Fritz Kolb

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fritz Kolb (born November 17, 1902 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died March 24, 1983 in Vienna) was an Austrian reform pedagogue and diplomat.

Life

Fritz Kolb was one of four children in a Viennese working-class family. He attended the teachers' college and graduated in 1922. Since no teachers were hired because of the post-war economic crisis , he managed to get by as a worker, occasionally as a daycare teacher for the Kinderfreunde . On the side he studied at the University of Vienna , which he received in 1930 with the dissertation Paths of sexual maturation in young people. A psychological study did her PhD. During this time he made a lifelong friendship with Karl Popper .

Kolb was involved in the working group of socialist educators and has been writing in the journal Sozialistische Erziehungsverigung since 1924 . Journal for the educational work of the socialist movement in Austria . Kolb was a member of the Alpinists 'Guild of Friends of Nature and organized a workers' expedition to the Caucasus in 1930 . In the same year he got a permanent position at a Vienna experimental school in the 20th district and married the educator Martha Grandl (1910-2000).

In February 1934 the Austro-Fascist corporate state established itself and banned the socialist organizations Kinderfreunde , Rote Falken and Naturfreunde . Kolb's social and political work was pushed underground, all the more after Austria's annexation to National Socialist Germany in 1938.

In 1938 Kolb and Ludwig Krenek were to lead a British-Austrian Himalayan tour organized by an international association of academics; the tour was postponed to the summer of 1939 because of the Sudeten crisis . Despite the increasing political uncertainty, it began in July 1939 with the boat trip from Marseille to Bombay . Martha Kolb had gone to England as a domestic helper to await developments there. On September 7th, 1939 the mountain Mulkila (6517 m) was climbed for the first time, after the descent the two German participants were interned as Enemy Aliens in Ahmednagar and later in Premnagar near Dehradun . In 1944 they were moved to Purandhar near Poona . In the camps, they were harassed by supporters of National Socialism. In 1944 he was released from British internment as an anti-fascist and took a position as a history teacher at the American high school in Hill Station Kodaikanal in South India. With Krenek he made another mountain tour in the Garhwal Himalayas in 1945 and to Paddar in the Kishtwar district (Kashmir) in 1946 . In 1946 he reunited with his wife in India; one of her two daughters is the climate researcher Helga Kromp-Kolb .

In 1948 the three of them were able to return to Austria, where Kolb initially worked as a secondary school teacher. He was then summoned to the OEEC in Paris as a representative of Austria , then became head of the Austrian legation to the ECSC in Luxembourg and from 1960 to 1963 ambassador to Pakistan . In 1967 he retired.

Fonts (selection)

  • Books for my child A guide for parents, teachers and educators . Vienna: Fountain of Youth, 1927
  • We wander . Jungbrunnen Publishing House, 1931
  • Paths to height; Ten year book of the Alpinists' Guild . Vienna: Verlag der Alpinistengilde in the tourist association "Die Naturfreunde", 1931
  • Chok. Story of a dog . Vienna: Jungbrunnen Publishing House, 1955
  • We are hiking in the distance A guide for leaders of children's excursions . Vienna: Fountain of Youth, 1956
  • Loner in the Himalayas . Munich: Bruckmann, 1957
    • Himalayan Venture . Lawrence PR Wilson in translation. London: Lutterworth Press, 1959
  • America's future, Europe's fate . Vienna: Europaverlag, 1975
  • It turned out quite differently: considerations of an aging socialist . Foreword by Karl R. Popper . Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1981; a processing of his party political disappointments
  • Life in the retort: ​​as an Austrian alpinist in Indian internment camps . Preface by Heinz Fischer. Edited by Margit Franz and Karl Wimmler. Graz: Clio, 2014 ISBN 978-3-902542-42-7 ; a review in the Jewish cultural magazine "David" (issue 105, no. 7/2015)

literature

  • Margit Franz, Karl Wimmler: The socialist and reform pedagogue Fritz Kolb in India , in: Margit Franz, Heimo Halbrainer (Hrsg.): Going east - going south: Austrian exile in Asia and Africa . Graz: Clio, 2014 ISBN 978-3-902542-34-2 , pp. 475-481

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Popper: Starting points. My intellectual development , Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, 1979, p. 101
personal data
SURNAME Kolb, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian reform pedagogue and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH 17th November 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1983
Place of death Vienna