DI Max Leitner

Max Leitner was born the son of a forester who died young. Thanks to his mother's willingness to make sacrifices, Max Leitner was able to graduate from grammar school in Ried im Innkreis in 1903 and then began studying forestry at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna (Dipl.-Ing. 1910), where he joined the Kürnberg student fraternity. While still a student, he worked as a forest engineer in South Bohemia.

After graduating, Leitner became forest inspector at the Cistercian monastery of Hohenfurth in South Bohemia (Vyšší Brod). At the beginning of the First World War, he was drafted into the k. u. k. He was mainly deployed on the Italian front. In 1918 he was taken prisoner of war in Italy, from which he only returned in the fall of 1919. He then joined the forestry service of the Premonstratensian monastery of Schlägl in the western Mühlviertel. There, he switches timber transportation from waterway to truck.

In 1929, Max Leitner takes over the management of the Starhemberg estates with the title of Director General. However, he only half-heartedly supported Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg's Heimwehr policy because he was primarily close to the Christian Socialists. With Starhemberg and partly already in Schlägl, Max Leitner gained an excellent reputation in professional circles through his commitment and was regarded as an outstanding economic expert. As a result, he was appointed to the Upper Austrian parliament in 1934 as a representative of agriculture and served as a member from November 1, 1934 to March 12, 1938. In 1936, he also became Vice President of the Chamber of Agriculture.

After the Anschluss in March 1938, investigations, interrogations, restrictions on freedom of movement, suspension of benefits and deprivation of housing followed. The mental breakdown was followed by a physical one, and Max Leitner committed suicide.