Univ.-Prof. Dr. Anton Burghardt

Burghardt grew up in Vienna-Brigittenau and graduated from the commercial academy. He then began studying at the University of World Trade (Dkfm. 1935, Dr. rer. merc. 1937), where he joined the Nibelungia student fraternity.

During this time, Anton Burghardt became involved in the Catholic-German Students' Union of Austria (KDHÖ). The KDHÖ was a federation of student associations, with the ÖCV dominating. It emerged from the Catholic Academic Committees, which represented an electoral platform for the elections to the then student representations at the individual universities within the framework of the German Student Union (DSt). After the DSt was dissolved in 1933, the KDHÖ's role in university politics was extinguished and it began to be reorganized in line with the then emerging Catholic Action (KA).

In January 1938, a new board was elected under the chairmanship of Anton Burghardt of the KDHÖ. After completing his studies, he found a job in the coal and steel administration and initially remained unmolested in the days following the Anschluss. However, on April 24, 1938, despite protests from his superior, he was taken away by an SA man and had to wash away a Schuschnigg slogan painted with oil paint on a sidewalk for about an hour and a half with a brush and lye. This is the first evidence that a non-Jew was forced to take part in this notorious "rubbing party". It took two months for the skin on his hands, which had been damaged by the lye, to be repaired.

At the end of May 1938, Anton Burghardt was dismissed and drafted into the German Wehrmacht in 1941.

After the war, he became a teacher and co-founder of the Dr. Karl Kummer Institute. The purpose of the association and the institute was to prepare a "reform of society in line with the principles of Catholic social teaching".