Ministerialrat Dr. Oskar Maria Philipp Egon Kurt Freiherr Berger von Waldenegg

Oskar Maria Philipp Egon Kurt Freiherr Berger von Waldenegg was born in Vienna, the son of Oskar Emil Freiherr Berger von Waldenegg, Section Councillor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and his wife Maria Franziska, née Renkin. His brother Egon Freiherr Berger von Waldenegg, born in 1880, became Minister of Justice and Foreign Minister in 1934 and subsequently envoy to Rome.

After elementary school, he attended grammar school and graduated in 1907. Oskar Freiherr Berger von Waldenegg then enrolled in law at the University of Vienna and obtained his doctorate in 1912. He then entered the service of the province of Lower Austria and worked at various district administrative offices. In 1918, he moved to the Ministry of Social Welfare [now the Ministry of Social Affairs]. He left the civil service as early as 1920, as he had to help his father, who was already ill, with the takeover and liquidation of an inherited estate in Yugoslavia.

From 1930, Oskar Freiherr Berger von Waldenegg supported the social policy department in the Ministry of Social Affairs on a voluntary basis and returned to Vienna in 1931. There he worked first as deputy head and later as head of the office of the head of the homeland security department, Ernst Rüdiger Fürst Starhemberg.

After Ernst Rüdiger Prince Starhemberg resigned from his office, Oskar Freiherr Berger von Waldenegg was assigned to a department in the Federal Chancellery.

As a civil servant in the Federal Chancellery, Oskar Freiherr Berger von Waldenegg witnessed the downfall of free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. On March 12, 1938, he was suspended from his post and forced to retire on September 2, 1938. Immediately after the outbreak of the Second World War, he was arrested by the Gestapo on September 3, 1939 and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp on September 20, 1939. He was released from there on February 10, 1940.

On his return to Vienna, he found employment with various companies. After the liberation of Austria, he was rehabilitated on May 1, 1945 and appointed head of department at the Federal Ministry of the Interior. He became involved in the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich. In 1950 he marries the Viennese dentist Karoline Seitz.

Oskar Freiherr Berger von Waldenegg is a member of the Austrian Parliament at the request of his friend, the Federal Chancellor and Foreign Minister Leopold Figl, played a key role in transferring murdered French prisoners from the Mauthausen concentration camp to France in 1954. He retired in the same year.