Dr. Albert Rheinberger

Albert Rheinberger studied medicine in Prague and Vienna after graduating from the state grammar school in Feldkirch in 1913. In 1913 he was accepted into the Saxo-Bavaria student fraternity. From May 1915 to 1918, he completed his military service (ultimately as a lieutenant).

After obtaining his doctorate in medicine in 1921, he initially worked as a general practitioner before becoming chief physician at the Aspangbahn and chief physician at the Vienna Directorate of the Austrian Federal Railways in 1932. Immediately after the Anschluss, he was dismissed from his post on March 13, 1938. His house is searched. He was taken into protective custody from March 23 to June 30, 1938. At the beginning of the war, he is drafted into the Vienna Medical Department as a medical officer. As a troop and site doctor in Horn (from spring 1940) and as a medical assessor in the nerve department of the Reserve Hospital I a (formerly Rainerspital) in Vienna, he had to assess the fitness for service of members of the Wehrmacht. In this way, he saved many from being sent back to the front. Albert Rheinberger thus became part of the military and medical resistance in Vienna. He himself says of this nerve-wracking activity in the resistance movement: "At the beginning of every week, he wondered whether he would live to see the end of it." He also maintained contact with the Karl Gruber group, which had set up a secret radio station in the Hungarian Guard.