Otto Felix Kanitz

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Kanitz memorial plaque on the Parliament building, Vienna.

Otto Felix Kanitz (born February 5, 1894 in Vienna ; † March 29, 1940 in Buchenwald concentration camp ) was an Austrian socialist, educator, writer, politician and representative of individual psychology .

Childhood and family

Otto Felix Kanitz was born as the son of the Jewish Viennese court and court lawyer Alfred Kanitz (son of the factory owner Mayer Kanitz and Katharina Mandel) and his wife and cousin Sidonie born. Kanitz (daughter of Bernhard Kanitz and Rosa Hahn) was born in Vienna 7th , Mariahilfer Straße 76.

His parents divorced in 1902; the three sons Meinard (born in 1891, fled to Argentina from Nazi persecution), Georg (born in 1892) and Otto were assigned to their father, the only daughter, Franziska, came to live with the mother. When the father married a Catholic the following year, he had his sons baptized and raised Catholic, but in an imperial and royal orphanage so as not to strain the relationship with the young woman. Otto completed five classes of elementary school, three years of community school and then began an apprenticeship.

Obituary notice for Sidonie Kanitz b. Kanitz

His mother Sidonie Kanitz died on October 14, 1927 in Vienna as a lawyer widow (Otto's father had died before her) and was buried in the New Israelite Department of the Central Cemetery, 4th Gate. Her obituary notice in the “Neue Freie Presse” of October 19, 1927 was only signed by her daughter Franzi , who remained with her , the three sons were subsumed under the other relatives .

Political commitment

As early as 1911 Kanitz was active as an election campaigner for the social democrat Max Winter , and from 1912 he spoke to youth groups. In 1916 , when he was called up to serve in the armed forces of the Landsturm , he also worked for the children's friends , to whom he probably came through Hermine Weinreb . He also prepared for the Matura , wrote poems, plays and contributed to the magazine Kinderland, founded in 1916 . Newspaper of the Austrian workers and farmers children .

After graduating from high school in 1918, he was hired as a pedagogical consultant at Kinderfreunde and began studying philosophy and pedagogy. Besides Hermine Weinreb, who called him her spiritual son , Anton Afritsch deserves special mention as his mentor .

The meeting with his professor Wilhelm Jerusalem helped the Catholic educated Jew to develop tolerance and to clearly distinguish religion from church claims to power, which were vehemently opposed by the Social Democrats . He rejected ridicule of religion and “cheap” free-thinking.

Child friends

In 1919 the 25-year-old was entrusted with the management of the first large holiday colony of the Austrian Kinderfreunde , an organization of the social democracy: In the abandoned refugee camp Gmünd 700 children had to be looked after in two rotations.

Kanitz led these two camps as the first Austrian children's republics in which democratically elected shop stewards and the general assembly discussed problems of living together and participation was possible. The pedagogy of the Children's Republic, however, developed less strongly in Austria than later in the German falcon movement .

The success of the young man in Gmünd prompted those responsible to put him in charge of the Schönbrunn Educational School . Under enormous time pressure, according to the official decision, the rooms made available to the children's friends in Schönbrunn Palace had to be occupied within three days. Kanitz therefore traveled to Gmünd in a lightning campaign with 100 children (the children's group was then led by Anton Tesarek ).

In 1922 Kanitz completed his studies in education with a dissertation on family education , state education and social education . From 1921 to 1934 he designed the journal Socialist Education and made a name for himself as an author of scientific works. Fighters of the future was of course on the Nazi incineration lists from 1933.

SAJ

From the 1920s onwards he was particularly committed to the socialist youth workers , becoming chairman of the Vienna SAJ in January 1926, and federal chairman in 1930. Bruno Kreisky in particular notes in his memoirs that he was a friendly role model and adviser to the young people who joined them at the time .

From 1932 to 1934 he was the State Vienna dispatched a member of the Federal Council ( IV. Legislative period ), the second chamber of Parliament, which even after the elimination of the National Council by Dollfuss functional stayed in March 1933.

The February fights in 1934 and the ban on social democracy by the corporate state dictatorship prompted him to flee to Brno , from where he soon returned to Vienna, plagued by homesickness and depression.

death

In November 1938, as a Jew and a member of the Revolutionary Socialists, he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he died on March 29, 1940.

Afterlife

In 1966 Kanitzgasse in the 23rd district of Vienna was named after him.

The urn with the ashes allegedly from Otto Felix Kanitz, which was sent to the relatives of the Nazi regime by post, has been in the Heiligenstadt cemetery in Part N, Group 10, Grave No. 76 since the reburial on April 9, 2002 .

When anti-authoritarian education became topical again in the 1960s and 1970s, Kanitz was one of the reissued and much discussed socialist authors of the interwar period. He is considered an important pioneer of modern pedagogy.

literature

  • Otto Felix Kanitz: Schönbrunn. In: The Socialist Education , Vienna, vol. 2 (= 1922), p. 259 ff.
  • Otto Felix Kanitz: The proletarian child in bourgeois society . 96 pages; Urania-Verlagsgesellschaft, Jena 1925; newly published by Lutz von Werder , Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt 1974, ISBN 3-436-01852-X .
  • Otto Felix Kanitz: Fighters of the Future. A systematic presentation of the socialist educational principles. 94 pages, Jungbrunnen publishing house, Vienna 1929; newly published by Lutz von Werder with the title Fighters of the Future. For a socialist education , March Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970
  • Otto Felix Kanitz: Ten years of the Gmünd Colony. In: The Socialist Education , Vienna, 9th year (= 1929), p. 198.
  • Henriette Kotlan-Werner: Otto Felix Kanitz and the Schönbrunn circle. The working group of socialist educators 1923–1934. (= Materials on the labor movement 21), Europaverlag, Vienna 1982
  • Jakob Bindel (Ed.): 75 years of childhood friends: 1908–1983; Sketches, memories, reports, outlooks. Jungbrunnen publishing house, Vienna, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-7026-5536-0
  • Uwe Fuhrmann: Otto Felix Kanitz. Fighters of the future in the shadow of the past , in: Messages from the Archives of the Workers' Youth Movement , Oer-Erkenschwick 2009, Volume II, p. 4 f.
  • Albrecht Karl Konecny : The death of a federal councilor. Approaching a patriot in thirty-three paces. Zukunft-Verlag, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-9501569-1-7 .
  • Heinz Weiss u. a .: The educators of the Schönbrunn circle. (Exhibition catalog 2007, see web links)
  • Kanitz Otto Felix. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 3, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1965, p. 216.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Die Presse: 100 Years of Individual Psychology
  2. ↑ Excerpt from Lit. Kotlan-Werner in "75 Years ..." p. 42 f.
  3. ↑ weekly newspaper Die Frau , Vienna, October 23, 1947, quoted in lit. "75 years ..." p. 38 f.
personal data
SURNAME Kanitz, Otto Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian socialist educator, writer and politician, member of the Federal Council
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 29, 1940
Place of death Buchenwald concentration camp