Alois Englander

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Alois Gottfried Englander (born May 13, 1907 in Prague ; † February 13, 1996 in Vienna ) was an Austrian publisher, diplomat, environmentalist and politician.

Childhood and youth

Alois Gottfried Englander was born on May 13, 1907, still under the name Engländer, in Prague. He came from a prominent Austrian family with aristocratic roots in Tyrol . His father Adolf Engländer was a member of the board of the Creditanstalt (at that time the largest bank in Austria-Hungary , later: Creditanstalt-Bankverein ) in Vienna and director of all branches of Creditanstalt in Bohemia. His mother, née Hofmann, was the daughter of a governor's council in Prague.

After a tumultuous youth in Prague, during which the family belonging to the German minority had also experienced the serious riots of the Czech majority against the small, around 10% German minority, Englander studied law at the Charles University in Prague from 1925 , then entered the Bohemian Escompte Bank and Creditanstalt in Prague and finally joined a few more semesters at the medical faculty.

Professional life and emigration

In 1934 he joined the Social Democratic Party (SdPA), which had meanwhile been declared illegal and persecuted in Austria, and supported their struggle to restore constitutional conditions with a donation of ATS 20,000, a very large sum at the time. In 1936 he moved to Vienna, he had always remained an Austrian citizen after 1918, and bought the Wilhelm Frick bookstore am Graben in downtown Vienna.

In Vienna he founded the publishing house of the same name and made a significant contribution to the cultural life of the city and the state for decades. The authors published by him included: Thomas Mann , R. and F. Czernin , Ludwig Windischgraetz , Anton Wildgans , all works by Maria Augusta Trapp , HC Artmann , John F. Kennedy , John Gunther , Robert Jungk , Agnes de Mille , Marian Anderson , Harald Kreutzberg etc. At the same time he founded the “Theater for Young People”, which played in the Theater an der Wien . Englander leased the Theater in der Josefstadt from Ernst Lothar in February 1938 and brought out Ferdinand Bruckner's play “Napoleon” there with a director and ensemble unknown at the time. The play, which alluded to Hitler's dictatorship in Germany, was very successful. The planned takeover into the repertoire of the Theater in der Josefstadt was prevented by the invasion of Austria by Hitler's troops.

Englander, classified by the Nazi rulers as a "mixed race 2nd degree" (quarter Jew) due to his Jewish grandfather, the doctor Adolf Engländer, and thus excluded from all cultural activities in accordance with Nazi legislation, had to give up the bookstore and publisher. He then returned to Prague and took care of a. a. about political refugees from Austria. He also participated in the production and financing of the anti-Nazi documentary "Crisis", which premiered at the 1939 World's Fair in New York.

After the German army marched into Prague, Englander emigrated to Sweden in 1940, first via Poland and the Baltic States, and finally to the USA via the USSR, China and Japan.

From 1940 to 1943 he lived in New York, where he a. a. for the organization of the Austrians in exile. He founded the “Assembly for a Democratic Austrian Republic”, of which he was vice-president until 1943. This association for the restoration of a democratic republic in Austria (President Fritz Rager) gave u. a. the magazine "Freedom for Austria" out. Englander was also involved in Ferdinand Czernin's “Austrian Action” as vice-president. Professionally, he was a partner in the Film Unit Inc. and produced a. a. an English-language revision of the silent film " Battleship Potemkin " by Sergej Eisenstein . He joined the New York Professional Fire Department as a volunteer member.

Englander lived in Hollywood from 1943 to 1945, where he worked in Julius Altmann's knitwear factory. The California State Guard was an English volunteer. Returning to New York in 1945, he founded the "Paramount Printing & Publishing Company", which dealt with the publication of books by mostly Austrian authors for the US prisoner of war camps. One of his authors was the opera singer Lotte Lehmann . After the end of the war he was one of the founders of the "Austrian - American Chamber of Commerce" in New York, which stimulated trade between the resurrected but devastated Austria and the USA.

