Dr. Leopold (Josef) Grill OCist

Leopold Grill was born Josef Grill in Gaaden in Lower Austria in 1903. He attended grammar school in Mödling and entered the Cistercian monastery of Heiligenkreuz as a novice in 1922. In August 1923, he made his simple profession there and took the monastic name Leopold. His theological studies took him to Graz and Innsbruck. He made his solemn profession at Rein Abbey in December 1926. He was ordained a priest in 1927 and then became a pastor in the monastery parishes of Gratwein and Deutschfeistritz. In 1930 he was a founding member of the student fraternity Norica Graz. From 1933 to 1937, he was parish vicar in Sankt Oswald near Plankenwarth.

Due to his staunch opposition to National Socialism, he fled from the National Socialists via Switzerland to France with the help of his abbot Dr. Ernst Kortschak after the German Wehrmacht invaded Austria in March 1938. After the outbreak of war, he was interned in the camp for German emigrants in Les Milles, where he worked as a camp chaplain and was able to escape from a prisoner transport in June 1941 and, with the support of the future Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, was able to find accommodation in the priests' student hostel in Lyon and complete a second degree in theology. He never took German citizenship and was also exclusively Austrian during the war.

On May 10, 1944, he received his doctorate in theology from the University of Lyon. He received his doctorate in Austria on June 5, 1963 from the Faculty of Theology at the University of Vienna.

After the war, he returned to Styria, worked on the restoration of Rein Abbey, which had been expropriated by the Nazis and devastated by the Russians, and rendered great services to the preservation and renewal of the library and archive.