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At the end of the nineteenth century, the imperial capital of the k.k. Danube monarchy, Vienna, enabled the meeting of two important figures in medical history: the surgeon Eduard Albert (1841-1900) and his student Adolf Lorenz (1854-1946). Both men had comparable traits: they came from humble backgrounds, were exceptionally talented and longed for a career in the supreme medical discipline-surgery. Both achieved the highest goals in their disciplines but the spectrum of their interests was much broader. The life of both and their contacts to each other are reported here. In this respect the Memorial Book of House No. 528 by Eduard Albert in Senftenberg was also evaluated.

Adolf Lorenz, the founder of orthopedics in Austria and father of the later Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz, and the founder and first president of the Czechoslovak Republic, Tomáš G. Masaryk, were in contact. In the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century both studied at the University of Vienna: Masaryk, four years older, Philosophy and Lorenz Medicine. The first meetings took place in the dissecting room of the Anatomical Institute. Later both entered (scientific) careers and became well-known personalities. Almost 40 years after the first coincidental encounter, Lorenz remembered his former student, meanwhile president of the Czechoslovak Republic, and made contact with him. The correspondence kept in the Masaryk Institute in Prague will be presented here.