DI Dr. Anton Pabst CSsR

Anton Pabst was born in Windern near Desselbrunn in Upper Austria as one of seven children of Anton and Klara Pabst. His parents run a farm. After elementary school in Desselbrunn, he attended grammar school in Budweis. On August 16, 1919, he joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists) in Eggenburg and began his theological studies at the University of Graz. He received his doctorate there in 1927 and was ordained a priest on September 8, 1927. He taught canon law at the monastery college in Mautern and also studied agricultural sciences, in which he graduated in 1934.

In Mautern, he witnessed the fall of Austria on March 12, 1938 as a result of the occupation by Hitler's Germany. After the SA attack on the monastery college in Mautern on July 23, 1938, he feared being arrested by the Gestapo due to his opposition to National Socialism and fled via Switzerland and Alsace to a Redemptorist monastery in Soucirac in the south of France. He taught law there and lived to see the end of the war.