Of course, the Inn Valley was not first colonised with the Roman conquest. The inhabitants of the Alps, described as wild, predatory and barbaric, were labelled by Greek and Roman writers with the rather vague collective term "Raeter". These people probably did not refer to themselves in this way. Today, researchers use the term Raeter to refer to the inhabitants of Tyrol, the lower Engadin and Trentino, the area of the Fritzens-Sanzeno Culturenamed after their major archaeological sites. Two-storey houses with stone foundations grouped in clustered villages, similar language idioms, burnt offering sites such as the Goldbühel in Igls and pottery finds indicate a common cultural background and economic exchange between the ethnic groups and organisations between Vorarlberg, Lake Garda and Istria. According to finds, there was also a lively exchange with other ethnic groups such as the Celts in the west or the Etruscans in the south even before the Roman conquests. Etruscan characters were used for all kinds of records.

According to Roman interpretation, the Breons, a tribe within the Raetians, lived in the area of today's Innsbruck. This name persisted even after the fall of the Roman Empire until the Bavarian colonisation in the 9th century. Although there were no Breon Popular Frontthe quote from Life of Brian could also have been used in pre-Christian Innsbruck:

"Apart from medicine, sanitation, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, water treatment and public health insurance, what, I ask you, have the Romans ever done for us?"

A climatic phenomenon known as Roman climate optimum the area north of the Alps for the first time in history. Roman Empire interesting and accessible via the Alpine crossings. From a strategic point of view, the conquest was overdue anyway. The Roman troops in Gaul in the west and Illyria on the Adriatic in the east were to be connected, invasions by barbarian peoples into northern Italian settlements were to be prevented and routes for trade, travellers and the military were to be expanded and secured. The Inn Valley, an important corridor for troop movements, communication and trade on the outer edge of the Roman economic area, had to be brought under Roman control. The transport route between today's Seefeld Saddle and the Brenner Pass already existed before the Roman conquest, but was not a paved, modern road that met the demands of Roman requirements.

In the year 15 BC, the generals Tiberius and Drusus, both stepsons of Emperor Augustus, conquered the area that is now Innsbruck. Drusus marched from Verona to Trento and then along the Adige River over the Brenner Pass to the area that is now Innsbruck. There, the Roman troops fought against the local Breons. The Roman administration was rolled out under Augustus' successor Tiberius. The military was followed by the administration. Today's Tyrol was divided at the river Ziller. The area east of the Ziller became part of the province of Noricum, Innsbruck hingegen wurde ein Teil der Provinz Raetia et Vindelicia. It stretched from today's central Switzerland with the Gotthard massif in the west to the Alpine foothills north of Lake Constance, the Brenner in the south and the Ziller in the east. The Ziller has remained a border in the division of Tyrol in terms of church law to this day. The area east of the Ziller belongs to the diocese of Salzburg, while Tyrol west of the Ziller belongs to the diocese of Innsbruck.

It is unclear whether the Romans destroyed the settlements and places of worship between Zirl and Wattens during their campaign of conquest. The burnt offering site at Goldbühel in Igls was no longer used after the year 15. There are also no precise sources on the treatment of the conquered. The Roman troops most likely drew on the expertise of the local population to secure and construct the transport routes. Today we would probably say that important human resources were handled with caution after the takeover.  

The soon Via Raetia named road made the Via Claudia Augustawhich linked Italy and Bavaria via the Reschen Pass and Fern Pass, as the most important transport route across the Alps. In the 3rd century after the turn of the millennium, the Brenner route became the via publica developed. It was too steep in parts for poorly equipped trade trains to become the main route, but traffic increased noticeably and with it the importance of the Wipp and Inn valleys. Just over five metres wide, it ran from the Brenner Pass to the Ferrariwiese meadow above Wilten over the Isel mountain to today's Gasthaus Haymon. At intervals of 20 to 40 kilometres there were rest stations with accommodation, restaurants and stables. In Sterzing, on the Brenner Pass, in Matrei and Innsbruck, these Roman Mansiones Villages where Roman culture began to establish itself.

