Univ.-Prof. DDr. Herbert Braunsteiner

Herbert Braunsteiner was a member of the Austrian Young People until 1938.

After the Anschluss, he continued his schooling with relatives in France in the 1938/39 school year. When France was attacked, he joined a French company for foreigners, but was interned after the defeat of France and handed over to the Germans, who imprisoned him in the Schirmeck concentration camp in Alsace.

In September 1940, he managed to escape with two Poles while working outside. However, he was apprehended by the police and given a conditional sentence for illegal border crossing.

Back in Vienna, he completed his A-levels as an external student in 1941. He was declared unworthy of military service and barred from studying at university. Through Johann Eidlitz (1920-2000), he came into contact with the resistance group "Österreichischer Kampfbund" - a successor organization to the "Anti-Fascist Austrian Freedom Movement". The Kampfbund is credited with leaflet campaigns and acts of sabotage in armaments factories. He subsequently came into contact with his former religion teacher Dr. Anton M. Pichler and Dr. Felix Hurdes.

From April 1944, Herbert Braunsteiner worked in the "Provisional Austrian National Committee" (POEN), a group of people within the Viennese resistance group "05".

After the war, he was involved in building up the ÖVP as Felix Hurdes' personal secretary. On May 19, 1945, he swam across the Enns near Großraming to report on the founding of the ÖVP in the American zone. On June 4, 1945, the university in Vienna reopened and he immediately began studying medicine. In 1945, he becomes a member of the CV fraternity Nibelungia Wien. In 1948, he joined the ÖVP Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich.