Obersanitätsrat Dr. Walter Ruff

Walter Ruff was born in Vienna into a lower middle-class family. After graduating from high school, he enrolled in medicine at the University of Vienna in 1932 and joined the Amelungia student fraternity in the same year. He makes no secret of his Christian and emphatically Austrian views. His fellow students at the University of Vienna included Friedrich Pakesch and Norbert Klech, both members of the Franco-Bavaria student fraternity, René Grundmann and Friedrich Muschl, both members of the Rudolfina student fraternity. They were also opponents of National Socialism.

When the five medical students attended a medical lecture at the University of Vienna on Monday, November 28, 1938, word had already spread of their decidedly anti-regime behavior. They were observed by the later SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Marounek, the later SS-Hauptsturmführer Wolfgang Rabe, the SA-Rottenführer Josef Lack and the SS men Ignaz Artner, Lothar Böhm, Ernst Zartl and Friedrich Völkl.

Viktor Marounek in a memorial protocol:

"I was informed by various party comrades that in the lecture by Prof. Schürer, the CVers caused a public nuisance with their obstinate behaviour. Since it has been customary since the upheaval for the audience to stand up at the beginning of the lecture and return the professor's German salute, the former leading C.C. members believed they had to express their hatred of National Socialism by not making this salute, not standing up and expressing their disapproval of such new introductions with hand gestures. [

In fact, the university students Muschl, Pakesch, Ruff and Rene Grundmann, who behaved in the manner described, were sitting on the last bench. [After Prof. Schürer had finished his lecture with the German salute, the CVer Norbert Klech did the rest by putting on his hat during the salute and turning his back on the professor.

After the lecture, the five fellow students were confronted by the mob, beaten up and thrown down the stairs. After their names were revealed, they were suspended from the university and disciplinary proceedings were initiated. They were banned from entering the University of Vienna, which is why they were no longer able to sit any examinations that semester.

In the course of the disciplinary proceedings, they were found guilty on February 23, 1939 of "failing to give the German salute properly after Prof. Schürer [...] had finished his lecture. They were punished with an admonition and warning from the dean and were not given credit for the semester.

At the beginning of the war, Walter Ruff was immediately drafted into the Wehrmacht for deployment on the front. In 1942, after a leave of absence from his studies in Prague, he was finally able to complete his doctorate in medicine and was then sent back to the front for military service.

After the war, he became a medical officer in Gänserndorf and retired as such.