Karl Steinhardt

Karl Steinhardt (born August 1, 1875 in Gyöngyös ; † January 21, 1963 in Vienna ) was an Austrian printer and politician ( KPÖ ). Steinhardt was a co-founder of the Communist Party of Austria in November 1918 and, as its delegate in 1919, one of the co-founders of the Communist International in Moscow . From April 1945 to February 1946 Steinhardt was Viennese Vice Mayor and City Councilor for Welfare. From 1945 to 1949 he held a mandate in the Vienna state parliament and local council .

Life

Childhood in Vienna, first politicization and years of traveling around the world (1875-1913)

Steinhardt was born on August 1, 1875 in Gyöngyös , Hungary , where his father was serving as a sergeant in a hussar regiment at the time. Two years later he came to Vienna with his parents , where he began an apprenticeship as a printer in 1890 after completing elementary and community school. In 1894 he became a member of the Social Democratic Party in Simmering and the printing union. In 1894, after the end of his apprenticeship, he traveled through Austria , Germany , Switzerland and Italy until Steinhardt established himself in Hamburg in November 1900 . Hamburg became Steinhardt's "second home" and remained the center of his life until 1913. From 1904 to 1908 he worked as a ship printer on large passenger steamers, which took him to Buenos Aires and New York , to West Africa , East Asia and Japan . In 1909/10 Steinhardt belonged in London to the workers' education association founded by Karl Marx , for which he worked as editor of the London People's Newspaper .

War opponent and founding member of the Austrian Communist Party (1914–1918)

Expelled from Hamburg for political reasons, Steinhardt returned to Vienna in October 1913, where he was again active in the Social Democratic Party and the trade union before and during World War I, until he was expelled from the SDAPÖ in 1916 for anti-war propaganda . In 1917 he participated in the founding of a group of excluded and resigned socialists, which also appeared in the January strike and June strike of 1918. When the Communist Party of German Austria was founded in November 1918 by members of various left-opposition groups, Steinhardt and his “Communist Group” played the central role alongside the group around Elfriede Friedländer-Eisler and Paul Friedländer .

When the Republic of Austria was proclaimed on November 12, 1918 , Steinhardt gave a speech in front of parliament in line with the political goals of the KP (D) Ö, which was followed by the well-known tumultuous scenes. As a result of these events, he and Elfriede Friedländer-Eisler were arrested by the Vienna Police President Johann Schober on November 14, 1918 , but had to be released two weeks later.

Austrian delegate to the Communist International in Moscow (1919–1921)

At the 1st party congress of the KP (D) Ö in Vienna on February 9, 1919, Steinhardt was elected a member of the party executive and general secretary of the party, as well as a delegate to the upcoming international congress of communist revolutionary parties and groups in Moscow. After a three-week trip that took him through the fronts of the civil war, Steinhardt arrived in Moscow on March 3, 1919, where the conference had already opened the day before. He gave a fiery and spirited speech in which he reported in optimistic terms about the Austrian labor movement and the political development in Austria. The next day, with significant support from Lenin and other delegates, he submitted the Austrian motion to found the Communist International , whereupon on March 4, 1919 the unanimous decision was made to constitute the founding congress of the Communist International (Comintern). On his return trip from Moscow, Steinhardt was taken prisoner in Romania after his plane was shot down on May 1, 1919, sentenced to death by a field court for espionage and later pardoned for forced labor. After an intervention by the International Red Cross , he was able to return to Vienna in January 1920.

Steinhardt was also a delegate at the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern in July / August 1920 in Petrograd and Moscow, where he was elected a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (EKKI). In this function and as the party representative of the KPÖ at the EKKI, Steinhardt lived in Moscow until July 1921, where he again took part as a delegate of the KPÖ at the 3rd World Congress of the Comintern in June / July 1921.

"Simple party member" in Germany and Austria (1921–1945)

In November 1921 Steinhardt went to Bremen, where he worked for the KPD newspaper Nordwestdeutsches Echo . Expelled as an "annoying foreigner", he became active in Hamburg from April 1922, where he worked for the Soviet trade agency. Expelled from Hamburg in 1925, he worked for the Soviet trade agency in Berlin until June 1925 . After his expulsion from Germany, he returned to Austria, where he also worked in the commercial agency of the USSR until November 1928. Long years of unemployment followed. In the KPÖ he was active as a functionary on a district scale. In the years 1938 to April 1945 he worked again in his profession as a printer. In 1938 and 1943 Steinhardt was briefly arrested twice by the Gestapo, and his apartment was searched three times.

Local politician of the KPÖ in Vienna (1945–1951)

In April 1945 Steinhardt was appointed Deputy Mayor of Vienna by the Soviet city commandant Major General Alexej Blagodatow at the suggestion of the KPÖ . In the first Viennese city administration after the liberation of Vienna by the Red Army, Steinhardt received the department for welfare, which made him responsible for child and adult welfare. As a result of the November 1945 elections, Steinhardt resigned from the Vienna City Senate in February 1946 . From December 13, 1945 to December 5, 1949 he was a member of the KPÖ in the Vienna state parliament and municipal council . At the 13th party congress of the KPÖ in April 1946 he was elected to the party's central committee, of which he was a member until the 15th party congress in November 1951. Until April 1948 Steinhardt was also a member of the Vienna City Council of the KPÖ and until April 1950 a member of the Vienna State Committee. In 1946 he also served for a short time as the Viennese chairman of the children's and parents' organization Kinderland, which was founded in 1945 .

Karl Steinhardt died on January 21, 1963 in Vienna and is buried at Neustifter Friedhof (group E, no. 15).

Works

• Reunion with Moscow: travel impressions , Soviet Information Service 1951
• Memoirs of a Viennese Worker , ed. and introduced by Manfred Mugrauer. Vienna: Alfred Klahr Society 2013 (Biographical Texts on the History of the Austrian Labor Movement, Vol. 7), ISBN 978-3-9503137-2-7

literature

• Felix Czeike: Historical Lexicon Vienna . Vol. 5, Vienna 1997
• Magistrate of the City of Vienna (Ed.): The City Council of the City of Vienna, the Vienna State Parliament, the Vienna City Senate, the Vienna State Government 1945–1985 . Vienna 1986
• Manfred Mugrauer: Karl Steinhardt (1875–1963). A biographical sketch , in: Karl Steinhardt: Memoirs of a Viennese Worker , ed. and introduced by Manfred Mugrauer. Vienna: Alfred Klahr Society 2013 (Biographical Texts on the History of the Austrian Labor Movement, Vol. 7), pp. 7–79

Web links

• Pioneer of the Austrian workers' movement , KPÖ.