College, graduating from which would have all but guaranteed a stellar career. Streeruwitz took the exam in 1899 and passed with flying colors. A mere year later, however, Streeruwitz's health suffered a serious relapse after a demanding field training exercise. Streeruwitz lost his faith in his ability to withstand the rigors of military life and applied to be granted reservist status. His request was approved in 1901. While waiting to be allowed to leave active service, Streeruwitz began studying mechanical engineering at the College of Technology and law at the University of Vienna. Friedrich Franz Joseph von Leitenberger, a fellow Bohemian officer whom Streeruwitz has befriended during his time as a lieutenant of the dragoons, hired Streeruwitz as a technical consultant as soon as the latter's transfer to the reserve was final. Streeruwitz was tasked with helping to modernize Leitenberger's factories. He reorganized Leitenberger's obsolete textile printing plant in Josefsthal with some success and was made the manager of the factory in 1902. His professional future now reasonably secure, Streeruwitz married Christine Strobl, a Bohemian from Prague. Following Leitenberger's death in a car accident in 1904, Streeruwitz found himself sidelined. He clashed with the company's new owners as well as with their bankers. In 1913, he was kicked upstairs to a position in senior management, a promotion that forced him to move to Vienna again. In 1914, Streeruwitz finally quit. With the outbreak of World War I, he also volunteered to return to active military service. In October, Streeruwitz became managing director of a textile printing plant in Neunkirchen. A few days later, he was called up by the army, effective November. Still in poor health and unfit for service at the front, Streeruwitz spent the war as an administrator. He helped reorganize the military mail service, worked to ensure the humane treatment of Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war, organized the use of enemy prisoners as agricultural laborers, co-edited a newspaper for captive Russians, and wrote a five-volume book on legal issues surrounding prisoners of war. Streeruwitz was considered highly competent and was decorated several times. First Austrian Republic Streeruwitz experienced the collapse of the empire as a personal catastrophe. He returned to his native Bohemia; in his autobiography, he would later claim that "Bolshevik emissaries" in Vienna had threatened to murder both him and his family. He nevertheless moved to Vienna a third time when it became clear that the