[Adolf Lorenz und Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk-an extraordinary encounter].

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.