Fritz Weber (writer)

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Fritz Weber as a lieutenant during the First World War

Fritz Weber (born June 4, 1895 in Vienna ; † June 1, 1972 ibid) was an Austrian writer and storyteller .

Life

In the first World War

From 1910 to 1915 he attended the artillery - cadet school in Traiskirchen (Lower Austria). In May 1915 he moved to the Verle tank factory (300 men, 10 artillery pieces, 15 machine guns) on the Italian front during the First World War as ensign of the fortress artillery battalion No. 6 . There he commanded a traditional battery and a machine gun division and was promoted to lieutenant on September 1, 1915. In his war books he describes how the commander and most of the crew evacuated the fort in the course of heavy Italian bombardments, and that Weber remained at the Verle plant with another ensign and 50 men of the crew. After the crew returned under a new commander, Weber fought at Fort Verle until June 1916. During this time he met Luis Trenker and they became friends. The fort was later largely cleared.

Weber's war mission after his time in Fort Verle can only be reconstructed from his war books. Accordingly, he took part in the South Tyrol offensive in 1916, witnessed the demolition of Monte Cimone in September 1916 and also fought on Monte Pasubio . In April 1917 his unit was relocated to the Sugana Valley and in August 1917 to the Isonzo Front . Here Weber took part in the Eleventh and Twelfth Isonzo Battles and, in June 1918, also in the Second Battle of the Piave . After the collapse of the Danube Monarchy, he returned as a captain with his battery across the Semmering to Vienna , where he handed over the remaining equipment to the arsenal .

Interwar period

After the war Weber studied law and political science for six semesters before he worked for the Italian-Austrian border surveying commission on the surveying of the new border at the Brenner Pass . After returning to Vienna, he began to work as a journalist and writer. In 1923 he published the Dawn Festival . A German hero song . From 1925 he devoted himself exclusively to writing. Among other things, he was an employee of the New Free Press . In 1926 he married Herta Demmer. In 1930 the utopian novel Die Toten der Svea (1930) appeared. From 1931 he wrote several books about the war events on the southern front and the twelve Isonzo battles in the First World War. Translations have also been published in Italy. In the second half of the 1930s Weber wrote novels again. The result was the collaboration with Luis Trenker, for whom he worked as a " ghostwriter ". As a result of this collaboration, the novels Sperrfort Rocca Alta , Der Feuerteufel , Hauptmann Ladurner and Sterne über die Gipfel appeared before and during the Second World War . Fritz Weber also wrote the script for Luis Trenker's film Der Rebell .

At the same time Weber began to work again as a journalist. He became an editor of daily newspapers and the weekend edition of the Wiener Tagblatt . According to his own statements, he was a member of the Greater German People's Party from 1919 to 1932 . On March 27, 1933, he joined the Austrian NSDAP . He was also a member of the SA . After the NSDAP was banned, he was dismissed from his position as editor and moved to Munich , where he had been the chief editor and editor of Welt am Sonntag since January 1, 1934 . Shortly after the annexation of Austria , he returned to Vienna in March 1938, where he became chief editor of the Neue Freie Presse and the Neuen Wiener Tagblatt and presented himself as a National Socialist.

World War II and after

In 1940 Weber was drafted into military service as a captain. He refused to run a reporting company and came to Greece and Yugoslavia, where he worked on the staff. Towards the end of the war he was briefly on the Italian front and in 1945 was captured by the Americans. After his release he lived in Grieskirchen (Upper Austria) and Mattsee (Salzburg).

Weber's divorce took place in the late 1940s. On the occasion of a reading from his book The End of an Army , he met Gertraud Athenstaedt - a daughter of the inventor Viktor Kaplan  - in Unterach am Attersee in 1949 , whom he married in 1949. From this marriage there are two sons and a daughter.

