Süheyl Furgaç

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Süheyl İzzet Furgaç ( 1914 - February 2, 2006 in Istanbul ) was a Turkish student in Stuttgart who challenged and defeated a National Socialist in 1938 .

Life

Süheyl Furgaç was the son of the former Grand Vizier and Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire Field Marshal Ahmed İzzet Pascha . He graduated from Galatasaray High School in 1933. At Ataturk's behest , Furgaç studied electrical engineering in Stuttgart.

In May 1938 he had an argument with the architecture student Hans Bellem in the cafeteria there. The latter had curtly asked him to vacate the table, as he was reserved for comradeship . There were fights in which Furgaç was defeated. The next day, Furgaç went to the student organization and challenged Bellem to a duel. This accepted the request. However, it turned out that Furgaç had mistakenly believed that duels would be fought with pistols. He asked for a period of three months to learn fencing, which he was allowed to do. Furgaç took professional fencing lessons from Franz Kühner for a month and learned fencing in Paris for two more months. The planned duel caused diplomatic entanglements and a special permit had to be obtained from Rudolf Hess . The armed forces finally took place on November 10, 1938 at 7:00 a.m. in front of a large audience in the sports hall of the Eberhard-Ludwig-Gymnasium. Bellem previously recited the heroic ballad Swabian Customer , in which it says:

On the right you can see
half a Turk sinking down on the left . "

Furgaç defeated his opponent in half an hour and injured him so that he could barely stand on his feet. The referee had to intervene to prevent the duel from ending fatally. In the months that followed, the two opponents became friends. However, Hans Bellem was not to survive the first months of the war.

Representation in the media

Furgaç returned home and hid his adventure there until 1987, when Ziyad Ebuzziya and Sahir Kozikoğlu wrote a book about the final year 1933 of the Galatasaray High School. However, Furgaç agreed that no names would be given in order not to put his deceased comrade to shame. The Stuttgart journalist Gerhard Eigel heard about the story in the Istanbul bazaar in 1988 , thought it was fantasy, but wrote an article about it in the Stuttgarter Zeitung on November 14, 1988. Thereupon numerous witnesses reported, including the then fencing master Furgaç ', Franz Kühner, who dispelled any doubts.

Deutschlandradio produced a feature about the duel. There was an article about it in the Stuttgarter Zeitung and various books in Turkey described the duel. The book by Önay Yılmaz contains an eyewitness account from one of the Turkish fellow students present. A picture, the negative of which Süheyl Furgaç gave to the author Ümit Bayazoğlu in 1988, shows a blurred moment of the duel.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.emo.org.tr/ekler/c627ab1ccbdb62e_ek.pdf?tipi=20&turu=H&sube=0 (p. 12)
  2. ↑ http://www.emo.org.tr/ekler/1a21da7bca4abff_ek.pdf?dergi=228 (p. 13)
  3. ↑ Milliyet, November 12, 1997
  4. ↑ Ziyad Ebüzziya and Sahir Kozikoğlu: 1921 - 1933 Galatasaray Tarihçesi: 1933 Mezunları ile 50 Yılları, Istanbul 1987.
  5. ^ The duel: a German-Turkish affair from 1938 / by Ulla and Winfried Lachauer. GermanyRadio Funkhaus Köln
  6. ↑ Önay Yılmaz: Nazilerle Beş Yıl. Istanbul 2005, p. 195.

source

  • Ümit Bayazoğlu: Uzun, İnce Yolcular. 42 portre. Istanbul 2014, p. 158ff.
personal data
SURNAME Furgaç, Süheyl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Furgaç, Süheyl İzzet
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish student and duelist
DATE OF BIRTH 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Ottoman Empire
DATE OF DEATH February 2, 2006
Place of death Istanbul