Martin Fuchs (diplomat)

Martin Fuchs (born September 26, 1903 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † October 1, 1969 in Vienna ) was an Austrian journalist and diplomat . From 1938 to 1945 he was a leading member of the Austrian opposition in exile against the Nazi regime and, after the Second World War, Austrian ambassador in Brussels and Paris .

Life and activity

Early career

Fuchs was a son of Bernhard Fuchs and his wife Emilie, geb. Grünemann. After attending school, Fuchs studied law at the University of Vienna . In 1926 he received his doctorate there for Dr. jur.

From 1926 to 1936, Fuchs worked as chief correspondent for the Official Austrian Telegraph Agency in Paris . From 1927 he was assigned to the official news office of the Austrian Federal Chancellery in this capacity . From 1927 to 1936, in addition to his work for the telegraph agency, Fuchs was employed as a contract employee at the Austrian embassy in Paris. He was also appointed Austrian representative of the Confédération Internationale des Travailleurs Intellectuels in Paris and Geneva.

From 1936 to 1937 Fuchs was in the service of the Austro-Fascist regime at the Presidium of the Federal Chancellery in Vienna. In the same year he was a member of the Austrian delegation to the League of Nations . He then held the post of press attaché at the Austrian embassy in Paris from 1937 to 1938 . In this position he headed the press, information and culture departments of this diplomatic mission.

Emigration to France and the United States (1938 to 1947)

After the "Anschluss" of Austria in March 1938, he resigned from the diplomatic service of the two countries that were now forcibly united. Instead, he stayed in Paris as a private person. According to an American who's who publication from 1940, he was the only Austrian diplomat who openly refused to incorporate his homeland into the Nazi state.

Fuchs earned his living in Paris from 1938 to 1940 as an employee of the newspapers Figaro , Revue de Paris and Evening Standard .

During the first years of his exile, Fuchs belonged politically to the circle around Otto von Habsburg , in accordance with his legitimist attitude . In keeping with this conviction, he published a monarchist magazine - based on the Habsburg dynasty - during his Parisian years, on which his friend Eugen Roth also worked.

The most important political allies of Fuchs during his first years in exile were the former ministers of the Schuschnigg government such as Hans Rott , Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg and Guido Zernatto , with whom he organized a conservative resistance group against the Nazi regime that had come to power in Austria. Attempts by this group to win the Austrian socialists for a common front failed because they were resolutely rejected by the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria (RSÖ) under Joseph Buttinger .

In the years 1938 to 1940, Fuchs was also instrumental in improving the lot of Austrians who fled their homeland to France before the National Socialists. In this way he managed to get the French authorities to get Austrians who refused to accept German citizenship, which the National Socialists demanded of the entire Austrian population, to be granted the status of "ex-autrichiens" in France.

Although he himself had refused to recognize for himself the automatic conversion of their Austrian citizenship into a German one decreed by the German government collectively for the entire Austrian population, he was demonstratively disavowed by the German authorities, who gave them to him because of his activities in the Exile, the German [sic!] Citizenship (which, according to your reading, he automatically had as an Austrian since March 1938) "again" withdrawn and his expatriation was publicly announced in the Reichsanzeiger .

In April 1938, Fuchs was the initiator and co-founder as well as - alongside Ernst Hoor and Alfred Kupscha - head of the semi-official refugee aid organization Entr'aide Autrichienne , as its representative he was involved in the establishment of the non-partisan Féderation des Émigrés provenant d'Autriche (Central Association of Austrian Emigrants) in May 1938 ) involved. He then became a board member of the Federation. In addition, Fuchs was involved in the founding of the conservative-bourgeois emigre organization Ligue Autrichienne at this time . From December 1938 to September 1939 he was also an employee of the body of this organization, the Austrian Post .

In 1939, Fuchs negotiated with Julius Deutsch and the Organizing Committee of the Austrian Social Democrats under Karl Hartl, which had split off from the RSÖ in French exile, to form an official Austrian representative body in Paris from representatives of all political directions (except the KPÖ), but this did not materialize.

After the outbreak of World War II, Fuchs was the initiator of the Austrian broadcasts on Radio Paris and the Austrian freedom broadcaster in Fécamp . He was also the organizer of the Austrian Legion, which was set up within the French Army in 1939 to fight against Germany. For this reason, he was sentenced to death in absentia by German courts.

In September 1939, Fuchs became the initiator and alleged general secretary of the Office Autrichien or Service National Autrichien, which was formed after the failure of the project of a general Austrian representation, as an apolitical representative body chaired by Richard Wasicky , but which was not recognized by the French authorities. In the spring of 1940, Fuchs instead founded the Action Committee for the Liberation of Austria with Rott (Ligue Autrichienne), Hanno Friebeisz (Association for the Liberation of Austria) and Karl Hartl (Organizing Committee of the Austrian Social Democrats) .

Because of his classification as an enemy of the state, the National Socialist police officers - who mistakenly suspected him to be in Great Britain - put Fuchs on the special wanted list drawn up by the Reich Security Main Office in the spring of 1940 , a list of people whom the Nazi surveillance apparatus regarded as particularly dangerous or important, which is why they were In the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, special SS commandos that followed the occupation troops should be located and arrested with special priority.

In view of the German occupation of France in 1940, Fuchs emigrated to the United States in September 1940. There he was u. a. worked as an employee of Austrian Action , the core organization of the Austrians in opposition to National Socialism in the United States under Ferdinand Czernin, and as chairman of the organization Young Conservative Austrians. In 1941 he brought this group together with the Austro-American Center and Austrian Action to form the Austrian Coordinating Committee.

In autumn 1941, Fuchs and the organizations mentioned protested against the plans of Hans Rott and Willibald Plöchl to form an Austrian government in exile. In February 1942, in his position as chairman of the Young Conservative Austrians, he was appointed board member and secretary of the Austrian National Committee (ANC) under the board of Rott and Guido Zernatto. However, he resigned from the ANC in the fall of 1942 because he rejected its plan to set up an Austrian battalion in the US Army. For the same reason he fell out with Otto von Habsburg.

From 1942 Fuchs was in the service of the OWI, later the Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs at the State Department , the American State Department. After the end of the Second World War, he remained in the State Department for two years, where he served from 1945 to 1947 as head of the Austrian department of the International Broadcasting Division.

Career in the 2nd Austrian Republic

In 1947 Fuchs returned to Austria. There he initially found a job as a ministerial secretary and ministerial commissioner in the Federal Chancellery.

In February 1948, Fuchs was (again) accepted into the Austrian diplomatic service. From 1948 to 1952 he served as Legation Councilor at the Austrian Consulate General in New York. He then worked for the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna from April to December 1952.

At the end of December 1952, Fuchs was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Austrian Embassy in Brussels. In September 1953 his position was upgraded to that of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. In March 1958, Fuchs was entrusted with the post of General Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna.

From April 1962 to June 1969, Fuchs was the extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of the Republic of Austria in Paris.

Honors

In 1935, Fuchs was made a chevalier (knight) of the French Legion of Honor .

family

Fuchs had been married to Ludovika Richter since December 24, 1928 and had one son.

Fonts

• Showdown in Vienna. The Death of Austria , Putnam, 1939.

literature

• Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century. Volume 1: A-I. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 395.

Web links

• Literature by and about Martin Fuchs in the catalog of the German National Library
• Martin Fuchs in the memorial book for the victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938

Individual evidence

1. ^ Who is Who in America , 1940, p. 146.
2. ↑ Michael Hepp, Hans Georg Lehmann: The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . Saur, Munich 1985, p. 384.
3. ^ Entry on Fuchs on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .