Braunsteiner's first marriage resulted in three daughters. After the early death of his wife Elisabeth in 1984, he remarried and the second marriage resulted in a son. He was a member of the Catholic student associations KÖStV Nibelungia Vienna (since 1945) and AV Austria Innsbruck (since 1966) in the ÖCV

Honors

literature

  • Edwin Knapp: Herbert Braunsteiner: A fulfilled life as a passionate Austrian, great doctor, scientist and clinic director. Wagner, Innsbruck 2014, ISBN 978-3-7030-0872-6 .

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ^ A b c Franz Lugmayer: Herbert Braunsteiner - a messenger from Vienna for a united Austria . In: Euro Journal. Linz - Mühlviertel - Bohemian Forest . 11th year, no. 1 , 2005, p. 14 ( online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at).
  2. ↑ a b Prof. Herbert Braunsteiner. Innsbruck Medical University, July 28, 2006, accessed October 10, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Dr. med. univ. Herbert Braunsteiner. In: club-carriere.com. Retrieved October 10, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Braunsteiner, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian doctor and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 2006
Place of death Bad Fischau-Brunn