Benedikt Fantner

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Benedikt Fantner (born June 9, 1893 in Vienna ; † January 1942 in the Hartheim killing center near Linz ) was a working-class writer .

Life

Benedikt was born the son of the furrier assistant Benedikt and his wife Juliana Fantner (nee Neumaier) and had two siblings. As a teenager he became a free spirit and a socialist . In 1917, as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army , he was taken prisoner by Russia during the First World War and joined the Russian Revolution . In 1918 he returned to Vienna and attended meetings of revolutionary organizations.

On January 8, 1921, he married Antonia Falda. He became a bank clerk, but lost his job during the Great Depression. After that he worked as a representative and author. In 1929 and 1931 the publisher Richard Lányi published two books by Benedikt Fantner. In 1933 he became a member of the Association of Socialist Writers . He wrote for the Arbeiter-Zeitung and in April 1933 he read from their works with Fritz Bartl and Willy Miksch in the Alsergrund workers' education association . On December 21, 1933, he got his second marriage to Josefine Bauer.

After February 1934 he was only able to publish sporadically, and on September 11, 1935 a police search of his apartment took place. Many manuscripts disappeared forever, including that of the recently completed novel "People Between Times". Benedikt Fantner was sentenced to six weeks' arrest for custody of illegal printed matter. After his release from prison he went to Czechoslovakia . In November 1937 he went to Spain and fought in the XI. International Brigade .

After the end of the Spanish Civil War , he fled to France, where he was interned. He was transferred from France to Vienna on October 13, 1940, and was sent to Dachau concentration camp on February 22, 1941 . Despite the help of fellow inmate Viktor Matejka , Benedikt Fantner soon collapsed and was taken to the Hartheim killing center near Linz on January 19, 1942 , where he was murdered.

Works

  • Lazarus. The story of a man of our time , Vienna 1929
  • Stories from the gray crowd , Vienna 1931

literature

  • Herbert Exenberger : Benedikt Fantner (1893-1942). An Austrian working-class writer. In: Austria in History and Literature, Issue 4, 1982
  • Hubert Höller: Overview of Austrian workers' literature in the Spanish Civil War with special consideration of the work of Benedikt Fantner. Diploma thesis, Vienna 1990
  • Eckart Früh (Ed.): Benedikt Fantner. Traces and remnants. Bio-bibliographical sheets, No. 32. Vienna 1999. Stitched brochure
  • Herbert Exenberger (Ed.): As if the world was on fire. An anthology of murdered socialist writers. Vienna 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Austrians for Spain's Freedom 1936–1939 on the website of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance
personal data
SURNAME Fantner, Benedict
BRIEF DESCRIPTION writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria
DATE OF DEATH January 1942
Place of death Hartheim Euthanasia Center , Austria