DI Nikolaus Eichlehner

Nikolaus Eichlehner grew up in Gmunden and attended the secondary school there, where he joined the Catholic secondary school fraternity Gamundia Gmunden. After graduating from the Realgymnasium in Gmunden in 1923, he began studying electrical engineering at the Technical University in Vienna (Dipl.-Ing. 1931), where he joined the student fraternity Austria Wien. After completing his studies, he embarked on a career as a teacher at vocational colleges and worked at the Federal Teaching and Research Institute for the Chemical Industry in Vienna-Hernals.

After the Anschluss in March 1938, Nikolaus Eichlehner was dismissed for political reasons. He found a job in a company in Berlin, where he worked on the conversion of gas lighting in railroad trains to electric lighting and on electrotechnical equipment in airplanes. Towards the end of the war, he was drafted into the German Wehrmacht and was taken prisoner of war by the Soviets. However, he was soon released and returned to Vienna after a long march on foot.

In the fall of 1945, Eichlehner was rehabilitated as a secondary school teacher and was soon appointed director of the Höhere technische Bundeslehranstalt in Wiener Neustadt. At the beginning of the 1950s, he was appointed to the Ministry of Education in the Vocational Schools Section and headed the Department for Secondary and Higher Technical Schools as a Ministerial Councillor.