Hofrat Dr. Ludwig Sölder

Ludwig Sölder attended the Franciscan grammar school in Hall/Tyrol and became a member of the Sternkorana Hall secondary school fraternity in 1937. In 1943, as a lieutenant in the German Wehrmacht, he was assigned to an infantry division in the Croatian theater of operations in what was then Yugoslavia.

The unit was based in Crkvenica, a coastal town on the northern Adriatic. He was ordered to surround a house at night where two Jewish women (mother and daughter) were living, who were accused of being in contact with the partisans and of harboring them in their house. Looking back, Ludwig Sölder recalls:

"When I saw mother and daughter in their helpless despair, my inner rejection of a mission against civilians who were being persecuted primarily because of their Jewish descent grew stronger as a front-line fighter."

He ordered the soldiers back and gave the daughter the order to appear at his house the next morning for questioning.

During the interrogation, he got the impression that the two women had been wrongly accused. He then issues Zlata Schulteiss and her mother with a "clearance certificate" accidentally stamped with the company's stamp, even though he is aware of the danger to his own life.

"I must confess that the life-threatening consequences of this action kept me in suspense until the end of the war."

Both women thus survived the war without danger.

Ludwig Sölder returns home from the war in 1945, severely wounded, and enrols at the University of Innsbruck. Immediately after the end of the war, on September 8, 1945, he was accepted into the student fraternity Leopoldina Innsbruck. After completing his studies, he joined the Tyrolean state service and became head of department in the state government.