Ernst Fettner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ernst Fettner (born on May 29, 1921 in Vienna ; died on December 15, 2021 there ) was an Austrian journalist and political activist. Persecuted by the National Socialists , he had to emigrate to Great Britain in 1939, where he was active in the Young Austria organization . He served in the British Army during World War II and the immediate post-war period . From 1946 to 1953 he wrote for the Carinthian KPÖ newspaper Volkswille , from 1955 to 1991 he was editor of the communist central organ Volksstimme. He was also involved in the journalists' union .

Life

Ernst Fettner was born on May 29, 1921, the second child of Rosa Fettner (née Nener) and Sigmund (Isak Schaje). Both parents came to Vienna from Galicia with their Jewish families . In 1926, Fettner's mother died during the flu epidemic . After the father's marriage to Rosa Katz, his half-siblings Lily (1929), Karoline (1931) and Herbert (1932) were born.

childhood and education

The family lived in cramped conditions in the 20th district of Vienna , part of the so-called "Mazzesinsel". Ernst Fettner grew up mainly in the Jewish orphanage for boys in Baden near Vienna . After eight years in this institution, he finished his school education in the fall of 1935. He found an apprenticeship in the Baruch Friedländer tailor shop in the First District . After two years, he completed his apprenticeship as a “manufacturer of corsetry and lingerie”. In 1938 he worked for the Jewish tailor shop in Pein (9th district) as a bicycle messenger.

Persecution and exile

After Austria was annexed to the National Socialist German Reich , Ernst Fettner was arrested for the first time in the summer of 1938. Before that, he and his father had to take part in a humiliating pavement rubbing action . The second arrest during the November pogroms in 1938 , in which the workers at the Rein tailor shop locked themselves in, was dramatic . The bar was stormed and Ernst Fettner and his colleagues were treated as "political resistance". He remained in custody until Christmas Day, after which the Gestapo ordered him to leave the country within a month. The deadline for this could later be extended to two months, so that he could leave Austria just in time. It turned out to be particularly difficult that Ernst, like his father Siegmund, had never received Austrian citizenship and was "stateless" until then.

It was not until March 29, 1939 before the 17-year-old could write in his diary: “Dover in sight”. Via London he came to the north of Scotland as an almost slavish "agricultural worker" . With a lot of effort he learned English by himself until he could no longer stand it with the farmer, went to Glasgow and was interned within two days. He was considered an enemy alien (“foreigner from an enemy state”) - despite the political and racist persecution that led to last-minute emigration - and ended up in the Isle of Man “reception center” through several stops . It was only there that he was politicized in lectures and by more experienced colleagues. After six months he returned to agriculture, this time in the Midlands. Thanks to the contacts he made during internment, he became active in “ Young Austria ” and was one of the most important locations for the Association of Austrians in British Exile in Glasgow. After a few more activities, he was accepted into the Civil Service - and was one of the first Austrians in British uniform. "Young Austria" developed into an important home port. The longer the emigration lasted, the more it became clear that the young emigrants wanted to make a contribution to the liberation of Austria from Nazi Germany as the “ Free Austrian Movement ”.

As "Gordon Highlander" for the liberation of Austria

In 1943 the time had come. The emigrants, not a few of them already communists, were now accepted in the British Army fighting against Germany . Due to his stationing in Scotland, Fettner became a Gordon Highlander , a member of an infantry regiment of the British Army. Militarily, he was with the second wave of the Normandy landings in July 1944. At the end of the war he was stationed in a small town in Germany. For the first time he was doing better than the average of the population, but he wanted to make a contribution to an anti-fascist post-war Austria. In 1946 he returned to Austria as a member of the British Army at his own request and was stationed in Klagenfurt .

family

He remained the only family member who returned to Austria. His aunt Sally was able to emigrate with her husband to Shanghai and later to Australia . His sister Wali managed to emigrate to Palestine , where she helped set up the kibbutz Afikim, while Lily was saved with a child transport to England and later - married - emigrated to Canada . All other family members did not survive the Nazi terror.

