Dr. Karl Gusenleitner

After elementary school in Ottensheim, Karl Gusenleitner first attended the grammar school at the Cistercian monastery in Wilhering and then transferred to the Imperial and Royal State Grammar School in Linz, where he graduated in 1912. He then studied medicine in Graz and became a member of the student fraternity Carolina Graz in 1912. After voluntary pre-military training, he took part in the First World War as a private in 1914 and returned from Russia as a medical lieutenant in 1918. He then continued his studies and was awarded a doctorate in medicine in 1919. Between 1919 and 1923, he worked as a junior doctor at the Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross in Linz and at the women's clinic there. He later worked at the women's clinic in Wels, where he became primary physician.

After the Anschluss, he was forced to retire in June 1938 for political reasons. During the Second World War, he worked as a staff physician and surgeon at the Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross in Wels, which served as reserve hospital A for the German Wehrmacht, where he saved the lives of countless wounded. In the last days of the war, he managed the disempowerment of the local Nazi authorities in Wels, organized the surrender of the town to the Americans without a fight and was appointed mayor by the military government on 4 May 1945. At this time, typhus and typhus were rampant in Wels. True to his motto "Salus aegroti suprema lex medici", he primarily cared for these patients.