Gunther Burstyn (1879‒1945)

Today Gunther Burstyn (1879-1945) is considered as reformer of the Austrian tank force. But during the first half of the 20th century the young soldier sustained the typical well-known Austrian fate of innovators with his inventions and concepts. The implementation of his inventions, which were far beyond the military technical standard at that time, were doomed to failure because of disability of the Habsburg's and the Austrian army as well as on missing financial capacity of the Austrian government. So Burstyn, the inventor of the tank, was forced to see other nations engineering "his" idée, which possible influenced victory and defeat of World War I. Later on Burstyn hoped to market his inventions in Nazi Germany and got still today into cross-fire of political criticism. At the end of his tragic life Burstyn committed suicide.