Emmerich Teuber

Emmerich "Imre" Teuber (born May 11, 1877 in Prague ; † February 3, 1943 in Vienna ), called "Papa Teuber" by the scouts, is the founder of the Austrian Scout Association , the first scout organization in Austria.

Life

Tomb of the Teuber family in the Dornbach cemetery

His father Oskar Wilhelm Karl Teuber (* 1852 in Weckersdorf in Bohemia; † 1901 in Vienna) was editor-in-chief of the Wiener Zeitung in Prague. Emmerich had three brothers, Wilhelm (1879–1968), Oskar (* 1881) and Maurus (* 1883).

After visiting the Schottengymnasiums he joined the infantry - Cadet School of the Imperial Army one. In 1904 he married the American Charlotte Drifton Coxe in Philadelphia and in 1910 retired from military service as a first lieutenant . In the next few years he was busy setting up a scout organization in Vienna.

At the beginning of the First World War , he was reactivated and began his military service as a captain . Under his leadership, the scouts were used to provide relief services for the Austrian Red Cross , street collections and donation transports. He received several awards for these achievements, including the Knight's Cross of the Franz Joseph Order and the Salvator Medal from the Vienna City Council and later Mayor Jakob Reumann . After the end of the war in 1918 he worked as an inspector of the Viennese child and youth welfare institutions .

After the “ Anschluss ” to the German Reich , he was arrested and charged by the National Socialists in 1938 as the founder of a boy scout organization and a “friend of England” . At his trial in 1939 before the People's Court in Munich, he defended himself, was acquitted, but remained in the sights of the Gestapo .

Emmerich Teuber died on February 3, 1943, weakened by the stress of imprisonment and persecution in a Vienna clinic.

In 2008 the Emmerich-Teuber-Platz in Vienna- Landstrasse (3rd district) was named after him.

Scouting activity

On the advice of the War Department, his brother Wilhelm studied the book Scouting for Boys by Robert Baden-Powell as a teacher at a military educational institution . Based on his positive experience, he encouraged Emmerich to use this system in civil youth work. In 1909, Emmerich Teuber got to know some military youth centers in America. Therefore, when the founder of the "Reichsbund der Knabenhorte Austria" Hauptmann a. D. Franz Opelt, appointed him as the central inspector of his after-school care center, he soon recognized the limited possibilities of this organization. In the spring of 1912 he traveled to Berlin, where he was informed by the German field master Maximilian Bayer . In Germany at that time, however, the boy scouts only had pre-military training, which he didn't like.

On October 1, 1912, he founded the 1st Vienna Scout Company in the Vienna Erdberg day care center . It consisted of seven young electrical mechanic apprentices. He wanted to employ his boys in nature with the help of the boy scout method and raise them to be able members of society through the "daily good deed". He was called "Papa Teuber" by his scouts. Soon three troops were scouting out.

On November 4, 1912, he submitted the application for the “Association for the Establishment and Maintenance of a Vienna Scout Corps” to the authorities. Although Teuber had to take a break for some time due to illness, he started the foundation of the Austrian Scout Association (ÖPB) in 1914. The aim was set in the statutes:

[...] to promote the development of the scout movement in general in the kingdoms and countries represented in the Reichsrat [...] and to maintain the scout corps in the imperial capital and residence city of Vienna.

When this union was founded, it had around 800 boys, 100 girls and 50 leaders. Teuber, who was appointed 1st main field master, then Reich field master of the federal government, wanted to unite all scout groups of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in him and to do this successfully established contact with the Catholic scout corps in Vienna and Graz. However, many German national, Hungarian and Czech groups stayed away from the ÖPB and founded their own umbrella organizations.

After the end of the First World War, it was thanks to Emmerich Teuber (now called Bundesfeldmeister) that the ÖPB quickly found its way back into the World Scout Organization. At the suggestion of France, he was appointed to the International Committee of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) from 1922 to 1929 , the international association of scouts. When the Catholic groups separated from the ÖPB in 1924 and founded their own umbrella organization, he advocated its international recognition. As a committee member, it would probably not have been difficult for him to prevent this, but it was not in keeping with his understanding of Scout tolerance. At that time Austria was the only country in which WOSM had recognized two associations.

literature

• Kurt Pribich: Log of the scout associations in Austria. 2nd edition, self-published by the Austrian Scouts Guild, Vienna 2004.
• Manfred Fux: History of the Austrian Scout Movement. From the beginning to the “Jamboree of Simplicity” (1912–1951). In: Franz Loidl (ed.): Publications of the Church History Institute of the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Vienna. Volume 8, Wiener Dom-Verlag, Vienna 1971, ISBN 3-85351-037-X .

Web links

• Who was Emmerich "Papa" Teuber?