Taras Borodajkewycz

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Taras Borodajkewycz (born October 1, 1902 in Vienna-Josefstadt ; † January 3, 1984 in Vienna ; until 1919 Taras von Borodajkewycz ) was an Austrian National Socialist historian . From 1955 until his compulsory retirement in 1971, he was a professor at the Vienna University of World Trade .

Life

Taras Borodajkewycz was born in 1902 as the son of the Galician civil servant Wladimir Borodajkewycz (born April 23, 1875 in Stryj , Galicia ) and his wife Henriette, née Löwe (born November 18, 1876 in Vienna). The father was at the time of Taras' birth Konzipist at the Imperial State Railways, and later, as is clear from entries in Lehmann's Vienna address results, engineer and official of the Imperial Ministry of Railways directly below kk State Railways , most recently with the official title Oberbahnrat.

There are different statements about Taras' place of birth in the literature: In addition to Baden near Vienna, Galicia at that time and today's Ukraine are also given. According to his birth entry, he was born in the Josefstadt district of Vienna and was baptized and confirmed as a Greek Catholic in Vienna on November 15, 1906. He is said to have grown up in Baden near Vienna.

In the interwar period , Taras Borodajkewycz belonged to the Catholic-national camp around the Christian Social Party , the leading ruling party , where attempts were made to combine Catholic and German-national ideas. By the mid-1930s at the latest he came under the spell of the NSDAP (which was illegal in Austria at that time) . After dropping out of theology and philosophy studies at the University of Vienna , Borodajkewycz graduated in history in 1932 and shortly afterwards became assistant to the historian Heinrich Srbik . His dissertation was entitled Constantin von Höfler's career. A contribution to the intellectual discussion of Catholicism with German thinking in the first half of the 19th century. He was appointed Dr. phil. PhD.

From January 1934 to 1945 he was a member of the NSDAP, which was banned in Austria until 1938. He was a member of the student association KaV Norica Vienna , when he joined the Cartell Association of the Catholic German student associations , from 1933 in the split off Austrian Cartell Association . Immediately after the Second World War, when the relevant liaison bodies were able to meet again, he was expelled for his involvement in the NSDAP.

University career

In 1937 Borodajkewycz became a lecturer in the corporate state dictatorship at the University of Vienna . During the Nazi dictatorship he was associate professor for history at the German University in Prague from 1942 to 1945 .

In 1946 he was classified as a “minor offender” and thus achieved his denazification . In 1949 Borodajkewycz took part in the Oberweiser Conference together with other formerly prominent National Socialists . As a result of his good relations with the ÖVP , in particular with the then Minister of Education Heinrich Drimmel and the later Federal Chancellor Josef Klaus , who had been a top functionary of the anti-Semitic German student body in the First Republic , Borodajkewycz received a chair for economic history at the then University of World Trade, the today's Vienna University of Economics and Business .

His continuing sympathies for National Socialism were evident; in his lectures he repeatedly made neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic statements that made him the darling of the then mostly right-wing student body.

Borodajkewycz affair

From December 1, 1961, the then 19-year-old student Ferdinand Lacina , later social democratic finance minister, wrote down his political comments in a Borodajkewycz lecture. For example, the professor referred to Rosa Luxemburg as a “Jewish mass whip” and praised Hitler's speech on March 15, 1938 at a mass rally on Heldenplatz in Vienna immediately after the “ annexation of Austria ” to the German Reich.

In 1962, the young lawyer Heinz Fischer , later Austrian Federal President (2004 to 2016), discussed democratic education at Austrian universities in the social democratic media Arbeiter-Zeitung and Zukunft using Lacina transcripts and attacked Borodajkewycz because of his questionable lecture practice. In order not to jeopardize Lacina's graduation, Fischer left the source of his allegations unnamed. The notes were only submitted to the judge anonymously; therefore, in a court case initiated by Borodajkewycz, Fischer was sentenced to a fine of 4,000 schillings (at that time about two months' wages for an employee) for defamation. Borodajkewycz felt his views were confirmed by the judgment and gave his views more insight in lectures.

In 1965 the later newspaper founder Oscar Bronner handed Lacina's material to his father, the cabaret artist Gerhard Bronner . Bronner processed it in his satirical TV show Zeitventil on ORF in the form of a fictional interview with the professor, whose answers to the questions asked were original quotations from Borodajkewycz. Since the program was very popular, the anti-Semitic and anti-democratic statements by Borodajkewycz, broadcast on March 18, were perceptible to a large audience. The fictional interview ended with a defamatory anti-Semitic statement about Hans Kelsen , the creator of the Austrian constitution. As a result, there were indignant press reports about Borodajkewycz. The affair escalated when the attacked man held a press conference at the university two days later, at which he confirmed his statements. In the hall there were supporters from the ranks of the fraternities who applauded when Borodajkewycz spoke out anti-Semitic. When he proudly declared himself a member of the NSDAP, he also received applause. He invoked university autonomy and freedom of research. The very next day and the days that followed, there were demonstrations by opponents of National Socialism and the protagonist Borodajkewycz under the motto “Against Fascism”.

