Julius Braunthal

Julius Braunthal (born May 5, 1891 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † April 28, 1972 in Teddington , England ) was an Austro-British historian . In the interwar period he was a social democratic journalist and also after 1945 a functionary and contemporary witness of the labor movement . One of his main achievements is the three-volume history of the Internationale , which was published in German between 1961 and 1971.

Life

During the First World War Braunthal served in the Austro-Hungarian army , most recently as a lieutenant. Even before 1914 he was active in the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP), became editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung in 1924, was editor -in- chief of the popular daily newspaper Das Kleine Blatt from 1927 to 1934 and, from 1929, also as editor-in-chief of the illustrated newspaper Der Kuckuck .

Braunthal was arrested in February 1934 and imprisoned in the Wöllersdorf detention camp for one year . After his release, he left Austria. He first moved to Belgium , where his brother Alfred Braunthal lived, and had lived in England since 1938 , where his sister Bertha Braunthal had emigrated from Germany in 1933 after the Nazi seizure of power . From 1938 until the outbreak of the Second World War he was deputy secretary in the Socialist International, which he co-founded .

After 1945 Braunthal was secretary of the committee of the International Socialist Conference (Comisco, 1949–1951) and from 1951 to 1956 he was the secretary of the Socialist International. Then he shifted the focus to the writing of history. From 1961 to 1971 he wrote the three-volume History of the International , which deals with the institutional development of international socialism from the First International to the present.

Publications

• The workers' councils in German Austria. Their history and politics, the deliberations and resolutions of the Second Reich Conference, the organizational statute , published on behalf of the Reich Executive Committee of the Workers' Councils . Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Vienna 1919.
• The Vienna July Days 1927. A memorial book . Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Vienna 1927.
• 40 years May 1st . Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Vienna 1929.
• Festschrift for the 2nd Workers' Olympiad . Workers' Association for Sport and Physical Culture in Austria, Vienna 1931.
• Need Germany survive? Gollancz, London 1943.
• In Search of the Millennium . Gollancz, London 1945.
  • German by Franziska Schulz: In Search of the Millennium , Nest-Verlag, Nuremberg 1948.
• The Paradox of Nationalism. An epilogue to the Nuremberg Trials, common-sense reflections in the atomic age . St. Botolph Publishing, London 1946.
• The Tragedy of Austria . Gollancz, London 1948.
• In search of the millennium . Europa Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Stuttgart / Zurich 1964.
• History of the International , 3 volumes, JHW ​​Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1961–1971, and further editions and reprints.

Awards

• 1971: Prize of the City of Vienna for Journalism

literature

• Brigitte Robach: Julius Braunthal as a political publicist. A life in the service of socialism. Dissertation. University of Vienna, 1983.
• Shlomo Shafir : Julius Braunthal and His Postwar Mediation Efforts between German and Israeli Socialists . Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 47, No. 3/4 (summer-autumn 1985), pp. 267-280. in JSTOR .
• Braunthal, Julius , in: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 89

Web links

• Literature by and about Julius Braunthal in the catalog of the German National Library
• Julius Braunthal. In: dasrotewien.at - Web dictionary of the Viennese social democracy. SPÖ Vienna (Ed.)
• Reference to Braunthal's estate in the International Institute of Social History
• Radio portrait of Julius Braunthal in the Ö1 series chroniclers, reporters, scouts from 2003.