4th President of Austria, Mayor of Vienna, Austria. He served in that position from June 21, 1951, to January 4, 1957. He was born in Újszőny by Komorn, Austria-Hungary (later Komárom, Hungary), to a father who served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. It is believed that he was related or named for the poet of the same name but this has never been verified. He was educated locally and then attended the Mahrisch Weibkirchen (now Hranice) Military Academy where he received the rank of Lieutenant in 1894. He then served as an officer in Agram, Croatia, (now Zagreb, Croatia). He received the rank of Major in 1904, and he was made a member of the Austrian staff in 1905. He served with the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1894 to 1918, a total of twenty-four years. His distinguished military career included being a member of units including the 72nd Infantry Brigade at Zagreb in 1904, General Staff Officer at Mostar in 1908, Hungarian Infantry Regiment at Levoca in 1910, Instructor on General Staff Services at the Military School in Vienna in 1912, Balkan Army High Command Officer at Petrovaradin in 1914, and Planning and Deployment Operations for the Battles of the Isonzo from 1915 to 1917. He received the ranks of First Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, and General, and was also XV and VII Imperial Army Chief of Staff in 1915 and again in 1916, and First Isonzo Army Chief of Staff towards the end of 1917. During World War II, he served with the rank of Colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was named Chief of Staff in 1915. During the war, he helped to stem Italian offensives along the Italian-Slovenian border. He was then Appointed Army Inspector General of the Bundesheer-new Austrian Army Services after the fall of the empire in November 1918 and served in that position until he retired from the military with the rank of General in 1924. Having always been fascinated by politics he then decided to run for a public office with the social democrats and was elected to parliament in 1924. A Member of the Social Democratic Party, he first sat as a Delegate for the city of Vienna, Austria, in the Austrian Bundesrat from 1925 to 1934. He also served as Chairman of the Federal Council of Austria from December 1933 to February 1934. During the early 1930s, he was a military adviser for the Schutzbund—a Socialist paramilitary organization. He steadily counseled against violent action despite the increasingly rightward drift of Austrian politics. With the Civil War raging in Austria the Austro-fascist leader Engelbert Dollfuss was brought to power and this, in turn, would end Korner's political career. He was nonetheless arrested by the authoritarian government that banned all opposition parties and was imprisoned after the Socialist rising of February 1934 for his Schutzbund activities. After Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated on July 25, 1934, by ten Austrian Nazis, he was later released from prison. With the start of World War II, and this time the Nazis coming to power, he was once again sent to prison for his resistance of participating in Nazi politics after the Anschluss of incorporation of Austria into the German Reich in March 1938. Following his second release from prison, he returned to politics and he ran for the office of the Mayor of Vienna, Austria, and was elected on April 17, 1945. The fascist Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler would kill himself two weeks later on April 30, 1945. As Mayor of Vienna, Austria, in the newly erected Second Republic, he helped to rebuild sections of the city that had been heavily damaged by bombings during the war. The war was officially declared over by September 2, 1945, after six-years and one day. He continued as the Mayor of Vienna, Austria, until his term expired on June 18, 1951. He was succeeded in office by Franz Jonas. Following the death of then-President of Austria Karl Renner on December 31, 1950, while still in office, the Social Democratic Party appointed him as a Candidate for the Presidency and as Renner's successor. He won the elections with slightly more than 51 percent of the votes. He had become the Fourth President of Austria that was directly elected by the Austrian people. He served in that position from June 21, 1951, to January 4, 1957. He passed away while still in office on January 4, 1957, at the age of 83, in Vienna, Austria. He was the only second consecutive President of Austria to die while still in office at that time. He was laid to rest at the famous Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, Austria. He was succeeded in office by Leopold Figl. During his lifetime he had a profound knowledge of military sciences and he also wrote about military theory. The Theodor Korner Prize, an Austrian Award for science and art was established in his memory, and a street in Vienna, Austria, is also named for him. For his military and political services to the country of Austria and beyond he was awarded the Austro-Hungarian Military Merit Cross Third Class, Imperial Order of the Iron Crown Third Class, Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, Honorary Doctorate at the Vienna University of Technology in 1945, Honorary citizen of Vienna city in 1948, and Grand Cross special class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956.