The military camp was accessible via this road network Castell Veldidena The Romans were integrated into an economic and intellectual area stretching from Great Britain to the Baltic and North Africa. The Romans brought many of their cultural achievements such as imperial coinage, glass and brick production, the Latin language, bathhouses, thermal baths, schools and wine across the Brenner Pass. Roman law and administration were also introduced. Military service in the Roman army enabled people to climb the social ladder. With an imperial decree in 212, the Breton subjects became full Roman citizens with all the associated rights and duties. After Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, the Tyrolean region was also proselytised. The episcopal administration was based in Brixen in South Tyrol and Trento.

There is hardly anything left of Roman Innsbruck in the cityscape. Exhibits can be admired in the Tyrolean State Museum Ferdinandeum. In various excavation projects, burial sites and remains such as walls, coins, bricks and everyday objects from the Roman period in Innsbruck were found around today's Wilten Abbey. The centre of the Leuthauses next to the monastery dates back to Roman times. One of the Roman milestones of the former main road over the Brenner Pass can be seen in Wiesengasse near the Tivoli Stadium.

In the 15th century, the first early form of industrialisation began to develop in Innsbruck. Bell and weapon founders such as the Löfflers built factories in Hötting, Mühlau and Dreiheiligen, which were among the leading factories of their time. Between the Sill gorge and Dreiheiligen, a number of mills and businesses utilised the energy provided by the Sill Canal. There was a munitions factory in what is now Adamgasse, which exploded in 1636, and a hammer mill was located in Jahnstraße. Work and money attracted a new class of people. Industry not only changed the rules of the social game with the influx of new workers and their families, it also had an impact on the appearance of Innsbruck. Unlike the farmers, the labourers were not the subjects of any master. Although entrepreneurs were not of noble blood, they often had more capital at their disposal than the aristocracy. The old hierarchies still existed, but were beginning to become at least somewhat fragile. The new citizens brought with them new fashions and dressed differently. Capital from outside came into the city. Houses and churches were built for the newly arrived subjects. The large workshops changed the smell and sound of the city. The smelting works were loud, the smoke from the furnaces polluted the air.

The second wave of industrialisation came late in Innsbruck compared to other European regions. The Small craftThe town's former craft businesses, which were organised in guilds, came under pressure from the achievements of modern goods production. In St. Nikolaus, Wilten, Mühlau and Pradl, modern factories were built along the Mühlbach stream and the Sill Canal. Many innovative company founders came from outside Innsbruck. Peter Walde, who moved to Innsbruck from Lusatia, founded his company in 1777 in what is now Innstrasse 23, producing products made from fat, such as tallow candles and soaps. Eight generations later, Walde is still one of the oldest family businesses in Austria. Today you can buy the result of centuries of tradition in soap and candle form in the listed main building with its Gothic vaults. Franz Josef Adam came from the Vinschgau Valley to found the city's largest brewery to date in a former aristocratic residence. In 1838, the spinning machine arrived via the Dornbirn company Herrburger & Rhomberg over the Arlberg to Pradl. H&R had acquired a plot of land on the Sillgründe. Thanks to the river's water power, the site was ideal for the heavy machinery used in the textile industry. In addition to the traditional sheep's wool, cotton was now also processed.

