Ernst Karl Winter

Ernst Karl Winter (born September 1, 1895 in Vienna ; † February 4, 1959 there ) was an Austrian sociologist and politician.

Life

Youth and education

Ernst Karl Winter grew up as an only child in a middle-class family in Währing . His uncle and godfather was Karl Friedrich Gsur . At an early age he decided to take the path of a socially committed Catholic and, while in high school, joined the Catholic youth movement of Anton Orel , whose views influenced the first publications of Winter. After the beginning of the First World War , in October 1914 he volunteered for one year with the Tyrolean riflemen , where he became friends with his regimental comrade Engelbert Dollfuß . Early on, Winter came into contradiction with the German-national ideas that dominated academic circles at the time . According to Catholic doctrine, he refused a duel to which a German national officer had asked him because of an article that was too loyal to the Kaiser. Winter thus lost the opportunity of an officer career.

In 1918, as a staunch legitimist , he criticized the pragmatic turn of the bourgeois camp towards the republic. In the summer of 1918, Winter enrolled in the law faculty of the University of Vienna . He received his doctorate in 1922 after lecturing with Hans Kelsen , Othmar Spann and Max Adler , but attended other sociological and historical lectures until 1924. After that he lived as a writer and private scholar.

Activism against National Socialism

On his initiative in 1927 with the participation of Hans Karl von Zessner-Spitzenberg , August Maria Knoll , Alfred Missong , Wilhelm Schmid , and others. a. created the Austrian Action , which for the first time formulated the idea of ​​an independent Austrian identity on a programmatic and journalistic basis .

The attempt at a habilitation as a sociologist with a thesis on the "social metaphysics of scholasticism" failed, among other things because Winter was not ready to write the informally prescribed article for the right-wing extremist Deutschösterreichische Tages-Zeitung (DÖTZ). Two further attempts to complete a habilitation failed because of the German national professorial college. From 1930 he headed Gsur-Verlag , which was the only Austrian publisher to commit itself to an uncompromising fight against National Socialism. In general, Winter's publications were characterized by his Catholic faith, his Platonic philosophy and his political line, which was set against National Socialism early on . He had an influence on the sociologist August Maria Knoll, the founder of the Paneuropean movement Richard Nikolaus Graf von Coudenhove-Kalergi , on the publicist Alfred Missong and probably also on Eric Voegelin .

"Stand on the right and think on the left"

Winter became famous for his attempt between 1927 and 1938 to initiate a reconciliation between Christian Socialists and Social Democrats in order to defend against National Socialism. His political slogan " stand on the right and think on the left " is well known. Especially between April 1933 and February 1934, i.e. in the period after the elimination of parliament but before the February uprising , Winter advocated this position with downright desperate intensity in the Viennese political papers he edited himself, as well as in the social democratic Arbeiter-Zeitung . He published open letters to Federal President Wilhelm Miklas . In April 1934, Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss appointed Winter in a gesture to the political left as Third Vice Mayor in Vienna.

"Action Winter"

The "Aktion Winter" began with Ernst Karl Winter's assumption of office as Vice Mayor and was an attempt to build a bridge between the left and the right in order to induce the social democratic workers to work on a common front against National Socialism. Winter began to organize regular gatherings called “debate evenings,” to which workers were invited through press announcements and posters, and where workers' rights could be discussed relatively freely. As these events turned out to be increasingly turbulent, the number of participants was soon reduced to 100 personally invited guests each. Although these events displeased many exponents of the authoritarian regime (especially the Heimwehr ), Winter had a certain amount of support from Dollfuss. However, the workers were reluctant to trust Winter's action: They wanted the state to first see "acts of reconciliation", but government officials demanded that workers "commit to the state" before they wanted to accommodate them. Winter tried in vain to break this vicious circle.

With the death of Dollfuss , Winter lost his most powerful supporter. In December 1934, the new government for the first time confiscated the weekly newspaper “Die Aktion”, the organ of “Aktion Winter”, because a printed letter to the editor was “inciting”. In the same month “Aktion Winter” was renamed “Österreichische Arbeiter-Aktion” (Ö. AA). "The action" was placed under prior censorship . In March 1935, Kurt Schuschnigg announced that the Ö. Incorporate AA into the Patriotic Front , as there was a risk that the action would be abused and it was essential to carry out all “awareness-raising and training work in agreement with the provincial captains”. At the beginning of April 1935, the “Social Working Group” (SAG) was founded, which was conceived as a political interest group for the workers within the Fatherland Front. The Ö. AA sent shop stewards to the SAG. However, after Gsur Verlag's permission to publish the "Aktion" was withdrawn in June 1935, the Ö withdrew. AA returned from the SAG in protest, which practically meant the end of "Aktion Winter".

On October 24, 1936, Winter was relieved of his post as mayor in the wake of the July Agreement with National Socialist Germany.

Escape from Vienna

A few days before the Anschluss in March 1938, Ernst Karl Winter fled to Switzerland on the urgent advice of Hans Kelsen . He had to leave his family behind for the time being. When the Gestapo came to the Winter family's house on March 14, 1938 and could not find Ernst Karl, they took his eldest son Ernst Florian with them to the police station. Due to the good political contacts of the family, however, the mother Margerete was able to get her son back home on the same day. After a few days, Ernst Karl called his wife in Vienna and asked her to follow immediately with the eight children via Vorarlberg to Switzerland. But they were also informed by the Swiss Federal Council that their family had been handed over to Nazi Germany . Therefore they fled to France with the support of the French minister Joseph Paul-Boncour . From there they were able to travel to England with the help of a correspondent for the London Times . On the way there she visited the Habsburg family in Steenokkerzeel . The Winter family actually wanted to stay in Great Britain, but the government there did not allow an Austrian government in exile either. For this reason and on the advice of Oswald Redlich and Hans Kelsen, Ernst Karl Winter decided to emigrate to the USA with his family.

