Lisa Fittko

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Lisa Fittko (born Elizabeth Ekstein ; born August 23, 1909 in Ungvár , Ung County , Austria-Hungary ; † March 12, 2005 in Chicago , Illinois , United States ) was an Austrian resistance fighter against the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany and during World War II Escape helper across the Pyrenees between France and Spain .

She was born as the daughter of Ignaz Isak Ekstein and Julie Schalk as the second child of their parents; her older brother was called Hans Ekstein (1908–1984).

She became known as a writer from 1985 through her autobiographical publications about the time of the Second World War. The first in particular, "My way across the Pyrenees, memories 1940/41" (Munich: Hanser 1985) was discussed frequently and translated into many languages.

Life

Lisa Fittko grew up in Budapest and Vienna , where her father Ignaz (Isak) Ekstein, a Jewish journalist, was co-editor since 1916, later owner of the left-wing cultural-political journal Die Waage , for which he wrote important articles under the pseudonym "EK Stein" . Israel Zangwill , Olive Schreiner and Oskar Baum were among the authors of the paper . Her mother, Julie "Teriko" Ekstein, was the sister of the Viennese painter Malva Schalk . In 1922 the family moved to Berlin . Here Lisa Fittko was a member of the “ Socialist Student Union ”.

In early 1933 she was denounced for producing and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets and initially fled to Prague . With her future husband, Hans Fittko , a political refugee and journalist who had also come from Berlin and whom she married in Havana in 1948 , she fled to Paris via Basel and Apeldoorn in 1938 . In 1940 she was interned in the Camp de Gurs as an unwanted foreigner . After she managed to escape from the camp, she lived in Marseille and near the coastal town of Banyuls at the foot of the Pyrenees , where the local mayor Vincent Azéma issued her false papers.

With Hans Fittko, she organized the escape of people threatened by the German occupation and the Vichy regime in collaboration with the escape aid organization “ Emergency Rescue Committee ” and its representative in Marseille, Varian M. Fry . She described this phase of her life in the work My Way across the Pyrenees . When Walter Benjamin led her across the border into Spain in September 1940, she began working as an escape assistant. Benjamin was accompanied by the photographer Henny Gurland , born in Aachen . Meyer, and their son Joseph (José) Gurland. Later she led many more people across the Pyrenees, e. B. the journalist and editor of the Pariser Tageblatt (s) Georg Bernhard , the widow of the social democratic Reichstag member Otto Wels or the socialist historian Henry M. Pachter . A comprehensive appraisal of her political work is still pending, as she is remembered almost exclusively as Walter Benjamin's escape helper. In 1941 she managed to escape to Cuba , where she worked in Havana at a training center for Jewish refugees. Various short stories originate from this period, most of which are unpublished. Her friends in Havana included Fritz Lamm and Emma Kann , who also lived here in exile.

In 1948 Lisa Fittko moved to Chicago in the USA with her husband Hans . In Chicago, she worked as a foreign language correspondent and clerk at the university, and obtained American citizenship. She was politically involved in the American peace movement. She died in Chicago in 2005.

Hans Fittko was honored with the Yad Vashem Medal in Israel . He died in 1960.

Commemoration

At the point where the escape route used by the Fittkos to help escape begins in Banyuls-sur-Mer on the French border, a memorial was set up for Hans and Lisa Fittko in January 2001. This is a reminder that, at risk of death, they enabled many people persecuted by the Nazis to flee to Spain. A hiking trail begins at the foot of this memorial, on which you can follow the old escape route in about six hours, the "F route" formerly named after the Fittkos from Banyuls via Cerbère to Portbou, Spain. Since June 24, 2007, this path has been officially named "Chemin Walter Benjamin" and marked as a historical hiking trail.

Walter Benjamin took this path under dramatic circumstances while fleeing the National Socialists on September 25 and 26, 1940. The Spanish authorities did not allow the fugitive to enter because of a new decree, but wanted to send him back to France, whereupon Benjamin spent the night took his life on September 26-27, 1940 in the Hotel Francia de Portbou to avoid extradition. The walk-in landscape sculpture Passagen by the Israeli artist Dani Karavan is reminiscent of this . There is also a memorial stone in memory of Walter Benjamin in the Portbou cemetery. In the opera Shadowtime , Benjamin's death was treated musically and scenically by Charles Bernstein (libretto) and Brian Ferneyhough (composition).

About the Fittkos several documentaries were shot, including the 1998 , but we, we said, we do not give ... .

In her Landgericht , which was awarded the German Book Prize in 2012 , the writer Ursula Krechel set a literary monument to the married couple Hans and Lisa Fittko.

Works

  • My way across the Pyrenees. Memories 1940/41. dtv, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-423-62189-3 .
  • Solidarity undesirable. My escape through Europe. Memories 1933–1940. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-446-15188-5 .

Interviews

  • Brian Britt with Lisa Fittko: The Aura of Benjamin's Death. As an appendix in: Brian Britt: Walter Benjamin & the Bible. Continuum, New York 1996.
  • Hanne and Hubert Eckart with Lisa Fittko: My biography lies in world history. Abacus Medien 2006, audio book (3 CDs).

literature

  • Siglinde Bolbecher , Konstantin Kaiser (Ed.): Lisa Fittko. In: Lexicon of Austrian exile literature. Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft, Vienna & Munich 2000, pp. 198–199, ISBN 3-216-30548-1 .
  • Hans Jörgen Gerlach : The angel of history. On the death of the resistance fighter Lisa Fittko. In: Zwischenwelt (magazine for the culture of exile and resistance), 22nd year, no. 1/2. Vienna August 2005, pp. 7-9, ISSN  1606-4321
  • Foundation Jewish Museum Berlin & Foundation House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany (Ed.): Home and Exile. Emigration of German Jews after 1933. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Jewish Museum Berlin . Jewish publishing house in Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2006, ISBN 3-633-54222-1 .
  • Ursula Krechel : Regional Court . Jung and Jung, Salzburg / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-99027-024-0 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ https://gw.geneanet.org/pfdm?lang=en&n=schalek&oc=0&p=julie , accessed on July 19, 2020
  2. ↑ Gestures of Humanity. During the Second World War, many helpers looked after the refugees in southern France . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. October 27, 2018 ( nzz.ch ).
  3. ↑ Ursula Krechel: Regional Court. P. 305 ff.
  4. ↑ Claudia Diemar: Passages in freedom. The "Chemin Walter Benjamin" recalls the philosopher's flight over the Pyrenees exactly seventy years ago. (No longer available online.) In: Berliner Zeitung . berliner-zeitung.de, September 4, 2010, formerly in the original ; accessed on August 13, 2014 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.berliner-zeitung.de
  5. ↑ Chemin Walter Benjamin, the F-way. uebersmeer.at, May 19, 2012, accessed on August 13, 2014 .
  6. ↑ The website historia-viva.net on Walter-Benjamin-Weg offers a multimedia app ( see description of the app ) that explains Lisa Fittko's importance for the escape from National Socialism and lets her have her own say; accessed December 11, 2015.
  7. ↑ Ursula Krechel: Regional Court. 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Fittko, Lisa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ekstein, Elizabeth (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer and resistance fighter in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Ungvár , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 2005
Place of death Chicago , Illinois , United States