Just like 400 years earlier, the Second Industrial Revolution changed the city forever. Neighbourhoods such as Mühlau, Pradl and Wilten grew rapidly. The factories were often located in the centre of residential areas. Around 1900, over 20 businesses were still using the Sill Canal. The Haidmühle The power plant in Salurnerstraße existed from 1315 to 1907 and supplied a textile factory in Dreiheiligenstraße with energy from the Sill Canal. The noise and exhaust fumes from the engines were hell for the neighbours, as a newspaper article from 1912 shows:

„Entrüstung ruft bei den Bewohnern des nächst dem Hauptbahnhofe gelegenen Stadtteiles der seit einiger Zeit in der hibler´schen Feigenkaffeefabrik aufgestellte Explosionsmotor hervor. Der Lärm, welchen diese Maschine fast den ganzen Tag ununterbrochen verbreitet, stört die ganz Umgebung in der empfindlichsten Weise und muß die umliegenden Wohnungen entwerten. In den am Bahnhofplatze liegenden Hotels sind die früher so gesuchten und beliebten Gartenzimmer kaum mehr zu vermieten. Noch schlimmer als der ruhestörende Lärm aber ist der Qualm und Gestank der neuen Maschine…“

Aristocrats who rested too long on their birth earnings while the economic and social rules of the game changed had to sell their estates to the new moneyed aristocracy. Skilful individuals took advantage of their opportunities and invested family property and income from the 1848 land relief in industry and business. The growing demand for labour was met by former farmhands and farmers without land. While the new wealthy entrepreneurial class had villas built in Wilten, Pradl and Saggen and middle-class employees lived in apartment buildings in the same neighbourhoods, the workers were housed in workers' hostels and mass accommodation. Some worked in businesses such as the gas works, the quarry or in one of the factories, while others consumed the wealth. Shifts of 12 hours in cramped, noisy and sooty conditions demanded everything from the workers. Child labour was not banned until the 1840s. Women earned only a fraction of what men were paid. Workers often lived in tenements built by their employers and were at their mercy due to the lack of labour laws. There was no social security or unemployment insurance. Those who were unable to work had to rely on the welfare organisations of their home town. It should be noted that this everyday life of labourers, which we find terrifying, was no different from the working conditions in the villages, but developed from them. Child labour, inequality and precarious working conditions were also the norm in agriculture.

However, industrialisation did not only affect everyday material life. Innsbruck experienced the kind of gentrification that can be observed today in trendy urban neighbourhoods such as Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. The change from the rural life of the village to the city involved more than just a change of location. In one of his texts, the Innsbruck writer Josef Leitgeb tells us how people experienced the urbanisation of what was once a rural area:

„…viel fremdes, billig gekleidetes Volk, in wachsenden Wohnblocks zusammengedrängt, morgens, mittags und abends die Straßen füllend, wenn es zur Arbeit ging oder von ihr kam, aus Werkstätten, Läden, Fabriken, vom Bahndienst, die Gesichter oft blaß und vorzeitig alternd, in Haltung, Sprache und Kleidung nichts Persönliches mehr, sondern ein Allgemeines, massenhaft Wiederholtes und Wiederholbares: städtischer Arbeitsmensch. Bahnhof und Gaswerk erschienen als Kern dieser neuen, unsäglich fremden Landschaft.“

For many Innsbruck residents, the revolutionary year of 1848 and the new economic circumstances led to bourgeoisie. There were always stories of people who rose through the ranks with hard work, luck, talent and a little financial start-up aid. Well-known Innsbruck examples outside the hotel and catering industry that still exist today are the Tyrolean stained glass business, the Hörtnagl grocery store and the Walde soap factory. Successful entrepreneurs took over the former role of the aristocratic landlords. Together with the numerous academics, they formed a new class that also gained more and more political influence. Beda Weber wrote about this in 1851:

„Their social circles are without constraint, and there is a distinctly metropolitan flavour that is not so easy to find elsewhere in Tyrol."

The workers also became bourgeois. While the landlord in the countryside was still master of the private lives of his farmhands and maidservants and was able to determine their lifestyle up to and including sexuality via the release for marriage, the labourers were now at least somewhat freer individually. They were poorly paid, but at least they now received their own wages instead of board and lodging and were able to organise their private affairs for themselves without the landlord's guardianship.

