Dr. Heinz Pruckner

Heinz Pruckner was born the son of a gendarmerie officer, attended five years of elementary school in Korneuburg and then the first two years of secondary school in Korneuburg and Vienna-Floridsdorf. In 1924, he transferred to the Stiftsgymnasium in Seitenstetten (Lower Austria), where he joined the Udonia Seitenstetten secondary school fraternity. After graduating from high school in 1930, he began studying at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Vienna (abs. iur. 1935, Dr. iur. 1936), where he joined the Norica student fraternity in the same year. As his parents had died early, he had to finance his studies as a working student.

In the course of the so-called separation of the ÖCV from the CV in the summer of 1933, the Norica student fraternity became a suburb of the newly founded Third ÖCV, and Heinz Pruckner was elected 1st suburb secretary. Alongside the suburb president Alfred Benn, he is one of the co-signatories of the so-called "Abschaltungsbrief" (letter of secession) of July 11, 1933. The newly founded ÖCV - which had split off from the CV, which had been brought into line - saw itself as a fighting movement against National Socialism

After his studies and a short period of court practice at the Regional Court for Criminal Matters in Vienna, Heinz Pruckner joined the Lower Austrian provincial government in 1935. After a brief assignment at the district administration in Hietzing-Umgebung, he worked in the provincial government in Vienna from spring 1936, most recently in the legal office.

After the Anschluss in March 1938, he was initially suspended from service and transferred to permanent retirement (dismissed) on March 31, 1939 without entitlement to the rain shower. On March 1, 1939, he was drafted into the German Air Force and deployed to the theaters of war in France, Italy, Russia, Greece and Yugoslavia. He spent the last days of the war with his unit in the Tulln area, which the Red Army reached on April 6, 1945. In the course of this, he was wounded, could be transported to a military hospital in Kitzbühel and was taken prisoner of war by the US.