Dr. Thomas Weiss

Thomas Weiss attended the Marianum boys' seminary in Klagenfurt as an orphan. There, his classmate Josef Klaus (the later Federal Chancellor) took him to the Gothia (now Babenberg) Klagenfurt secondary school fraternity, where he joined in 1925. After passing his A-levels with good results, Thomas Weiss went to Graz to study law, supported by the Klagenfurt councillor Dr. Ignaz Tschurtschenthaler. In 1929, he became a member of the Traungau Graz student fraternity. In 1935 he graduated as Doctor iuris. In 1936, the young lawyer joined the City of Klagenfurt, where he worked as police director until the Anschluss in 1938.

On the night of March 11/12, 1938, Thomas Weiss was arrested and then dismissed as politically unreliable. He found a job in the private sector, but was arrested again in 1941 and taken to a detention camp. From there, he was sent to a penal company and was taken prisoner of war in Russia near Odessa, from where he returned on December 24, 1947.