Innsbruck is not a traditional working-class city. Nevertheless, Tyrol never saw the formation of a significant labour movement as in Vienna. Innsbruck has always been predominantly a commercial and university city. Although there were social democrats and a handful of communists, the number of workers was always too small to really make a difference. May Day marches are only attended by the majority of people for cheap schnitzel and free beer. There are hardly any other memorials to industrialisation and the achievements of the working class. In St.-Nikolaus-Gasse and in many tenement houses in Wilten and Pradl, a few houses have been preserved that give an impression of the everyday life of Innsbruck's working class.

Prejudice and racism towards immigrants were and are common in Innsbruck, as in all societies. Whether Syrian refugees since 2015 or Turkish guest workers in the 1970s and 80s, the foreign usually generates little well-disposed animosity in the average Tyrolean. Today, Italy may be Innsbruck's favourite travel destination and pizzerias part of everyday gastronomic life, but for a long time our southern neighbours were the most suspiciously eyed population group. What the Viennese Jew and Brick Bohemia were the Tyrolean's Wall's.

The aversion to Italians in Innsbruck can look back on a long tradition. Although Italy did not exist as an independent state, the political landscape was characterised by many small counties, city states and principalities between Lake Garda and Sicily. The individual regions also differed in terms of language and culture. Nevertheless, over time people began to see themselves as Italians. During the Middle Ages and the early modern period, they were mainly resident in Innsbruck as members of the civil service, courtiers, bankers or even wives of various sovereigns. The antipathy between Italians und Germans was mutual. Some were regarded as dishonourable, unreliable, snobbish, vain, morally corrupt and lazy, others as uncivilised, barbaric, uneducated and pigs.

With the wars between 1848 and 1866, hatred of all things Italian reached a new high in the Holy Land Tyrolalthough many Wallsche served in the k.u.k. army and most of the rural population among the Italian-speaking Tyroleans were loyal to the monarchy. The Italians under Garibaldi were regarded as godless rebels and republicans and were castigated from the church pulpits between Kufstein and Riva del Garda in both Italian and German.

The Tyrolean press landscape, which experienced an upswing after liberalisation in 1867, played a major role in the conflict. What today Social Media The newspapers of the time took over the role of the press, which contributed to social division. Conservatives, Catholics, Greater Germans, liberals and socialists each had their own press organs. Loyal readers of these hardly neutral papers lived in their opinion bubble. On the Italian side, the socialist Cesare Battisti (1875 - 1916), who was executed by the Austrian military during the war for high treason on the gallows, stood out. The journalist and politician, who had studied in Vienna and was therefore considered by many to be not just an enemy but a traitor, fuelled the conflict in the newspapers Il Popolo und L'Avvenire repeatedly fired with a sharp pen.

Associations also played a key role in the hardening of the fronts. Not only had the press law been reformed in 1867, but it was now also easier to found associations. This triggered a veritable boom. Sports clubs, gymnastics clubs, theatre groups, shooting clubs and the Innsbrucker Liedertafel often served as a kind of preliminary organisation that took a political stance and also agitated. The club members met in their own pubs and organised regular club evenings, often in public. The student fraternities were particularly politically active and extremist in their opinions. The young men came from the upper middle classes or the aristocracy and were used to buying and carrying weapons. A third of the students in Innsbruck belonged to a fraternity, of which just under half were of German nationalist orientation. Unlike today, it was not uncommon for them to appear in public in their full dress uniform, complete with sabre, beret and ribbon, often armed with a cane and revolver.

It is therefore not surprising that their habitat was a particular flashpoint. One of the biggest political points of contention in the autonomy debate and the desire to join the Kingdom of Italy was a separate Italian university. The loss of Padua meant that Tyroleans of Italian descent no longer had the opportunity to study in their native language at home. Although attending the university was actually only a matter for a small elite, irredentist, anti-Austrian Tyrolean members of parliament from Trentino were able to emotionally charge the issue again and again as a symbol of the desired autonomy and fuelled hatred of Habsburg. The debate as to whether a university in Trieste, the favoured location of the Italian-speaking representatives, Innsbruck, Trento or Rovereto should be targeted, went on for years. Wilhelm Greil was admonished for his incorrect behaviour towards the Italian population by the Imperial-Royal Governor. All language groups within the monarchy were to be treated equally by law from 1867 onwards.

