Fritz Jensen

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Fritz Jensen (Chinese name: Yǎn Fěidé严斐德; born December 26, 1903 in Prague as Friedrich Albert Jerusalem ; † April 11, 1955 ) was an Austrian writer , doctor and communist .

biography

Fritz Jerusalem was born in Prague in 1903 into a liberal Jewish factory owner family. He was the son of the successful Austrian writer Else Jerusalem . In 1913 his family moved to Vienna, where he went to school and first attended the Piarist grammar school and, after being expelled from school for disciplinary reasons, switched to the Maroltinger grammar school, where he passed the Matura in 1923. His mother was the well-known author Else Jerusalem. Fritz Jerusalem studied medicine from 1923 to 1929, was part of progressive intellectual circles (the "Felonen", Elias Canetti , Karl Kraus etc.) and joined the labor movement. In 1929 he received his doctorate, joined the Communist Party and founded the agitprop group "Shock Brigade". In 1930 he became a member of the Association of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers in Austria . In the same year he began working as a secondary doctor in Kassel and in 1931 he became an assistant doctor in the Lainz hospital. In 1933 he married Ruth Domino , the marriage failed after a few years.

During the uprising against Austrofascism in February 1934, Fritz Jerusalem set up a medical service in Vienna that secretly housed seriously wounded Schutzbund members in the Lainz hospital and smuggled particularly vulnerable fighters with his motorcycle into Czechoslovakia. In July 1934 Fritz Jerusalem was arrested and interned in the Wöllersdorf detention camp, where he led martial arts and study circles. After his release in April 1935 he settled in Vienna as a general practitioner and fought as chief physician of the XIII. International Brigade and the 42nd Division from August 1936 with the International Brigades on the side of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War .

Fritz Jensen fled to China via France and Great Britain in May 1939 , where he worked for the Chinese Red Cross and finally came to the areas liberated by the Communist Party of China , where he worked on establishing basic medical care in the War of Resistance against Japan and later in the Civil War . He traveled u. a. to London to find supporters for his projects together with Rolf Becker and other doctors. In 1945 Jensen married a Chinese woman.

In 1948 Fritz Jensen returned to Austria, where he worked as an editor for the Volksstimme , the organ of the Communist Party of Austria . His book on the Chinese civil war was published in Vienna and Berlin. In 1953, however, he moved back to China, from where he made trips to Korea and Vietnam. In Vietnam he interviewed Ho Chi Minh and Austrian prisoners of war in 1954 .

In April 1955, as a correspondent for Volksstimme and Neues Deutschland , the newspaper of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany , he took a flight from Hong Kong to Bandung in Indonesia to report on the conference of Asian and African states . Originally, Zhou Enlai should also be on the plane . After a five-hour flight, a time bomb exploded in the engine room and a fire broke out. While trying to make an emergency landing in the water, the plane broke. Ten other passengers died with Fritz Jensen, mainly Chinese delegation members and journalists, as well as five of the eight crew members. The Taiwanese secret service carried out the attack. There are indications that the CIA had prior knowledge of the attack or was even the initiator. Fritz Jensen was buried in the Babaoshan Heroes' Cemetery in Beijing .

Works

  • China wins (Vienna, Stern 1949; Berlin, Dietz 1950).
  • The bridge from Berlin to Beijing (Berlin, Congress 1951).
  • Experienced Vietnam (Vienna, Stern 1955; Berlin, Dietz 1955; Vienna, Buchgemeinde 1955).
  • Victim and winner (Berlin, Dietz 1955).
  • Hu Tschiau-mu [Hu Qiaomu]: 30 years of history of the Communist Party of China (Berlin, Dietz 1954); translated by Fritz Jensen.

literature

  • Eva Barilich: Fritz Jensen. Doctor on many fronts. Biographical texts on the history of the labor movement 5; Vienna, Globus 1991, ISBN 3853642136 .
  • Alfred Kantorowicz: German diary . Munich, Kindler 1961.
  • Wendell Minnick: I Was a CIA Agent in India. Analysis. Createspace, United States, 2015, ISBN 9781507892404 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Mettenleiter : Personal reports, memories, diaries and letters from German-speaking doctors. Supplements and supplements III (I – Z). In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 22, 2003, pp. 269-305, here: pp. 269 f.
  2. ^ Andreas Mettenleiter: Personal reports, memories, diaries and letters from German-speaking doctors. Supplements and supplements III (I – Z). In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 22, 2003, pp. 269-305, here: p. 269.
  3. ↑ Steve Tsang: Target Zhou Enlai: The "Kashmir Princess" Incident of 1955, in: The China Quarterly. Number 139, September 1994.
  4. ↑ Wendell Minnick: I Was a CIA Agent in India. Analysis. Published by Createspace, United States, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Jensen, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, doctor and communist
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1955