Siegmund and his father Abraham Fettner were arrested by the Gestapo in September 1939 and later transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where Abraham died. Siegmund's ordeal led through Ravensbrück and Dachau before he was murdered in the Hartheim killing center near Linz in 1942 . Grandmother Freide Katz came to Treblinka via the Theresienstadt ghetto . She did not survive the ordeal either. Rosa, Karoline and Herbert Fettner were deported to the Maly Trostinez extermination camp in August and shot there immediately at the dug mass grave. Stolpersteine in Vienna- Brigittenau are reminiscent of them .

Fettner married Hilde Oppenheimer in 1949, whom he met at a meeting of "Young Austria" in London. She belonged to a family of wine merchants in Mainz who, because of their Jewish origins , had also been murdered in concentration camps after fleeing to Belgium or Holland . Ernst and Hilde Fettner initially lived in Pritschitz and Klagenfurt, respectively. In 1950 son Peter was born in Klagenfurt. After moving to Vienna, the family moved into a community apartment in Lainz . In 1956 the second son Fred was born. Hilde died in 1968 and Ernst Fettner married his colleague Herta Felbermayer († 2019) the following year.

Professional life as a journalist

His journalistic career began with the design of the “ Young Austria ” wall newspaper in Glasgow . During a mission in Belgium he took a short vacation to meet an Austrian group of resistance fighters in Brussels. He reported on this in early 1945 in the emigrant newspaper Zeitspiegel .

After leaving the British Army, Fettner joined the Free Austrian Youth (FÖJ) and the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) in Klagenfurt and in 1946 began to write for the party newspaper of the Carinthian KPÖ Volkswille . Professionally, Fettner initially remained connected to local issues in Carinthia until he had to leave the editorial team in 1953. The background to this at the height of Stalinism was the great distrust of the editor who had come into the country with the British army. For three years he worked in metal works, including as a lathe operator at Steyr , where he was elected to the works council. The union function was also linked to the work on a company newspaper.

After his return to Vienna in 1955 he became editor of the communist central organ Volksstimme , for which he worked as a daily newspaper until it was closed in 1991. Professionally, it was primarily Lower Austria, about which he wrote countless reports during this time. In 1968, while on vacation in Czechoslovakia , he reported exclusively for his newspaper on the Prague Spring and the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. Then he came to the inner resort of the Volksstimme , where for many years he was part of Chancellor Bruno Kreisky's “convoy of journalists” .

He was a member and, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, vice-president of the journalists' union in the ÖGB . In 2018 he was honored for 70 years of ÖGB membership.

At the end of his professional career, Fettner was still a motor journalist. In his last years he was increasingly evolving from an author to an object of journalistic research as a contemporary witness , whereby the researcher could fall back on his great treasure trove of records and photos as well as on his humorous stories. The last big challenge was his autobiography Go ahead - a century with Jana Waldhör as editor . The book has elements of scientific documentation, is essentially a specialist book, has belletristic elements in the stories and contains numerous illustrations.

Sports

Ernst Fettner has been doing sports since his youth. He played soccer in the orphanage and in exile in England, and he was a long-distance runner. In old age he played tennis and golf. As a member of GC Wienerberg, he was the oldest active golfer in Austria, completing 18 holes a few days before his 100th birthday.

honors and awards

Ernst Fettner receives the golden medal of honor of the State of Vienna

Literature, TV reports

  • Ernst Fettner, Jana Waldhör (Ed.): “Go ahead” - a century. Clio, Graz 2021, ISBN 978-3-902542-93-9 .
  • Sonja Frank (Ed.): Young Austria. Austrians in British exile 1938–1947. For a free, democratic and independent Austria. Verlag des ÖGB, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7035-1539-2 .
  • Maria Bianca Fanta: Worker of the pen. The journalists of the KPÖ central organ “Österreichische Volksstimme” 1945–1956. Clio, Graz 2016, ISBN 978-3-902542-48-9 .
  • Gerda Hofreiter: Alone in a foreign country. Child transports from Austria to France, Great Britain and the USA 1938–1941. Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2010, ISBN 978-3-70654830-4 .
  • Happiness is a bird. TV series, episode 3. In: W24 - Stadtsender Wien . First broadcast on October 9, 2020, all episodes online .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Fettner. In: kunstplatzl.info . Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  2. ^ Ernst Fettner at the Wienerwald Golf Club. In: greenboard.at . May 19, 2020, accessed May 24, 2021.
personal data
SURNAME Fettner, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian journalist and victim of National Socialism
BIRTH DATE May 29, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Vienna