A look at the statistics shows just how great the fears of German nationalists that Italian students would overrun the country were. Even then, facts were often replaced in the discourse by gut feelings and racially motivated populism. After the incorporation of Pradl and Wilten in 1904, Innsbruck had just over 50,000 inhabitants. The proportion of students was just over 1000 and less than 2%. Of the approximately 3000 people of Italian descent, most of them Welschtiroler from Trentino, only just over 100 were enrolled at the university. The majority of the Wallschen made up labourers, innkeepers, traders and soldiers. Many had lived in Innsbruck for a long time. Wilten in particular was a favourite place to settle. The majority were part of a different everyday culture, but as subjects of the monarchy they spoke excellent German; only a small proportion came from Dalmatia or Trieste and were actually foreign speakers. In keeping with the spirit of the times, they also founded sports clubs such as the Club Ciclistico oder die Unione Ginnasticasocialist-oriented workers' and consumer organisations, music clubs and student fraternities. Like their German-speaking fellow citizens, the Italians also frequented their traditional pubs such as the Steneck Inn in Leopoldstrasse.

Although the students only made up a small proportion of them, they and the demand for an institute with Italian as the language of examination and teaching received above-average attention. Conservative and German nationalist politicians, students and the media saw an Italian university as a threat to Tyrolean Germanness. In addition to the ethnic and racist resentment towards the southern neighbours, Catholics in particular were also afraid of characters such as Cesare Battisti, who, as a socialist, embodied evil incarnate. Mayor Wilhelm Greil capitalised on the general hostility towards Italian-speaking residents and students in a similar populist manner as his Viennese counterpart Karl Lueger did in Vienna with his anti-Semitic propaganda.

After some back and forth, it was decided in September 1904 to establish a provisional law faculty in Innsbruck. This was intended to separate the students without marginalising one of the groups. From the outset, however, the project was not under a favourable star. Nobody wanted to rent the necessary premises to the university. Finally, the enterprising master builder Anton Fritz made a flat available in one of his tenement houses at Liebeneggstraße 8. At the inaugural lecture and the festive evening event in the White Cross Inn On 3 November, celebrities such as Battisti and the future Italian Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi were in attendance. The later the evening, the more exuberant the atmosphere. When shouts of invective such as "Porchi tedeschi“ and „Abbasso Austria" (Note: German pigs and down with Austria), the situation escalated. A mob of German-speaking students armed with sticks, knives and revolvers laid siege to the White cross, in which the Italians, who were also largely armed, entrenched themselves. A troop of Kaiserjäger successfully broke up the first riot. In the process, the painter August Pezzey (1875 - 1904) was accidentally fatally wounded by an overly nervous soldier with a bayonet thrust.

The Innsbrucker Nachrichten appeared after the night-time activities on 4 November under the headline: "German blood has flowed!". The editor present reported 100 to 200 revolver shots fired by the Italians at the "Crowd of German students" who had gathered in front of the White Cross Inn. The nine wounded were listed by name, followed by an astonishingly detailed account of what had happened, including Pezzey's wound.

The news of the young man's death unleashed a storm of acts of revenge and violence. While the detained Italians in the completely overcrowded prison sang the martial anthem Inno di Garibaldi the city saw serious riots against Italian restaurants and businesses. The premises of the White Cross Inn were completely vandalised except for a portrait of Emperor Franz Josef. Rioters threw stones at the residence of the governor, Palais Trapp, as his wife had Italian roots. The building in Liebeneggstraße, which Anton Fritz had made available to the university, was destroyed, as was the architect's private residence.

