Dr. Anton Pinsker SJ

Anton Pinsker was born in Vienna as the second eldest of nine children. After elementary school, he attended the state grammar school in Klosterneuburg, where he graduated with distinction in 1924. On September 7, 1924, he joins the Order of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in St. Andrä in Lavanttal.

In addition to studying philosophy (1926-29) at the Berchmanskolleg Pullach near Munich, he also studies physics and mathematics and is then employed as a teacher and educator at the Aloisianum College on Freinberg in Linz, teaching Latin, Greek and philosophy. From 1932-36, he studied theology in Innsbruck while continuing to study mathematics and physics. Anton Pinsker was ordained a priest on July 26, 1935. He was then sent to the youth ministry at the recently established St. Elisabeth residence in Salzburg.

There he also witnessed the downfall of free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in March 1938.

Anton Pinsker was also employed as a secondary school catechist, where he soon faced harsh opposition from Nazi infiltration. Nevertheless, the youth groups quickly flourished and at the beginning of 1939, St. Elisabeth became a parish in its own right. On August 27, 1940, Anton Pinsker is arrested by the Gestapo. A member of his youth group had been caught distributing leaflets against the National Socialist regime. Anton Pinsker is accused of high treason and later of connivance and failure to report the crime. He was sentenced to three years in solitary confinement and subsequently banned from the Gau. On March 22, 1943, he was released from prison and expelled from the Salzburg district.

Anton Pinsker moved to the Canisius parish and experienced the liberation of Austria there.

In 1946, he returned to Salzburg as deanery youth chaplain and became superior and parish priest in St. Elisabeth in 1947. He joins the newly founded Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich. After being asked to focus more on the basic tasks of the Jesuits, Anton Pinsker became rector of the Aloisianum College on the Freinberg in Linz in 1950. In 1955 he was appointed provincial of the Jesuits. In 1962 he received his doctorate and in 1973 became president of the Upper Austrian Chess Association. In the same year, he moved to Vienna for good to devote himself to the further expansion of the provincial archives.