ROMAN SANDGRUBER is an Austrian historian and author who was born in Rohrbach in 1947. He studied history, German studies and economics at the University of Vienna from 1965 to 1971. From 1988, Sandgruber was a full professor at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences at Johannes Kepler University. He was also a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and was chairman of the senate of the University of Linz from 1996 to 1998, as well as a member of the Austrian Commission of Historians from 1998 to 2003.