Barbara Issakides

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Barbara Fellinger , née Barbara Issakides (born May 31, 1914 in Vienna ; † August 29, 2011 there ) was an Austrian pianist and resistance fighter .

Education and career

Barbara Issakides was the daughter of a Viennese businessman. From 1930 to 1942 she studied piano at the Vienna Music Academy , where she was a student of Viktor Ebenstein , Emil Sauer and Friedrich Wührer .

As a pianist she could be heard on the radio and at concerts in Vienna. Concert tours have taken her to Poland , Hungary , England and other European countries.

After the war she rarely appeared in public. She completed a law degree at the University of Vienna .

resistance

Barbara Issakides was acquainted with the Gersthof clergyman Heinrich Maier , who, like her, rejected National Socialism . She was also able to go abroad for her concerts in Austria during the National Socialist era . On one such trip to Switzerland at the end of 1942, her anti-Nazi stance caught the attention of Kurt Grimm , a lawyer who had emigrated from Austria and who was an informant for the American secret service Office of Strategic Services (OSS). This enabled contact between the Maier-Messner group and the allies to be established. Josef Joham confirmed to Grimm the reliability of Issakides. On another trip in March 1943 she was able to openly discuss the plans and goals of the group with Grimm. At the end of 1943 she traveled to Switzerland with Maier, where Maier met Grimm and gave him information about production facilities for rockets and synthetic rubber . Issakides himself even met Allen Dulles , head of the Bern OSS office. From then on, the resistance group was in continuous, albeit irregular, contact with the secret service.

The group was exposed through betrayal - presumably through double agents among the OSS informants - and many of its leading members were arrested. One of them was Barbara Issakides, who was arrested on March 31, 1944 while attempting to transfer money from the OSS. She remained in detention for over eight months and endured numerous grueling interrogations. However, unlike Maier and other members of the resistance group, she was not charged. She survived "stomach sick" written in the prison hospital.

Private

After the war she married the well-known internist Karl Fellinger . After his death, Barbara Fellinger founded the non-profit association Fellinger Cancer Research in 2002 , to which she bequeathed a large part of her fortune. She was buried in an honorary grave at the Döblinger Friedhof .

literature

  • Issakides, Barbara, pianist. In: Ilse Korotin (ed.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 2: I-O. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , p. 1437 f.
  • Siegfried Beer : "Arcel / Cassia / Redbird": The Maier-Messner resistance group and the American military intelligence service OSS in Bern, Istanbul and Algiers in 1943/44 . In: DÖW (Hrsg.): Yearbook 1993: Focus on resistance . 1993, p. 75-100 .

supporting documents

  1. ↑ C. Turner: The CASSIA Spy Ring in World War II Austria: A History of the OSS's Maier-Messner Group . McFarland, Jefferson 2017, ISBN 978-1-4766-6969-4 , pp. 179 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ Historical background. In: Fellinger cancer research. Retrieved February 4, 2019 .
  3. ^ Grave site Barbara Fellinger , Vienna, Döblinger Friedhof, Group 24, Row 2, No. 1.
personal data
SURNAME Issakides, Barbara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fellinger, Barbara (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian pianist and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 2011
Place of death Vienna