Josef Leb

After elementary school, Josef Leb attended the Jesuit boarding school on the Freinberg near Linz until the seventh grade. After graduating from Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium in Vienna, he founded the first middle school congregation together with the "Viennese Apostle of Men" Fr. Heinrich Abel SJ [1843-1926] and was also its prefect. In 1893, he began studying German and was accepted as a member of Austria in Vienna in 1893. However, he then switched to the Faculty of Law, where he passed the legal history examination in 1901 and received his degree in 1903. After his year of volunteering in 1895/96 and his appointment as a lieutenant in the reserve, he abandoned his officer's career in 1896. In 1902, he became Obersthofmeister and served in the First World War as an active officer and imperial official for court travel.

From 1918, he took over the management of the Tyrolia publishing house in Innsbruck and Vienna, and was also involved in setting up and expanding the Catholic library organization "Volkslesehalle", which had 39 libraries and more than 70,000 volumes.000 volumes, which were confiscated by the National Socialists after the Anschluss.

On March 16, 1938, he was arrested by the SA at the central office of the Volkslesehalle and was only released on March 28, 1938, following the intervention of Cardinal Innitzer. He then entered church service. After the death of his wife, Josef Leb studied theology and was ordained a priest in Vienna on July 30, 1944. He then worked as a chaplain in St. Rochus in 1944, in St. Augustin in 1945 and as a religion teacher in Vienna. He died shortly after the end of the war.