DDr. Sylvester (Karl) Birngruber OCist

The son of a railroad worker, Karl Birngruber attended the Stiftsgymnasium Wilhering grammar school and on 20 December 1930, as a sixth-grader, joined the local secondary school fraternity Hilaria Wilhering [later Hilaria Enns]. Even as a pupil, he was involved in patriotic, anti-Nazi topics and gave a lecture on 'National Socialism and Austria' at the Hilaria secondary school fraternity in February 1934. After graduating from high school, he entered the Cistercian monastery in Wilhering in 1934 and was given the religious name Sylvester. He studied theology in St. Florian and Linz; he made his solemn profession in 1938, was ordained a priest in 1939 and then worked as a chaplain in Alkoven.

Sylvester Birngruber was mentored by his confrere Gebhard Rath in 1939 for the Großösterreichische Freiheitsbewegung around the Viennese lawyer Jakob Kastelic. In total, the Wilhering cell of the Great Austrian Freedom Movement consisted of six fathers ( Gebhard Rath, Sylvester Birngruber, Theoderich Hofstätter, Amadeus Reisinger, Eduard Haiberger, Stefan Plohberger). With the exception of Stefan Plohberger, all Wilhering resistance fighters were members of the middle school fraternity Hilaria.

After Austria's liberation, Sylvester Birngruber studied theology, German and Latin at the University of Vienna and obtained two doctorates; from 1949, he taught these subjects at Wilhering Abbey Grammar School. From 1953 to 1965, he was parish priest of Wilhering and prior of the monastery, after which he left Wilhering for Linz, where he was spiritual director of the Sisters of Mary and professor of religious education at the Pedagogical Academy. Sylvester Birngruber died in Linz on March 4, 2006 at the age of 92.