Evžen Štern

Signature of Evžen Štern

Evžen Štern (born May 7, 1889 in Čelakowitz ; † November 12, 1942 in Mauthausen concentration camp ) was a Czechoslovak lawyer and politician.

Life

Štern came from a Czech-Jewish merchant family and attended the Academic Gymnasium in Prague and studied from 1909 law at the Czech Charles University in Prague and at the École des Hautes Études Sociales in Paris . In 1914 he received his doctorate in Prague. Štern was initially active in the realistic party of TG Masaryk until he became a member and functionary of the Czech Social Democracy in 1911. Above all, he advocated the cooperative idea and the idea of ​​workers' self-management and advocated Czech-Jewish assimilation. During the First World War he was editor of the weekly Socialistické listy. In the Czechoslovak state he turned against hasty socialization from the end of 1918 and soon became one of the most important practical social politicians. From 1918 to 1926 he headed the Labor Legislation Department at the Ministry of Social Welfare in Prague and was involved in several worker-friendly laws. In 1919 he was one of the founders of the Czechoslovak Social Institute in Prague, of which he became vice-president. From 1921 to 1926 Štern represented Czechoslovakia on the board of directors of the International Labor Office of the International Labor Organization in Geneva. From 1926, Štern was general secretary of the Central Social Insurance Institute in Prague until he became its director in 1935. In 1938 Štern joined the National Labor Party. In 1939 he was temporarily arrested, on the one hand for political reasons and on the other for anti-Semitic reasons. Štern also worked in the Věrni zůstaneme resistance group. From July 1942 he was imprisoned in the small fortress Theresienstadt , later deported to Mauthausen concentration camp, where he was murdered.

family

Evžen Štern was married to Růžena, née Štěrbová (1894–1963), who worked as a translator from German and French. Their son was the poet, literary critic and journalist Jan Štern (1924–2012).

Private library

Bookplate by Dr. Evžen Štern

A book from Evžen Štern's private library was found in the holdings of the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart while searching for Nazi looted property . It bears both Štern's handwritten signature and his bookplate.

Works (selection)

• Názory TG Masaryka. náboženství; realism; humanita; politika; mravnost; ženská otázka; literatura; osobní , Prague: Grosman a Svoboda 1910.
• Kollektivism c̆ili hospodár̆ské tendence socialismu , Prague: Nákladem ústredního dĕlnického knihkupectví 1912.
• O současném českožidovství , Karlino: Nákl. Týdenníku "Rozvoj" 1915.
• Socialism a imperialism; hospodářské příčiny světové války , Prague: Svečený 1918.
• Na cestě k hospodářské demokracii , Prague: [Masarykova sociologická společnost] 1926.
• Sociální vymoženosti a břemena u nás av cizině , Prague: Nákl. Výkonného výboru Československé sociálně Demokratické strany dělnické 1927.
• Ed .: Social insurance in Czechoslovakia , Prague: Orbis 1931 (publications of the social inst. In d. CSR; 55).
• Technický pokrok, pracovní doba a mzdy; sociálny řešení hospodářské krise , Prague: Ústřední dělnické knihk. a nakl. (Antonín Svěcený) 1934.
• Did the SSSR come? poznatky a úsudky z cesty Sovětským svazem , Prague 1935.

literature

• J. Kořalka: Štern, Evžen . In: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950, Vol. 13 (Lfg. 60, 2008), pp. 224f.
• Štern (Stern), Evžen (Eugen) , in: Biographical Lexicon for the History of the Bohemian Lands, Volume IV, Delivery 5: Munich: Collegium Carolinum 2015, p. 323.