the University of Innsbruck, taking classes in botany, zoology, geology, physics, and chemistry. Austria was under the control of Nazi Germany at this time, and did not exist as an independent state. Moser became an "authorized mushroom controller and instructor", and was in turn directed to attend mycological seminars around Germany and Austria. At these seminars, he met prominent mycologists, including Ernst Thirring, who introduced Moser to the large genus Cortinarius and its scientific challenges, which remained an interest of Moser's for the rest of his life. In 1943, aged 19 and after only three terms at Innsbruck, his studies were interrupted by military service. Having shown earlier promise in languages, he was trained as a translator, then sent to the Balkan Peninsula. He continued to have an active interest in mycology, collecting and identifying mushrooms and reading the mycologist Rolf Singer's Das System der Agaricales [The Agaricales in Modern Taxonomy]. In 1945, when Moser was 21 years old and still carrying out active military service, he was captured in Czechoslovakia by Soviet soldiers and made a prisoner of war. He was imprisoned in a labour camp in Crimea. While a prisoner, he was involved in repairing the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, Sevastopol. Working in construction at the camp, he had to labour to his physical limits, and was involved in a serious crash that killed several other prisoners. Moser was released in 1948, and chose to return to his studies at the University of Innsbruck. His first publication came in 1949; "Über das Massenauftreten von Formen der Gattung Morchella auf Waldbrandflächen" ["Mass-fruiting of forms of the genus Morchella on forest-fire areas"] was published in the journal Sydowia. In 1950, under the supervision of the botanist Arthur Pisek, Moser completed his doctoral thesis, Zur Wasserökologie der höheren Pilze, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Waldbrandflächen [Water Ecology in Higher Fungi with Special Emphasis on Forest-Fire Areas]. During his time at university, he became a member of both the Société mycologique de France and the British Mycological Society. Having become friends with prominent German mycologists during the War, he was keen to re-establish academic relationships throughout Europe in the years following the conflict's resolution. England and the Federal Institute for Forestry Research Due to the quality of his doctoral work, Moser received a grant from the British Council and in 1951 moved to England, where he stayed for six months.