Karl Pfeifer (journalist)

Karl Pfeifer (2008)

Karl Pfeifer (born August 22, 1928 in Baden near Vienna ) is an Austrian journalist .

Life

Karl Pfeifer fled to Hungary with his parents in 1938 , where he joined the socialist-Zionist youth organization Haschomer Hatzair in 1940 . Even before the German occupation of Hungary in World War II on January 5, 1943, as one of 50 young people and children, he managed to escape to Palestine in an adventurous way . He lived in a kibbutz , served in the elite Palmach troops from 1946 and, after the establishment of the state of Israel, in the Israeli army until 1949 .

In 1951 he returned to Austria. From 1982 to 1995 he was the editor of the community , the official organ of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Vienna .

In this capacity, he pointed out in an article in 1995 that the political scientist Werner Pfeifenberger posted "Nazi tones" in the yearbook of the Freedom Academy because he played down the Hitler regime and accused the Jews of having challenged Hitler Germany to war in 1933. Pfeifer was then sued by Pfeifenberger and acquitted in two instances. After the Vienna public prosecutor's office brought charges against Pfeifenberger for “ National Socialist re-employment ” in 2000 , he committed suicide. The editor of the right-wing magazine Zur Zeit , Andreas Mölzer , then referred to Pfeifer in a broadcast to his subscribers as "part of a hunting party" which Pfeifenberger had "driven into suicide" - the "Jewish journalist" had the "legal avalanche against Pfeifenberger" triggered. Pfeifer has now sued for compensation and was therefore rejected by the Austrian courts. On November 15, 2007, Pfeifer received a judgment from the European Court of Human Rights for violating respect for his private life under Article 8; At the same time, the Republic of Austria was sentenced to 5,000 euros in compensation for the non-material damage caused by the failure of the courts.

From the beginning of the 1990s until 2005, Pfeifer worked as a Viennese correspondent for Israeli radio and as a freelance journalist for the monthly anti-fascist London magazine Searchlight and the Jewish internet magazine haGalil .

In 2008, Mary Kreutzer and Thomas Schmidinger produced a documentary about his life for the Society for Critical Research on Antisemitism : Between All Chairs. The life paths of the journalist Karl Pfeifer .

Among other things, Pfeifer has documented for decades how strongly anti-Semitic nationalism has shaped Hungary.

Awards

• 2003: Joseph-Samuel-Bloch-Medal of the campaign against anti-Semitism in Austria
• 2018: Decoration of Honor in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria (1952)

Fonts

Monographs

• Not always very comfortable ... Verlag Der Apfel, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-85450-151-X .
• with Theodor Much: Brotherly dispute in the house of Israel: Judaism between fundamentalism and enlightenment . K & S, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-218-00667-8 .
• To Palestine and back: A Jewish way of life. Edition Steinbauer, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-902494-62-7 .
• Again and again Hungary. Autobiographical Notes, Nationalism and Anti-Semitism in the Political Culture of Hungary - Texts 1979 to 2016 . Edition Critic, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-946193-10-4 .

Others

• In the Palmach . Memories from 1948. In: Jungle. Supplement to jungle world No. 6, February 11, 2010, pp. 9–12 (including about Hassan Salameh in 1944 as an agent of the Nazis). [1]

Web links

• Doron Rabinovici: For Karl Pfeifer. First laudation on the occasion of his 90th birthday in DÖW in the online edition of FORVM [2]
• Gerhard Oberschlick: Dear Karl! Second laudation on the occasion of his 90th birthday in DÖW in the online edition of FORVM [3]
• Literature by and about Karl Pfeifer in the catalog of the German National Library

Footnotes

1. ↑ Roland Kaufhold: Pfeifer against Pfeifenberger. The struggles of an Austrian journalist and Shoah survivor. In: Neues Deutschland, 25./26. August 2018, p. 27
2. ↑ Harald Fidler : After the human rights court again by instances. Der Standard , May 13, 2008, p. 18
3. ^ Judgment of the ECHR of November 15, 2007
4. ^ Website of the film ( Memento of the original from May 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ Film review by Roland Kaufhold on haGalil , August 2, 2011
6. ↑ sueddeutsche.de / Oliver Das Gupta: Review of Pfeifer's 2016 book.
7. ^ Acceptance speech by Karl Pfeifer hagalil.com, December 4, 2003, accessed on November 29, 2012
8. ↑ will be awarded on July 4, 2018 - personal communication