Bruno Heilig

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Bruno Heilig (born April 26, 1888 in Hohenau an der March (Lower Austria), † July 23, 1968 in East Berlin ) was an Austrian journalist, author and translator of numerous books.

life and career

The beginnings

Bruno Heilig was born the son of a Jewish village merchant. After attending the humanistic grammar school in Lundenburg , around 20 km from his birthplace, he studied law for two years at the University of Vienna. After smaller jobs at Viennese newspapers and completing military service, he moved to Budapest , where he worked for the Hungarian news agency Magyar Távirati Iroda (MTI).

World War I.

After the outbreak of World War I he did military service with a Hungarian telegraph regiment; During this time, Heilig acquired perfect knowledge of the Hungarian language. During the war he married Hilda Wodiáner.

Working as a journalist

Immediately after the war, he returned to work for the Hungarian news agency. From 1920 to 1923 he was a foreign policy editor for the Budapest daily Pesti Napló and from November 1920 he was also a correspondent for the Berlin Vossische Zeitung .

He left the editorial office of Pesti Napló (Jewish Liberal) in 1923; afterwards he worked exclusively as a correspondent for the Berliner Vossische Zeitung (liberal-bourgeois).

Bruno Heilig was known for not being afraid to write the truth, nor did he skimp on criticism, which he did not know how to convey without humor and understanding. Such openness was inconvenient and in the end it was not tolerated. Under Miklós Horthy , a concept developed in which the supposedly pure-bred culture of the Hungarians was viewed as endangered by the Jews - the term 'Judeobolshevik' arose at that time.

In this ever-worsening environment, Bruno Heilig was expelled from the country on November 1, 1928. It is surprising that this had not happened much earlier, especially since Hungary had clearly passed anti-Semitic laws as early as 1920.

He then worked in Berlin as a reporter for Ullstein-Verlag until March 1931 , after which he worked as a Berlin correspondent for Wiener Tag (with a left-liberal orientation) and the Prague press (left-wing bourgeois, state-sponsored daily newspaper in German). A large number of articles on the political situation appeared under his name. Because of his constant correspondence against the emerging National Socialism, he fled Germany in September 1933 when he learned that his arrest was imminent.

Back in Vienna he worked as an editorial writer for Wiener Tag until the summer of 1934 , but lost his job again because of critical reporting. His departure took place at the instigation of government circles in connection with reports on the February events in 1934 .

From August 1934 to the beginning of 1935 he edited the Jewish newspaper Die Voice and in August 1935 he joined the editorial team of the Monday newspaper Der Morgen as foreign affairs editor and lead article ; from 1937 he was also a correspondent for the British Jewish Chronicle .

In his book “Not only the Jews are concerned”, published in 1936, there is a selection of his articles that he had written between 1933 and 1936 for the newspapers mentioned above.

Capture and stay in a concentration camp

Just two days after Austria was annexed to Hitler's Germany, on March 15, 1938, he was arrested and taken to Dachau concentration camp with other prominent Nazi opponents at the end of March . As an active and well-known anti-fascist, he did not expect a great chance of survival, but he was treated no worse than the other prisoners. Apparently the SS guards did not know that he was one of the most wanted men. Presumably an important part of his act has been lost. In September 1938 he was transferred to Buchenwald .

liberation

In December 1938 Heinrich Himmler had ordered that Jewish prisoners should be released from the concentration camps if they wanted to prepare their emigration. On April 26, 1939, his birthday, he received a telegram from his wife Hilda stating that a passage from Genoa to Shanghai had been booked for him. The passage booked was a pure invention, but the feint saved his life. The next day as a free man he boarded the train to Vienna, from there it went to Milan, where his wife and older son soon followed him. The younger son Gerhard had already reached England in December 1938 on a children's transport War 1943 Royal Air Force pilot .

Exile (1939-1945)

With the support of the Jewish Chronicle , Heilig was able to emigrate to Great Britain , where he arrived on August 12th. The rest of the family should have followed him, but the war that broke out less than three weeks later made this trip impossible. It is known that his mother, who still lived in Hohenau - his birthplace - as a merchant, was murdered in the concentration camp.

In 1941 the factual report "Men Crucified" appeared. In this book he describes the time of his internment in the concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald. It received an unanimously favorable reception among the critics. Leading English critic James Agate wrote in the Daily Express : “Book of the week. Men Crucified by Bruno Heilig, three hundred pages of Nazi devilries in pre-war concentration camps… ”. The book had three editions which quickly sold out, and only the lack of paper due to the war prevented further editions.

In German, under the title “People on the Cross”, the book was published in 1948 (Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin) in a single edition. This essential contribution to contemporary history was only reissued after more than 50 years (Bibliothek der Provinz 2002). In it, Bruno Heilig provides a shocking, authentic account of his time as a concentration camp prisoner in 1938 and 1939.

A lack of language skills did not allow him to work as a journalist in England. The Jewish Chronicle gave him some financial support, which made it possible to survive. In the spring of 1941 he began an apprenticeship as a locksmith in one of the training workshops set up by the government. After completing his apprenticeship, he worked as a lathe operator and toolmaker in war companies.

On September 18, 1942, Heilig wrote in a London newspaper about his retraining as a locksmith: “For thirty years I did journalism without interruption. I've been a machine fitter for a year and a half. I made this jump for a variety of reasons. 'You have a name,' I often heard friends say, 'You have to find your way into the English press ...' I didn't believe in it, I rather meant that what the journalist calls his name is not like a piece of luggage Land to land can be done. Then I quickly finished my last - or shall we say: for the time being last - work as a professional writer, my book about the German concentration camps, and looked around for a decent job. "

In Great Britain, too, Heilig campaigned against fascism and nationalism in Austria: “In the very first days after the Free Austrian Movement was founded, outstanding Austrian personalities announced their entry into the movement, including the painter Oskar Kokoschka, the writer Robert Neumann [... ] the journalist Bruno Heilig […] etc. “In June 1944, Bruno Heilig took a position at the British-American headquarters, his job was to produce radio broadcasts, magazines, leaflets and other propaganda material to undermine the military will in the German Reich.

post war period

After the end of the war, he worked for the DANA news agency and later at the Nuremberg Military Court . In 1947 he left the American service and went to East Berlin, joined the SED and worked as a journalist. In January 1948 he became deputy editor-in-chief of Germany's voice , and at the end of 1949 he and Max Spangenberg were editor-in-chief of this newspaper. He, who had been a staunch communist for many years, had always kept his right to his own opinion. This also became his undoing in the GDR . When he became uncomfortable, he lost this position at the end of August 1952 - a fate that he was familiar with from earlier times.

He then made a name for himself as a translator from Hungarian and was honored in 1960 with the PEN medal of the Hungarian PEN for his services.

Works

  • People on the Cross , Berlin: Verl. Neues Leben, 1947; Weitra: Provincial Library, 2002
  • It's not just about Jews , Vienna: Victoria Druckerei, 1936

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Holy, Bruno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Journalist, author and translator
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Hohenau an der March
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1968
Place of death East Berlin