Marcel Fodor

Marcel William "Mike" Fodor , born Marcel Vilmos Fodor , also known as MW Fodor (born January 17, 1890 in Budapest , † July 1, 1977 in Trostberg ) was a Hungarian-American journalist. From 1920 to 1938 he was Vienna and Central Europe correspondent for the Manchester Guardian .

Life and activity

Origin, education and first world war

Fodor was a son of the industrialist Janos Fodor and his wife Berta, geb. Auspitz. The father was of Danube Swabian descent. The original family name "Fischer" was translated into Magyar as "Fodor" in the 19th century. Besides his industrial ventures, Janos Fodor owned newspapers in Vienna and Budapest. The mother came from a wealthy banking family.

After attending school, Fodor studied in Budapest and Berlin . In 1911 he graduated as a chemical engineer. At the beginning of the First World War, because he refused to participate in the war as a pacifist, he went to Great Britain, where he worked as an engineer, before he was interned in a camp on the Isle of Man as a member of an enemy power .

After the end of the war, Fodor returned to Budapest. During the communist uprising that rocked Hungary in 1919, his parents were murdered by communist insurgents as "class enemies". The family's fortunes fell into disrepair in the war and post-war years due to the circumstances at that time.

Journalistic career in the 1920s and 1930s

At the beginning of the 1920s, Fodor turned to journalism: after he had written occasional articles for the Manchester Guardian , this newspaper hired him as a permanent correspondent for the Central European region based in Vienna. He was to remain in this position until the late 1930s.

In addition to the Guardian , Fodor also made numerous contributions as a Central European correspondent for various American newspapers and magazines such as the New York Post , The Nation , The New Republic and American Mercury in the years between the two world wars . On this occasion he was able to benefit from his extensive knowledge of several of the main languages ​​spoken in the area - Magyar, German, French and Italian - as well as what he described as "encyclopedic" knowledge of the culture and history of the region.

By supporting the efforts of numerous young journalists to get their careers off the ground, he has also earned the reputation of mentoring many later well-known journalists, including Dorothy Thompson , John Gunther , Frances Gunther , William Shirer , George Eric Rowe Gedye , HR Knickerbocker , Edgar Mowrer , Frederick Scheu and Robert Best .

In 1929 Fodor undertook a trip across the Balkans together with the American William Fulbright, who later became known as the Senator for the state of Arkansas .

Fodor had been hated by the National Socialist rulers in Germany since 1934 at the latest: In that year he interviewed various relatives of the Austrian-born German dictator Adolf Hitler as well as other people who were close to him from his early years (e.g. the midwife who gave birth to him and his godfather), which enabled him to expose numerous allegations of official National Socialist propaganda regarding the origins and early years of Hitler's life to the public in the Anglo-Saxon region as lies. In this way he made known a lot of information that was compromising for the German ruler and his system, such as the incestuous relationships in which various of his ancestors were to one another or the alcoholism of Hitler's father.

In March 1938, Fodor and his family had to flee Vienna because of the German annexation of Austria in order to evade the access of the National Socialist police forces. He came to Great Britain via Czechoslovakia, where he worked as a special correspondent for a few months, Belgium and France.

World War II and post-war period

From 1940 to 1944 lived Fodor in the United States, where he was a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the specialist social sciences taught and as a columnist for the Chicago Daily News wrote. In addition, he gave numerous lectures in various American cities during the war years, in which he educated the population about the conditions in Europe. He was naturalized there in 1943.

After the end of the war, Fodor returned to Europe. Until 1955 he worked as a correspondent for the Neue Zeitung, which was founded in Germany at the instigation of the American occupation administration . He also acted as an advisor to his old friend Fulbright, who had meanwhile risen to become an influential US Senator, on the most appropriate policy of the United States towards Europe and the Soviet Union.

From 1955 to 1965 Fodor worked as a policy director and program evaluator for the European service of the Voice of America .

family

Fodor married Marie Martha Roob in 1922. The marriage resulted in a son, Denis.

Fonts

• Plot and Counterplot in Central Europe , Houghton Mifflin, 1937.
• South of Hitler , Houghton Mifflin Co, Boston 1939.
• The Revolution is On , Houghton Mifflin Co., 1940.
• The Russian Riddle , Chicago Sun Syndicate, 1942.

literature

Obituaries

• "MW Fodor is Dead at 87, a Famed Correspondent," in: New York Times, dated

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hitler's black book