At the beginning of the 1950s there was a break with Luis Trenker after he had denied Fritz Weber's authorship of the above-mentioned books. On August 25, 1954, Fritz Weber brought an action for declaratory judgment on this issue . In 1956 he wrote Hurray, the chamois for Julius Ringel ! A memorial book for the soldiers of the 5th Mountain Division . In 1958 he moved to Vienna. In 1961 he got divorced again. From 1962 he lived in Salzburg .

In 1970 Weber fell seriously ill and died in Vienna in 1972. He was buried at the Mattsee village cemetery.

plant

Weber's best-known works are his war memoirs and war books from the 1930s. They were reissued again and again after 1945. In addition to Luis Trenker and the military historian Heinz von Lichem , Weber is the most famous “memory producer” for the events on the Austrian south-western front. According to Christa Hämmerle, Weber is “a particularly much quoted protagonist of the culture of remembrance of the First World War, which has long been determined by officers”. Especially since he also deals with the fate of the soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian Army, he also figures in Austrian military historiography as the “Austrian Remarque ”, an attribution that Hämmerle criticizes. In addition, Weber published a number of novels before and after 1945.

Works

Novels

  • The dead of Svea , 1930
  • The drum of God , 1936
  • In the fire circle of love , 1938
  • Sperrfort Rocca Alta , 1938 (Luis Trenker, written by Fritz Weber)
  • Der Feuerteufel , 1940 (Luis Trenker, written by Fritz Weber, text largely identical to Der Mann von Rinn )
  • Captain Ladurner , 1940 (Luis Trenker, written by Fritz Weber)
  • Stars above the peaks (Luis Trenker, written by Fritz Weber)
  • The Torn Sky , 1948
  • The Roman fountain , 1943
  • Martin Rupp's odyssey , 1952
  • The man from Rinn , 1949
  • The mountain is silent , 1951
  • Paradise without angels , 1957
  • Immortal beloved you! , 1960

Novellas

  • Front comrades , 1935

Memoirs / Experience reports The memoirs consist of four parts that did not appear in chronological order and were later reissued under different titles.

  • The End of the Army (1931) [Part 4]
  • Human wall on the Isonzo (1931) [Part 2]
  • Storm on the Piave (1931) [part 3]
  • Grenades and Avalanches (1932) [Part 1]

New editions of all 4 parts under the titles The End of an Army (1936, 1938) and The End of the Old Army (1959).

War history

  • Isonzo 1915, 1933
  • Isonzo 1916, 1933
  • Isonzo 1917, 1933
  • Alpine War , 1934
  • Hurray the Gams , 1956 (Julius Ringel, written by Fritz Weber)

Italian translations

  • Tappe della disfatta (The end of an army), Milano: Mursia 1965, new edition 2004 ISBN 88-425-3324-6
  • Dal Monte Nero a Caporetto (Isonzo 1915, 1916, 1917), Milano: Mursia 1965, new edition 2006 ISBN 88-425-3684-9
  • Guerra sulle Alpi 1915–1917 (Alpine War), Milano: Mursia 1995 ISBN 88-425-1795-X

Poems, satires, grotesques

  • The last word in wisdom , 1951

literature

  • Christa Hämmerle: It is always the man who decides the fight, and not the weapon ... In: Hermann JW Kuprian (Ed.): The First World War in the Alpine region . Innsbruck 2006, pp. 35-60. [This essay analyzes Fritz Weber as a war writer.]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christa Hämmerle: "It is always the man who decides the fight, and not the weapon ...". The masculinity of the Austro-Hungarian mountain warrior in the military culture of remembrance. In: Hermann JW Kuprian (ed.): The First World War in the Alpine region . Innsbruck 2006, p. 56.
  2. ↑ August 25, 1954 . chroniknet.de; Retrieved July 23, 2010.
  3. ↑ a b Christa Hämmerle: "Forty months ago we were soldiers, six months ago we were men ...". On the historical context of a crisis of masculinity in Austria. In: L'Homme. European Journal of Feminist History 19, 2 (2008), p. 53.
personal data
SURNAME Weber, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer and storyteller
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1972
Place of death Vienna