In the summer of 1916, he was an artillery commander with the Kaiserschützendivision in South Tyrol and then an artillery advisor with the XV Corps Command on the upper Isonzo, where he earned great merit for the breakthrough at Karfreit in October 1917, which earned him the Knight's Cross of the Austrian Imperial Order of Leopold. Further during the war, his daughter Margarete would be born in 1918 and then his second son Robert in 1919, the latter was called up in 1939 as a student at the Technical University in Vienna and would be killed on 10 January 1943 as a first lieutenant in the 44th Infantry Division during the Battle for Stalingrad.