Ovidius Faust

Ovidius Faust (born October 16, 1896 in Edelstal ( ung. Nemesvölgy), Austria-Hungary ; † April 18, 1972 in Preßburg ( Slov. Bratislava), Czechoslovakia ) was a museologist , historian and archivist for the city of Pressburg.

Ovidius Faust

Life

Ovidius Faust was the son of the Bratislava photographer Ludwig Faust and his wife, a daughter of the Austrian watchmaker Stefan Sommer. He was supposed to be born as a “Preßburger child” in Preßburg, but at the time of his birth his parents were in Edelstal, where his mother unexpectedly gave birth. Faust was baptized with the name 'Gabriellus Joannes Ovidius', but used only 'Ovidius' as a first name throughout his life.

Ovidius Faust (left) on his way to work in front of the Primate's Palace in Preßburg (Bratislava)

Faust began his education in the German elementary school, which was followed by a visit to the Hungarian grammar school in his hometown. In 1915 he volunteered at the front, but due to poor eyesight he was unsuitable for the front line and therefore served on the General Staff of the War Ministry in Vienna . During this time he decided to study at the University of Vienna , supplementing his studies with a few semesters at the Elisabeth University of Bratislava. After the war he continued his studies at Budapest University . He earned two doctorates: in law and philosophy.

In 1919 Faust entered the service of the Bratislava city magistrate, where he made a steep career that ended with his appointment as the city's cultural advisor. From 1922 he was the city's archivist and one of the best experts on the history of Pressburg and the (former) Pressburg County.

Ex-libris by Ovidius Faust (a work by Karl Frech )

He devoted the rest of his life to researching the history of Pressburg. Up to the present day he is considered the most important archivist in the city of Pressburg. He has made great contributions to Slovak historiography, as well as to the history of Pressburg, and research into the history of the Tyrnau district . He was able to speak and write in five languages ​​(German, Hungarian, Slovak, Czech and Latin), which had a very positive effect on his research. His publications reached the highest scientific level. He also reorganized the city archive and rebuilt it according to the most modern scientific criteria.

House Kapitelgasse (Kapitulská) 11; Ovidius Faust spent the last years of his life here

Like a “stranger” in his hometown

Faust confessed to being a German national throughout his life. After the Second World War , that was his undoing in 1945. He was removed from office without notice. Regardless of his great services to Slovak museology, he was persecuted on the basis of the Beneš decrees , he lost his apartment and all of his belongings. Like most Germans in Bratislava, he was taken to the reception camp in Engerau (Slov. Petržalka) together with his wife , from where these people were forcibly resettled to Germany and Austria as "stateless people" (their Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked) . Day and night, Germans were driven across the Austrian border from this camp .

Thanks to influential friends, Faust was allowed to leave the Engerau camp and return to the city. His apartment had been ransacked while he was away and a former subordinate now lived in it, who also appropriated some of the furnishings. His extremely valuable private library, as well as antiques and works of art were lost and were never seen again.

After spending several months in prison, Faust was released, but he was utterly destitute. Good friends took him and his wife in as lodgers (at Kapitelgasse 11), where he lived until his death. Between 1945 and 1950 he lived “like a stranger” - without citizenship - in his own hometown. Nobody dared to offer him a job. In the end, thanks to the courage of some of his former friends, he found a job with a local authority (“Krajský narodný výbor”). His experience in reorganizing the archive was really useful there. However, he had to watch powerlessly as valuable, irreplaceable archive material from church property and former noble houses ended up in the "waste paper collection" and were released for crushing. (It was the time of the church persecution and the beginning communist tyranny in the newly restored Czecho-Slovakia after 1945).

He found his last job in 1955 in the West Slovak State Museum of Tyrnau (Západoslovenské múzeum v Trnave). Even at an advanced age, he had to take the train to Tyrnau every day, as he was not provided with an apartment in Tyrnau.

death

His numerous publications, notes, diary entries and photographs are in his estate, but have not yet been systematically processed.

Ovidius Faust died on April 18, 1972 in his hometown. His death caused no response in what was then communist Czechoslovakia. He was buried in the St. Martin's cemetery in Pressburg quietly and without the involvement of the authorities.

literature

• P. Rainer Rudolf, Eduard Ulreich: Karpatendeutsches Biographisches Lexikon. Working group of Carpathian Germans from Slovakia, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-927096-00-8 , p. 81.
• Ovidius Faust: Príbehy zo starej Bratislavy. (German "Events from Old Pressburg"; edited by Ivan Szabó), Bratislava 2017, ISBN 978-80-8046-783-8 (Slovak).

Web links    

• Pred 110 rokmi sa narodil Ovídius Faust ("Ovidius Faust was born 110 years ago") from October 13, 2006 online in Bratislavske Noviny.sk (accessed online on July 17, 2017) (Slovak)
• Štefan Holčík: Dr. Faust, cudzinec vo vlastnom meste ("Dr. Faust, a stranger in one's own town") of October 18, 2015 in Bratislavske Noviny.sk (accessed online on July 17, 2017) (Slovak)
• Ján Čomaj: Stodvadsať rokov od narodenia najznámejšieho archivára Bratislavy (One hundred and twenty years ago, the most famous archivist in Bratislava was born) in Slovenské národné noviny (snn.sk) on October 3, 2016 (online: http://snn.sk/news/ako -sa-ovidius-faust-stal-legendou / ; accessed on July 17, 2017) (Slovak)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Frech (* 1883 in Gaisburg / Württemberg , † 1945 in Sankt Ulrich bei Steyr / Austria )
2. ↑ In Bratislava, with the cooperation of the state police authorities, three reception camps were set up for the expelled Germans (and Hungarians). 3,730 people were forcibly evacuated from the Engerau camp . (quoted from Anton Klipp: Preßburg, New Views on an Old City, ISBN 978-3-927020-15-3 , p. 38)