Viktor Leitner

Born:	01-31-1917
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Expelled student

Viktor LEITNER, born on January 31^st, 1917 in Varazdin, Croatia-Slavonia/Austro-Hungarian Empire [later Yugoslavia, today: Croatia] (entitled residency ('heimatberechtigt') for Vienna/Austria, Citizenship: Austria), son of Philipp Leitner (carrier, 1874-1965), lived in Vienna's 19^th district, Wuerthgasse 14, was enrolled finally in the spring term 1938 at the Medical School in the 3^rd year of his studies. In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism he was forced to quit his studies for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna. He had to flee Vienna and was able to emigrate to Great Britain, where he first settled in Liverpool but was soon interned as an "enemy alien", shipped to Canada in July 1940 and returned to England in October 1941. He tried to continue his education despite numerous difficulties. In February 1945, he wrote to his mother in law from the Fazakerley Sanatorium in Liverpool, England, where he was being treated for tuberculosis, that he was fortunate to place an article in an important medical journal (British Medical Journal). Viktor Leitner died, barely 30 years old, in England in 1947. His brother, Hellmuth Philipp Leitner (1913-1953), had already completed his law studies at the University of Vienna in 1937 and also had to flee after the Anschluss and was able to emigrate to England and from there on to the USA in May 1939. Here became "Henry P." Leitner and joined the US Army in May 1943 and was deployed as an intelligence officer in England, Belgium and the Rhineland and was able to disarm in 1946. Both their father Philipp Leitner then emigrated from his soin Viktor Leitner in England to the USA and arrived on November 21, 1946 in New York/USA and gave as destination: "Son H.P. Leitner, 839 West End Ave. New York 25." Hellmuth Leitner could not gain a foothold as a lawyer in the very different American legal system and worked in the export-import trade. Henry P. Leitner died in 1953.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/entrollment forms ("Nationale") MED 1937-1938; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 428; www.ancestry.de; information from his niece Victoria Ena Leitner Haines, 02/2021.

Herbert Posch