August Pezzey, who died in the turmoil and came from a Ladin family, was declared a "German hero" in a national frenzy by politicians and the press. He was given a grave of honour at Innsbruck's West Cemetery. At his funeral, attended by thousands of mourners, Mayor Greil read out a pathetic speech:

"...A gloriously beautiful death was granted to you on the field of honour for the German people... In the fight against impudent acts of violence you breathed your last as a martyr for the German cause..."

Reports from the Fatti di Innsbruck made it into the international press and played a decisive role in the resignation of Austrian Prime Minister Ernest von Koerber. Depending on the medium, the Italians were portrayed as dishonourable bandits or courageous national heroes, the Austrians as pan-Germanist barbarians or bulwarks against the Wallsche seen. On 17 November, just two weeks after the ceremonial opening, the Italian faculty in Innsbruck was dissolved again. The language group was denied its own university within Austria-Hungary until the end of the monarchy in 1918. The long tradition of viewing Italians as dishonourable and lazy was further fuelled by Italy's entry into the war on the side of the Entente. To this day, many Tyroleans keep the negative prejudices against their southern neighbours alive.

Although many of the buildings erected from the 1950s onwards are not very attractive architecturally, they do house interesting works of art. From 1949 there was a project in Austria Art on the building. In the case of buildings realised by the state, 2% of the total expenditure was to flow into artistic design. The implementation of the building law and thus also the administration of the budgets was then, as now, the responsibility of the federal states. Artists were to be financially supported through these public commissions. The idea first emerged in 1919 during the Weimar Republic and was continued by the National Socialists from 1934.

Austria took up art in architecture after the war to design public spaces as part of the reconstruction programme. The public sector, which replaced the aristocracy and bourgeoisie as the property developers of past centuries, was under massive financial pressure. Despite this, the housing projects, which were primarily focussed on function, were not intended to be completely unadorned.

The Tyrolean artists entrusted with the design of the artworks were selected in competitions. The best known of these was Max Weiler, perhaps the most prominent artist in Tyrol in the post-war period, who was responsible for the frescoes in the Theresienkirche on the Hungerburg in Innsbruck, among other things. Other prominent names include Helmut Rehm (1911 - 1991), Walter Honeder (1906 - 2006), Fritz Berger (1916 - 2002) and Emmerich Kerle (1916 - 2010).

The biographies of the artists were not only compiled by the Gewerbeschule Innsbruck (Note: today's HTL Trenkwalderstraße) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna as a common denominator, but also characterised by the shared experience of National Socialism. Fritz Berger had lost his right arm and one eye during the war and had to learn to work with his left hand. Emmerich Kerle was taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna by Josef Müllner, among others, an artist who had made his mark on art history with busts of Adolf Hitler, Siegfried from the Nibelungen saga and the Karl Lueger monument in Vienna, which remains controversial to this day. Kerle served in Finland as a war painter.

Like a large part of the Tyrolean population, politicians, civil servants and artists also wanted peace and quiet after the hard and painful years of war, to let the events of the last few decades sink in.

The works created as part of Kunst am Bau reflect this attitude towards a new moral image. It was the first time that abstract, shapeless art found its way into Innsbruck's public space, albeit only in an uncritical context. Fairy tales, legends and religious symbols were popular motifs that were immortalised on sgraffiti, mosaics, murals and statues. One could speak of a kind of second wave of Biedermaier art, which symbolised the petty bourgeois lifestyle of people after the war.

Art was also intended to create a new awareness and image of what was considered typically Austrian. In 1955, one in two Austrians still considered themselves to be German. The various motifs depict leisure activities, clothing styles and ideas of the social order and social norms of the post-war period. Women were often depicted in traditional costumes and dirndls, men in lederhosen. The conservative ideal of gender roles was incorporated into the art. Hard-working fathers, well-behaved wives who looked after the home and hearth and children who were eager to learn at school were the ideal image until well into the 1970s. A life straight out of a film with Peter Alexander.

