Ministerialrat Dr. Karl Lager

Karl Lager was born as the son of Karl Lager, an employee of the Insurance Company of the Austrian Federal Provinces. Lager attended the Schulbrüder elementary school in Vienna-Fünfhaus, then the lower school of the Piaristen-Gymnasium (Vienna-Josefstadt) and the upper school of the Gymnasium in Vienna-Hietzing (Fichtnergasse), where he passed his school-leaving examination in March 1939. In the period before 1938, he was involved in the Fatherland Front and the Austrian Young People's League.

Shortly after completing his A-levels, Karl Lager was arrested for high treason and violating the Treachery Act and was imprisoned for some time in the Gestapo prison in Vienna (Hotel Metropole) and then in the Krems district court until July 1939. As his school-leaving certificate was withdrawn in the course of this, he joined the financial service in September 1939. On October 1, 1939, he was accepted into the Norica student fraternity, which existed underground and illegally.

In March 1940, Karl Lager was drafted into the German Wehrmacht. After his basic training in Theresienstadt (Czech Terezin, then Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), he was transferred to East Prussia. From there, he took part in the Russian campaign as part of Army Group North (217th Infantry Division) and advanced with his unit to St. Petersburg (Leningrad). A few days after the end of the war, he was taken prisoner by the US in the Piave region, from where he was able to return to Vienna in September 1945 due to illness.