Lucian Brunner

Lucian Brunner (born September 29, 1850 in Hohenems , † April 15, 1914 in Vienna ) was an Austrian lawyer , functionary and banker .

Life and education

The Brunner family had lived in Hohenems since 1784. The father, Marco (Marchs) Brunner (born September 28, 1817 Hohenems; d. Ibid. 18 July 1888), had in Hohenems a manufactured goods business and later banker . The mother, Regina Brunner, b. Brettauer (born August 27, 1826 in Hohenems; died on April 26, 1855) was a housewife.

Lucian Brunner was married to Malwine (née Mandel, born in Proßnitz , Moravia on February 28, 1860; died in Altaussee , Styria on July 28, 1899) for the first time from 1884 . He is the father of

• Felix Robert Brunner (born April 28, 1885 in St. Gallen, died August 14, 1963 in Mödling ),
• Heinrich (Harry) Brunner (born August 18, 1886 in St. Gallen, died March 30, 1943 in Los Angeles ),
• Marco Moritz Brunner (born January 13, 1889 in St. Gallen, died March 23, 1918 in New York City ) and from
• Regine (Rega) Pauline Brunner (born February 25, 1892 in Vienna, died November 28, 1965 in Los Angeles ) and
• Otto Victor Brunner (born March 8, 1899 in St. Gallen, died May 21, 1923 in Brijuni (Brioni), Croatia ).

Walter Munk (1917–2019) was the grandson of Lucian Brunner. On December 30, 1904, he married Hedwig Wendriner (born March 17, 1858 in Breslau , died January 25, 1937 in Vienna). There are no children from this second marriage.

Lucian Brunner studied law .

Professional activities

He was very committed in Vorarlberg, but unsuccessfully, for a rail link from Hohenems to the Swiss Rhine Valley , to Lustenau and Feldkirch .

In 1883 he joined his father's private bank in St. Gallen (Switzerland) as a partner . From 1889 he was in Vienna-Döbling. Here he worked as a banker and industrialist , and in 1886 founded the L. Brunner EFa bank. who dealt with wealth management. After Lucian Brunner's death, the bank was continued by his son Heinrich and his brother-in-law Hans Munk.

Brunner was both a member of the board of directors of the Bozen-Meraner Bahn and president of the international reinsurance company.

Political activity

Politically, Brunner was first involved in the party of the Vienna Democrats. He was chairman of the Democratic Central Association and editor of the newspaper Jüdische Volksstimme . From 1896 he was a board member of the Political People's Association and from 1899 advisory board of the Austrian-Israeli Union.

From 1869 to 1901 he worked as a liberal in the Vienna City Council. With regard to the Baden language regulation , he took a moderate position. He took the view that, for reasons of reason, the German language had priority as the lingua franca in the Austrian Empire, but that the minority languages ​​should by no means be devalued. He also represented Jewish-democratic and later increasingly Jewish-national standpoints, advocated a moderate urban spending policy and opposed the growing nationalisms in the Habsburg monarchy.

In 1899 he filed a lawsuit against the 30,000 guilder subsidy planned in the same year in favor of the construction of the St. Laurentius Church in Vienna-Breitensee, which the Christian-Social majority wanted to enforce in the Vienna City Council. He got right before the Administrative Court and exposed himself to anti-Semitic attacks as a result of the consistent standpoint of the separation of church and state .

He turned more and more to Zionist ideas and from 1905 onwards he campaigned for Jewish national interests in an autonomy campaign. In 1907 he appeared as a supporter of Zionist Reichsrat politics and financier of the "Jüdische Zeitung". He was a co-founder of the association Nationale Autonomie , which was established in 1908 . a. and Thomas Masaryk , Karl Renner and Nathan Birnbaum committed.

In the 1907 Reichsrat election for the constituency of Austria under the Enns 31, Lucian Brunner was an unsuccessful candidate for the German progressive party. Brunner ran unsuccessfully for the Jewish National Association in 1910 in elections for the Lower Austrian state parliament and in the 1911 Reichsrat elections.

After his death, Lucian Brunner left a legacy in favor of a non-denominational school in Hohenems, but this legacy was not accepted by the Hohenems community. In 2017, in front of the former Brunnerhaus in Hohenems, Brunnerplatz was named after the Brunner family.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Lucian Brunner , genealogy database of the Jewish Museum Hohenems.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Brunner, Lucian (1850–1914), politician, functionary and banker , Austrian Biographical Lexicon, entry from November 25, 2016.
3. ↑ A moderate voice that acted consistently, Vorarlberger Nachrichten of June 26, 2018, p. B3.