From 1946 Englander, who had meanwhile also become a US citizen (dual citizenship) and anglicised his name from English to English, also worked for the UN refugee agency. He was appointed "Deputy Director" of a "displaced persons camp" with the "assimilated rank" of a "Brigadier General". In 1947, at the earliest possible point in time, Englander returned to Vienna and took over the “stolen” bookstore and Frick Verlag again. As a result, he published the magazines “A World of the United Nations” and “EFTA” for decades. By 1995 he published the yearbook “Vienna today”, an English-language guide to Vienna; First edition 1958. Englander also published numerous Viennensia, e. B. a book about the Vienna Philharmonic and one about the Vienna Ballet, the first edition by HC Artmann and the official Austrian spa book.

In 1948 Englander married the Prague actress Lida Matouskowa, with whom he had two daughters (Juno Sylva and Lucky Viola). In 1948, when the communists came to power in the CSSR, he lost his hometown for the second time and became a Viennese for good. From 1948 to 1989 he was committed to refugees from Eastern Europe, especially from the CSSR. Together with the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Englander founded the “Austrian Society for Foreign Policy and International Relations”, of which he was a member of the Board of Trustees for a long time.

Political work

In 1958 Englander was appointed Honorary Consul of Honduras in Vienna and then permanent representative of Honduras to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. This gave him diplomatic status. From advocating nuclear power to being a staunch opponent of nuclear power, Honduras was the first country to leave the IAEA at the end of the 1960s. In 1968 he took part in the non-violent resistance against the end of the “ Prague Spring ” in Prague and then became an important point of contact for Czech refugees in Austria. At the end of the 1960s, when he retired, he sold the bookstore and publisher, but remained active in Vienna's cultural life. For example, he had decades of friendship with the philosopher Friedrich Heer , the Burgtheater director Ernst Haeussermann , the futurologist Robert Jungk and other cultural masterminds in Austria.

In 1978 Englander founded the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft No zu Zwentendorf”, of which he was the organizer until 1983. This ARGE was the most important organization of the nuclear opponents on the occasion of the referendum on the commissioning of the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant and counted around 50 member initiatives. Englander contributed significantly to the no to the vote.

After the referendum won , the now 72-year-old founded the “World Congress on Alternatives and Environment” in 1979, which he headed until the end as Secretary General. The president of this worldwide discussion forum was Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz . The first “World Congress on Alternatives and Environment” took place in 1979 in the Vienna Künstlerhaus (150 speakers, including 12 Nobel Prize winners). Others followed in 1984 in Maastricht / NL, 1985 on a Danube ship between Passau and Ruse (Bulgaria), 1987 in the Hofburg in Vienna and 1991 in Prague. Like the first, this last congress was particularly effective, as it was the first time that it brought environmental concerns to the democratic states of East Central Europe, especially the debate about the risks of nuclear technology.

Alois Englander founded the United Greens Austria (VGÖ) party in 1982 , the first supraregional Austrian Green Party , from which he distanced himself in March 1983 due to its development towards right-wing positions . Together with the chemist and university professor Heinrich Noller and the organizational officer of the VGÖ, Günter Ofner , who had both also left the VGÖ, he founded the Green Democrats group . From 1983 to 2001 it published the magazine UMFELD , which at times had a great influence on the green movement in Austria.

In 1984 Englander was one of the midwives of the Hainburg movement and finally, in 1986, as a member of the Hainburg Unification Committee, he co-founded the Green Alternative (now the GREEN).

Englander, who had largely withdrawn from political life in 1992, died on February 13, 1996 after a long illness in a Viennese hospital.

Awards

In 1990 he was awarded the title of Professor by the Republic of Austria for his services in the fight against nuclear power. In 1991 the University of Sofia honored him for his ecological merits with an honorary doctorate, which was nostrified in Austria .

literature

• Günter Ofner: "Green shades, the history of the founding phase of the VGÖ, a factual report" 1984, typescript
• Franz Schandl, Gerhard Schattauer: "The Greens in Austria, Development and Consolidation" Promedia Verlag 1995
• Obituary in UMFELD No. 30, June 1996