Ernst Florian Winter

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Ernst Florian Winter (2007)

Ernst Florian Winter (born December 16, 1923 in Vienna ; † April 16, 2014 ) was an Austro-American historian and political scientist and founding director of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna .

Life

childhood

Ernst Florian Winter was the oldest of eight children of the former Third Vice Mayor of Vienna (1934–1936) and sociologist Ernst Karl Winter . He attended the humanistic grammar school in Klostergasse in Währing , the 18th district of Vienna. Then he was in the Neulandschule. At that time, Winter was part of the Neuland Federation . Alfons Stillfried and the brothers Otto and Fritz Molden were in the same group.

Winter accompanied his father Ernst Karl very early on on his political path. Hours of discussion regularly took place in the family apartment, in which people such as Alfred Missong , August Maria Knoll , Hans Karl von Zessner-Spitzenberg and Engelbert Dollfuss took part. When Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg returned from his meeting with Hitler at the Berghof on February 12, 1938, he stopped at the Winters to speak to Ernst Karl Winter. 14-year-old Ernst Florian Winter kept the minutes of this conversation.

A few days before the “ Anschluss ” in March 1938, on the urgent advice of Hans Kelsen , his father Ernst Karl Winter fled to Switzerland for political reasons. He had to leave his family behind for the time being. When the Gestapo came to the Winter family's house on March 14, 1938 and could not find Ernst Karl, they took his son Ernst Florian with them to the police station. Due to the family's good private contacts, however, the mother Margerete was able to get her son back home on the same day. A few days later, Margarete also fled Austria with Ernst Florian and his then six siblings.

Emigration to the USA

The Winter family reached New York in October 1939 via Switzerland , France and England as one of the first non-Jewish emigrant families . Since everyone who arrived was very homesick and there were no Austrian clubs at the time, numerous emigrants met almost every Sunday in the winter farmhouse for Austrian evenings. At the beginning of 1939, Ernst Karl Winter founded the Austrian American Center, the first non-partisan national committee in New York . This organized regular demonstrations and marches and published weekly publications. There were almost no young people among the emigrants, but Ernst Florian Winter was chosen to be their leader. A few dozen young Austrians regularly held parades on Fifth Avenue . Together with his father he met the US Vice President Henry A. Wallace .

Ernst Florian Winter did not take part in the "Austrian Battalion " initiated by Otto von Habsburg , as he was taking a ski instructor examination at that time. As a member of the "Ski Patrol System" he received a personal letter from the US War Department planning to set up a mountain division. On his 18th birthday, he voluntarily joined the US Army , but commented on the application form for admission to the army: “ I volunteer to help liberate my home country Austria, but I am not ready to kill. “The main reason for his strict attitude was that he was already familiar with pictures of the German concentration camps in his father's Gsur publishing house in Vienna and they weighed heavily on him. Although this wish caused incomprehension among the army command, it was fulfilled through training as an interpreter. In 1943 Winter was granted American citizenship and in 1944 he received a certificate from the University of Michigan for his Japanese studies and regional research as part of the ROTC .

Liberation of the homeland

Ernst Florian Winter took part in the invasion of Normandy and was the first Austro-American to march into the Austrian Innviertel near Burghausen on May 4, 1945 with the 86th Division of the 3rd US Army and billet at the Schnaitl brewery . Winter had several tasks. He was something of a quartermaster for divisional command of the 86th Black Hawk Division. He also appointed mayor: “ It wasn't very easy. First, you had to find someone who wasn't a party member . Second, he should have the ability and desire to do so. “That is why Ernst Florian Winter held talks with many prisoners and forced laborers. A decision was then made based on the interviews.

On behalf of Baron Georg Ludwig von Trapp , he inspected his villa in Aigen , which the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler had made his summer residence. He discovered that the house chapel had been converted into a bar and that swastikas had been carved into the altar table . Only a few weeks after the liberation, Ernst Florian Winter had to leave Salzburg again. On orders, the entire division set out for Japan to perform similar tasks there.

Study and teaching

After Winter returned to the United States, he graduated from Columbia College with a degree in social sciences . He then studied political science and international relations at Columbia University . Ernst Florian Winter completed his Master of Arts in 1951 on the comparative analysis of the Renner governments in 1918 and 1945 and his Ph.D. he made 1954 on the subject of Austrian agriculture between 1848 and 1953 . Winter began his academic career as a professor of history and political science at Iona College in New Rochelle , New York. He was also visiting professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy , Princeton University , Georgetown University and Indiana University .

Diplomatic Academy Vienna (2006)

In 1960 he accepted the call of Ministers Drimmel and Klaus to return to Austria in order to establish political science as a major. As part of the “International Research Center” (IFZ) on the Mönchsberg in Salzburg, an “ Eastern Institute ” was established in 1960 , and Ernst Florian Winter could be won over for its director. Today this institute bears the name Institute for the Christian East and is home to the Salzburg section of the Pro Oriente Foundation founded by Cardinal König . In 1964, Winter was appointed by then Foreign Minister Bruno Kreisky as the founding director of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna after the Second World War , where he worked regularly as a professor well into old age. From the establishment of the Institute for Higher Studies (IHS) in 1963, he worked there as an assistant. Between 1967 and 1968 he was its director. At that time, the general secretary of the IHS was Freda Meissner-Blau . Names such as Anton Pelinka , Traudl Brandstaller , Peter Gerlich , Helmut Kramer and many others bear testimony to the excellent teaching of political science.

