Obermedizinalrat Dr. René Grundmann

Renatus Friedrich Heinrich Grundmann, known as René, was born in Linz, the son of Heinrich Grundmann, a senior civil engineer, and Elisabeth Grundmann, née Hirst Edle von Neckarsthal. After elementary school, he transferred to the Bundesgymnasium in Linz in 1923. In 1929, he joined the secondary school fraternity Nibelungia 1901-Linz. He enrolled in medicine at the University of Vienna in 1932, the year he graduated from high school, and joined the Rudolfina student fraternity at the end of the year.

As a Catholic student, he was strictly opposed to National Socialism and demonstrated this publicly. When the five medical students René Grundmann and Friedrich Muschl, both members of the Rudolfina student fraternity, Norbert Klech and Friedrich Pakesch, both members of the Franco-Bavaria student fraternity, and Walter Ruff, a member of the Amelungia student fraternity, attended a medical lecture at the University of Vienna on Monday, November 28, 1938, word had already spread about their decidedly anti-regime behaviour. They were already being observed by the later SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Marounek, the later SS-Hauptsturmführer Wolfgang Rabe, the SA-Rottenführer Josef Lack and the SS men Ignaz Artner, Lothar Böhm, Ernst Zartl and Friedrich Völkl.

Viktor Marounek in a memorial protocol:

I was informed by various party comrades that in Prof. Schürer's lecture, the CVers were causing a public nuisance with their obstinate behaviour. Since it has been customary since the upheaval for the audience to stand up at the beginning of the lecture and return the professor's German salute, the former leading C.C. members believed they had to express their hatred of National Socialism by not making this salute, not standing up and expressing their disapproval of such new introductions with hand gestures.[

In fact, the university students Muschl, Pakesch, Ruff and Rene Grundmann, who behaved in the manner described, were sitting on the last bench. [...] After Prof. Schürer had finished his lecture with the German salute, the CVer Norbert Klech did the rest by putting on his hat during the salute and turning his back on the professor.

After the lecture, the five fellow students were confronted by the mob, beaten up and thrown down the stairs. After their names were recorded, they were suspended from the university and disciplinary proceedings were initiated. They were banned from entering the University of Vienna, which meant that they could no longer sit any examinations that semester.

On February 23, 1939, as part of the disciplinary proceedings, they were found guilty of "failing to give the German salute properly after Prof. Schürer [...] had finished his lecture. They were punished with an admonition and warning from the dean and were not given credit for the semester.

Despite all adversity, René Grundmann completed his doctorate in the spring of 1940. Due to his documented dissident stance, he was initially unable to find employment with a health insurance company and worked for various country doctors. It was not until later in the war that he found employment at the hospital in Linz. In May 1943, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a surgeon in the field hospital, married the actress Erika Kosman and was only briefly taken prisoner of war by the Russians until August 1945.

After the war, René Grundmann initially worked as a doctor in Linz until he was entrusted with setting up the medical service of the regional employment office in Lower Austria in 1947 and remained its medical director until his retirement in 1980. In 1967 he became a medical councillor and in 1975 a senior medical councillor. He died in Vienna in 1998.