Dr. Karl Schmidt

Karl Schmidt studied medicine in Vienna after graduating from high school and was accepted into the Babenberg Vienna student fraternity in 1911. He was then called up for military service and was only able to complete his studies after the war, graduating in 1921. He then worked as a general practitioner. In 1932, he was appointed director of the Wilhelminenspital.

After the Anschluss, he had to endure a series of house searches and interrogations by the Gestapo and was imprisoned from March 13, 1938 to May 1, 1938. In March 1939, he was dismissed through forced retirement and his house was expropriated. Drafted into the Wehrmacht, he was then put in charge of the Xlg reserve hospital in Vienna-Laxenburg due to his decorations in the First World War. From 1941, he was a member of a resistance group whose aim was to keep members of the Wehrmacht away from the front for as long as possible.