The reality, however, was different:

"The emergency situation jeopardises the comfort of the home. It eats away at the roots of joie de vivre. No one suffers more than the woman whose happiness is to see a contented, cosy family circle around her. What a strain on mental strength is required by the daily gruelling struggle for a little shopping, the hardship of queuing, the disappointment of rejections and refusals and the look of discouragement on the faces of loved ones tormented by deprivation."

What is in the Tiroler Tageszeitung was only part of everyday reality. In addition to material hardship, society was characterised by the collective trauma of war. The adults of the 1950s were products of the education of the interwar period and National Socialism. Men who had fought at the front could only talk about their horrific experiences in certain circles as war losers, while women usually had no forum at all to process their fears and worries. Domestic violence and alcoholism were widespread. Teachers, police officers, politicians and civil servants often came from National Socialist supporters, who did not simply disappear with the end of the war, but were merely hushed up in public.

The problem with this strategy of suppression was that no one took responsibility for what had happened, even if there was great enthusiasm and support for National Socialism, especially at the beginning. There was hardly a family that did not have at least one member with a less than glorious history between 1933 and 1945. Shame about what had happened since 1938 and in Austria's politics over the years was mixed with the fear of being treated as a war culprit by the occupying powers - the USA, Great Britain, France and the USSR - in a similar way to 1918. A climate arose in which no one, neither those involved nor the following generation, spoke about what had happened. For a long time, this attitude prevented people from coming to terms with what had happened since 1933.

The myth of Austria as the first victim of National Socialism, which only began to slowly crumble with the Waldheim affair in the 1980s, was born. Police officers, teachers, judges - they were all kept in their jobs despite their political views. Society needed them to keep going.

An example of the generously spread cloak of oblivion with a strong connection to Innsbruck is the life of the doctor Burghard Breitner (1884-1956). Breitner grew up in a well-to-do middle-class household. The Villa Breitner at Mattsee was home to a museum about the German nationalist poet Josef Viktor Scheffel, who was honoured by his father.

After leaving secondary school, Breitner decided against a career in literature in favour of studying medicine. He then decided to do his military service and began his career as a doctor. In 1912/13 he served as a military doctor in the Balkan War. In 1914, he was sent to the Eastern Front, where he was taken prisoner of war by the Russians. As a doctor, he sacrificially cared for his comrades in the prison camp. It was not until 1920 that he was recognised as a hero and "Angel of Siberia" return to Austria from the prison camp.

He began his career at the University of Innsbruck in 1932. In 1938, Breitner was faced with the problem that, due to his paternal grandmother's Jewish background, he had to take the "Great Aryan proof" could not provide. However, thanks to his good relationship with the Rector of Innsbruck University and important National Socialists, he was ultimately able to continue working at the university hospital. During the Nazi regime, Breitner was responsible for forced sterilisations and "Voluntary emasculation", even though he probably did not carry out any of the operations personally.

After the war, the "Angel of Siberia" managed to wriggle through the denazification process with some difficulty. In 1951, he was nominated as a candidate for the federal presidential election as a member of the VDU, a political organisation for former National Socialists. Breitner became Rector of the University of Innsbruck in 1952. After his death, the city of Innsbruck dedicated a grave of honour to him at Innsbruck West Cemetery. In Reichenau, a street is dedicated to him in the immediate vicinity of the site of the former concentration camp.

If you walk through the city carefully, you will find many of the works of art still visible today on houses in Pradl and Wilten. The mixture of unattractive architecture and contemporary works of art from the often suppressed post-war period, long idealised and glorified in films and stories, is well worth seeing. Particularly beautiful examples can be found on the façades in Pacherstraße, Hunoldstraße, Ing.-Thommenstraße, Innrain, the Mandelsbergerstraße vocational school or in the inner courtyard between Landhausplatz and Maria-Theresienstraße.