On March 26, 1965, Borodajkewycz was allegedly attacked by "three or four unknown boys" in front of his house in Vienna, but not injured. His son, Olaf, who accompanied him, “suffered minor injuries to his upper lip”.

On March 31, 1965, representatives of student organizations, former resistance fighters and trade unionists demonstrated against Borodajkewycz in the inner city of Vienna . During a clash with a counter-demonstration organized by the “ Ring Freiheitlicher Studenten ” (RFS), the student organization of the FPÖ , the former resistance fighter Ernst Kirchweger was hit in the face by the student and neo-Nazi Günther Kümel, who had already been sentenced to prison, at the Hotel Sacher ; he suffered injuries from which he died two days later. Kirchweger was later described as the first person to be killed in a political act of violence in the Second Republic.

In April 1965 the libel proceedings against Fischer were resumed. On the basis of Lacina's testimony (who had meanwhile finished his studies) the sentence against Fischer was overturned; Borodajkewycz's appeal against it was dismissed.

Finally, Borodajkewycz - after long resistance from the responsible Minister of Education, Theodor Piffl-Perčević - was compulsorily retired in 1971 with full pay. In the following years he published a few more texts, e.g. B. in the "Eckartschriften" of the Austrian Landsmannschaft .

Fonts

  • Konstantin von Höfler's career. A contribution to the intellectual confrontation between Catholicism and German thought in the first half of the 19th century. [University] Vienna, Phil. Dissertation of February 3, 1932.
  • Saint Germain . Dictation against self-determination . (= Eckartschriften. Issue 31). Austrian Landsmannschaft , Vienna 1969.
  • Landmarks in the history of Austria . (= Eckartschriften. Booklet 42). Austrian country team, 1972.

literature

  • Erich Schmidt, Albrecht K. Konecny : "Heil Borodajkewycz!" Austria's democrats in the fight against Professor Borodajkewycz and his backers. Verlag für Jugend und Volk, Wien a. a. 1966.
  • Heinz Fischer (Ed.): One in the foreground. Taras Borodajkewycz. A documentation. ( Austria profiles ) Europe, Vienna a. a. 1966; New edition exp. for the final disciplinary decision in 1971 against Borodajkewycz. Ephelant, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-900766-26-9
  • Gérard Kasemir: Late end for "scientifically" presented racism. The Borodajkewycz affair 1965. In: Michael Gehler , Hubert Sickinger (Hrsg.): Political affairs and scandals in Austria. From Mayerling to Waldheim . Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck u. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-7065-4331-6 , pp. 486-501.
  • Rafael Kropiunigg: An Austrian affair. The Borodajkewycz case . Czernin, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-7076-0535-8 .
  • Rafael Kropiunigg: The Rehabilitated Austrians and the Borodajkewycz Affair. In: Austrian History Yearbook. Vol. 46 (2015), pp. 360-385, doi: 10.1017 / S0067237814000228 .
  • Jiří Nĕmec: Taras (from) Borodajkewycz (1902–1984). Between Catholicism and National Socialism: The attempt to combine the incompatible . In: Karel Hruza (ed.): Austrian historians. CVs and careers 1900–1945 , Vol. 3, Vienna a. a .: Böhlau 2019, ISBN 978-3-205-20801-3 , pp. 527-606.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d birth entry in the birth register of the Greek Catholic parish St. Barbara in Vienna ( online ).
  2. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb (ed.): The long shadow of anti-Semitism . V&R Unipress, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8471-0145-1 , p. 242 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ 1971 final judgment of the higher disciplinary commission against him, revocation of the license to teach. Cf. Heinz Fischer (Ed.): One in the foreground. Taras Borodajkewycz. A documentation (= Austria profiles). Europe, Vienna a. a. 1966; New edition exp. the final disciplinary decision against Borodajkewycz in 1971. Ephelant, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-900766-26-9 .
  4. ^ A b Fritz Fellner , Doris Corradini : Austrian History in the 20th Century. A biographical-bibliographical lexicon . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2006, ISBN 3-205-77476-0 , p. 60 .
  5. ↑ a b c d Deborah Hartmann : The Borodajkewycz case. In: Context XXI. 7–8 / 2001 - 1/2002, archived from the original on April 17, 2016 ; accessed on March 31, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Neugebauer : On the problem of Austria's Nazi past: Presentation on the occasion of the study “Racism and coming to terms with the past in South Africa and Austria - a comparison?” In the Austrian Parliament. In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance . May 31, 2000, accessed March 31, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Entry on Borodajkewycz, Taras von in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
  8. ^ Christian Pape: The Borodajkewycz Affaire (Austria 1965) . In: Wolfgang Benz, Ed .: Handbook of Antisemitism. Volume 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies. K. G. Saur, 2011, ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 , pp. 59f.
  9. ↑ borodajkewycz-protest 2. (pdf, 13 kB) Austria Press Agency (APA), March 26, 1965, archived from the original on March 25, 2016 ; accessed on March 31, 2020 .
  10. ^ The "victim myth" in Austria: origin and development. In: Demokratiezentrum.org. April 2015, accessed March 31, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Borodajkewycz, Taras
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Borodajkewycz, Taras von (name until 1919)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian historian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 1, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna-Josefstadt
DATE OF DEATH 3rd January 1984
Place of death Vienna