Emigration and Engagement in Exile

In October 1938, the Winter family was one of the first non- Jewish emigrant families to reach New York by ship . Since everyone who arrived was very homesick and there were no Austrian clubs at the time, numerous emigrants met almost every Sunday in the winter farmhouse for Austrian evenings. At the beginning of 1939, Ernst Karl Winter founded the Austrian American Center, the first non-partisan national committee in New York . This organized regular demonstrations and marches and published weekly publications. The commitment of this group was also perceived very positively by the US Congress , which for all Austrians in exile and others. a. was a great advantage when choosing work and studies. Ernst Karl Winter received a professorship in New York.

Late return to Austria

After 1945, however, Winter's hope of a professorship in Graz was dashed . In March 1946 he sent a letter to Viktor Matejka regarding a return to Austria. It was not until 1955 that he returned with his family and taught as a lecturer in Vienna. In the last years of his life he dealt more and more with questions of religion.

His son Ernst Florian Winter made it his life's work to continue his father's spiritual and political path.

membership

He was a member of the student association Nibelungia Vienna in the ÖCV.

Recognitions

Memorial plaque in front of the Ernst-Karl-Winter-Hof

Ernst-Karl-Winter-Weg

In 1988 the Ernst-Karl-Winter-Weg in Vienna- Döbling was named after him.

Ernst-Karl-Winter-Hof

The municipal housing in 1180 Vienna, Thimiggasse 63–69 (year of construction: 1952–1955) was also named Ernst-Karl-Winter-Hof .
“His life's work was the policy of reconciliation with social democracy,” reads a stone plaque in front of one of the houses. According to Anton Pelinka, Winter did not fit into the policy of forgetting the post-war period, "He made the ÖVP and the SPÖ feel bad because he was right: both camps should have worked together in the fight against National Socialism."

Works

• The Social Metaphysics of Scholasticism , 1929
• Plato. The Sociological in the Doctrine of Ideas , 1930
• Rudolph IV of Austria , 2 vols., 1936
• Workers and the State , 1936
• Monarchy and Workers , 1936
• I. Seipel as a dialectical problem , 1966.
• (Ed.): Vienna political papers , 1933 ff.
• (Ed.): Viennese sociological studies , 1933 ff.
• The history of the Austrian people , ed. by Paul R. Tarmann. Platform Johannes Martinek Verlag, Perchtoldsdorf 2018 (written 1942–45)
• Christianity and Civilization , 1956
• with K. Kramert: St. Severin, the saint between East and West. Studies on the Severin problem , 2 vols., 1959 f.
• Collected works , ed. EF Winter, 7 vols., 1966

Literature about Ernst Karl Winter

• Erwin Bader , Ernst Karl Winter and the reconciliation of the political camps . In: Ulrich E. Zellberg (ed.), Conservative Profiles. Ideas & Practice in Politics between FM Radetzky, Karl Kraus and Alois Mock. Stocker, Graz 2003, pp. 363–378
• Karl Hans Heinz, EK Winter. A Catholic between Austria's fronts 1933–38 , 1984
• Robert Holzbauer, Ernst Karl Winter (1895–1959). Materials on his biography and on conservative Catholic political thinking in Austria 1918–1938 , Vienna 1992 online
• Franz Kittel, will you let Ernst Karl Winter go? In: The Freedom Fighter, H. 11 + 12, 1956 , especially p. 5
• Alfred Missong (ed.), Ernst Karl Winter. Pioneers of Dialogue , Vienna 1969. online
• Robert Schediwy , A Century of Illusions. Economy, Politics and Culture in the 20th Century , Bremen 2008, especially p. 260 ff.
• Norbert Leser (Ed.), "Ernst Karl Winter", In: Grenzgänger: Österreichische Geistesgeschichte in Totenbeschworben, Volume 1 , Vienna 1982, pp. 141–166
• Joseph Marko, Ernst Karl Winter's Critique of Ignaz Seipel. A critical contribution to the understanding of the state and democracy of the First Republic, in: Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd year (1983), pp. 128–149 and 207–225
• Joseph Marko, Ernst Karl Winter. Science and politics as a profession 1918–1938. , in: Geistiges Leben in Österreich der Erste Republik (1986), pp. 199–219
• Stifter, Christian H. (2014). Between spiritual renewal and restoration. American plans for denazification and democratic reorientation and the post-war reality of Austrian science 1941–1955 . Vienna - Cologne - Weimar: Böhlau, pp. 373–392.

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Austrian Action and the Relationship to National Socialism  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) (www.koel.at).
2. ↑ Ulrike Oedl: The country of exile Austria between 1933 and 1938: Gsur-Verlag , p. 10 (uni-salzburg.at).
3. ^ Catholic appeal to the Federal President. In:  Arbeiter-Zeitung , March 12, 1933, p. 5 (online at ANNO ). .
4. ↑ A Catholic Scholar's Warning. In:  Arbeiter-Zeitung , April 2, 1933, p. 4 (online at ANNO ). .
5. ↑ Letter from Ernst Karl Winter to Viktor Matejka regarding the return of Ernst Karl Winter and his family ( memento of the original from January 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , March 25, 1946 (doew.at).  
6. ↑ "Acta Studentica", 208 / March 2019, pp. 20f
7. ↑ cit. by Nicole Wohlgenannt in "Aktion Winter", date 3/2013, p. 32.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Karl Winter in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ernst Karl Winter - A Lone Fighter for Austria (by Norbert Leser, Die Furche, 2004)