He was married to a daughter of Georg Ludwig von Trapp , Johanna von Trapp (1919–1994), from 1948 to 1994 and the two had seven children together. From 1964 to 1977 they lived together in Eichbüchl Castle in Katzelsdorf, Lower Austria . The Eichbüchler Talks and Austria seminars took place there for over ten years , in which international professors such as Oskar Morgenstern , Paul Lazarsfeld , Friedrich Heer and Henry Kissinger took part. The first government proclamation of the Second Republic was made here as early as 1945 under Karl Renner . That is why Eichbüchl Castle is often referred to as the birthplace of the Republic of Austria.

During this time, Winter worked with Robert Jungk at the Institute for Future Issues . Jungk praises him in his memoirs: “ My closest colleague, the excellent Ernst Florian Winter, who tried to implement a cosmopolitan, generous style of thinking and working in the tradition of his father and the left-wing Catholic resistance he inspired . "

Diplomatic career

UN environmental program in China

Between 1968 and 1970 Ernst Florian Winter was Director of Social Science at UNESCO in Paris. His friend Henry Kissinger had suggested him for this position. At the same time he was negotiator between the United States and the People's Republic of China from 1968 . Between 1970 and 1972, Winter was a member of the United States' UN Committee for the Development of a New China Strategy. In January 1972, he was the first American to belong to a select group that was invited by then Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai to a two-month stay at the Institute for Foreign Policy of the People's Republic of China. In 1974 Ernst Florian Winter was chairman of the first mission of the UN representation in China within the framework of UNEP - FAO . The following year he led the UNEP- WHO China Mission .

From 1972 to 1978 his work at UNEP regularly took him to Nairobi as chief advisor . In 1975, Winter was a founding member of the Resources and Industries Associates Group and served as director of the Agricultural and Environmental Technologies Division in New York City and Vancouver . He held this office until 1994. Between 1989 and 1994, Winter worked as a high-ranking employee at UNIDO in Vienna. Since 1992 he has been a board member of an international association for environmentally friendly technologies.

Further political assignments from the United Nations took him to Geneva , Russia and Mongolia, among others . In total he has lived and worked in 83 countries. Ernst Florian Winter spoke Chinese , German , English , Japanese , Russian and Spanish .

Awarded the Egon Ranshofen-Wertheimer Prize by Gerhard Skiba (2008)
Reception of the Austrian Foreign Service Association in Graz (2010)

Agriculture and Kosovo

Since the 1990s he has been managing an organic self-catering area in East Tyrol's Defereggental . He was also involved in the United Nations Environment Program Agriculture in Kosovo , which is why he traveled to this region annually. There he also taught at the University of Business and Technology in Pristina .

Awards

Web links

Commons : Ernst Florian Winter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Diplomatic Academy Vienna mourns the founding director Prof. Ernst Florian Winter. Obituary of the Diplomatic Academy Vienna of April 16, 2014.
  2. ↑ Ernst Florian Winter: We carried Austria in our hearts . In: Helmut Wohnout (Ed.): Democracy and History . 2000 yearbook of the Karl von Vogelsang Institute on the history of Christian democracy in Austria.
  3. ↑ 1945 as the first US soldier in Austria. In: salzburg.orf.at . May 3, 2008.
  4. ↑ Ernst Florian Winter: 63 years ago his dream came true . ( Memento from December 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: Burghauser Anzeiger . May 7, 2008.
  5. ↑ Liberate on the bike. In: Salzburger Nachrichten , May 3, 2008, digitized online at textundkommentar.at (PDF; 627 kB).
  6. ^ Foundation and first years 1961–1971. IFZ-Salzburg. Retrieved June 17, 2019.
  7. ↑ 20 years of Pro Oriente in Salzburg. Pro Oriente. September 29, 2005, accessed June 17, 2019.
  8. ↑ Robert Jungk: Nevertheless. My life for the future . Carl Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1993, p. 389.
  9. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Ernst Florian Winter: Cosmopolitan people do not exist. ) In: interviews-magazine.com . March 8, 2011.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.interviews-magazine.com
  10. ^ Claudia Funder: Ernst Florian Winter: Cosmopolitan with edges. In: dolomitenstadt.at. August 28, 2010.
  11. ↑ Egon Ranshofen-Wertheimer Prize 2008 - Awarded to Dr. Ernst Florian Winter. In: Braunauer Stadtnachrichten , issue 134/2008, p. 29 (PDF; 6.58 MB).
  12. ↑ 4th World Human Prize 2010. In: weltmenschverein.org . November 1, 2010, accessed June 17, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Winter, Ernst Florian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American historian and political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 2014