ABSTRACT
Kaltenbrunner, Ernst (1903–46) A fanatical Austrian Nazi and leading police official, who rose to become Chief of the Reich Main Security Office, Ernst Kaltenbrunner was born on 4 October 1903 in the valley of the Inn, near Braunau, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. Descended from a family of country artisans (his father and grandfather were, however, lawyers), Kaltenbrunner was educated in Linz, where Adolf Eichmann (q.v.) was one of his boyhood friends, and subsequently studied law at Graz University. He took his doctorate in law in 1926, setting up his practice as a lawyer in Linz. Active in one of the first groups of Austrian National Socialist students and for a time a militant in the Independent Movement for a Free Austria, Kaltenbrunner eventually joined the Nazi Party in 1932. A year later he became a member of one of the more or less camouflaged SS organizations in Austria and a spokesman for the Party in Upper Austria, providing legal advice to members and sympathizers.
