Dr. Karl Kummer

According to the Matura at the Humanist Gymnasium in Vienna-Hietzing in 1923, Karl Kummer first studies two semesters of chemistry at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Vienna and then changes to the study of law and state sciences in Vienna. In 1923 he joined the student association Aargau. His particular interest here is social policy and social science according to the principles of Catholic social teaching. After his doctorate in the Dr. iur., he completed four years of legal practice and will then be employed for a short time in the Landesinvalidenamt until he becomes the head of the legal department of the Vienna Chamber of Labour and later head of the Vienna Chamber of Labour. Impressed by the work of Carl Sonnenschein (1876–1929), Carl Sonnenschein, a large-scale city apostle, has already organized relief activities for needy students and workers during his period of study, in order to promote the approach of the young and working youth. He takes care of the homeless and the legal advice at the Gesellenverein, among others, he also works in the academic aid.

In the night of March 11th, 1938, Karl Kummer is arrested and held in police custody for three weeks. He can then continue to work there until the dissolution of the working chamber on 30.6.1938. For “political reasons” he then receives only short-term work opportunities, such as the state of affairs as a specialist and then the AEG Union. In November 1942, when he is recruiting a staff member at Wertheimer & Co, the NSDAP Office asks the management for a political assessment. Here, Karl Kummer is certified that he was sympathetic to the “NS movement”, of “immigrant character” and that “there is nothing detrimental about his current political behavior.” At the time, however, it is not known that Karl Kummer joined the resistance group around Lois Weinberger in 1942 and is connected to the group of Heinrich Maier, Franz Josef Messner and Walter Caldonazzi.

These different “political” for Karl Kummer at that time Assessments then enable him to work at Wertheimer & Co until the end of the war. He himself gives after the war in the review of evtl. Participation according to Section 4 of the 1947 Prohibition Act states that “no application for admission to the NSDAP or one of its divisions has been filed.” On the occasion of the request for the issue of a sacrificial ID due to the imprisoned detention, the Vienna Magistrate and the department 2 of the BMI 1951 may be re-examined. By decision of 24.9.1952, the Authority notes that it believes Karl Kummer, because it has been designated as a non-member of the NSDAP in all its assessments and that an alleged party presence cannot be demonstrated at all. Even if he is led in the “Gauakten” as a “Parteian candidate since 1938”, but not as a party member, the latest study of ÖVP members therefore also comes to the following conclusion:

Thus, Dr. Karl Kummer counts as a circle of those persons whose biography has been studied in greater detail, in which no NSDAP membership is present within the meaning of the criteria catalogue.

After the war, Karl Kummer with Lois Weinberger is involved in the founding of the Austrian Workers' and Employees' Association [ÖAAB] and becomes its first Secretary General. On 29.6.1953, he founded the “Social and Economic Policy Association” and the “Institute for Social Policy and Social Reform” together with August M. Knüll. Both facilities are planned according to § 2 of the Statutes “preparing a reform of society in the sense of the principles of Catholic Social Doctrine” and helping to carry out corresponding social reformer tasks. From 1956 to his death in 1967, Karl Kummer is also a member of the National Council. He died completely unexpectedly on 15.8.1967 at a United Nations Seminar in Warsaw.