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Tilly Spiegel , actually: Ottilie , married Marek (born December 10, 1906 in Novoselica, Bukowina , Austria-Hungary ; died 1988 ) was an Austrian journalist and resistance fighter against National Socialism , who belonged to the Resistance . After the Nazi era, she was one of the first researchers to work on the history of victims of the Nazi regime . Her two book publications are often cited and are considered early standard works in this field of research.

life and work

Ottilie Spiegel was born as the daughter of the businessman Karl Spiegel (1880–1941) and his wife Hilde (1883–1941) in Novoselica in Bukowina. The place was near Chernivtsi on the border with the Russian Empire . Her parents were murdered by the Nazi regime in the Izbica ghetto . Her siblings Betty (* 1909), Antonie (* 1910), Dina (* 1912), Hermann (* 1914) and Leo (* 1920) managed to emigrate .

Spiegel graduated from high school and studied in Vienna. From 1925 to 1933 she had various positions, including a. as a gym teacher . From 1927 she was a member of the trade union, in 1930 she joined the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) and quickly became a functionary in the district and Vienna city council. After the party had been banned by the Austro-Fascist regime in 1933, she took over the management of District IV. In February 1935 she was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in heavy dungeon in November of the same year. The revision of the judgment in March 1936 reduced the sentence to 14 months. In the autumn of 1937, Spiegel went to Switzerland and organized the border crossing for Spanish fighters from Austria via Switzerland to Spain. Because of this illegal activity, she was arrested by the Swiss authorities in December 1937, sentenced and finally expelled in May 1938. She then emigrated to Paris.

In November 1938 she founded - together with Marie Pappenheim - the Cercle Culturel Autrichien , got involved in refugee aid and financed her living as a gymnastics teacher. It seems certain that she lived in Paris during the occupation of France by the Nazi regime , belonged to the communist wing of the Resistance and took part in the extremely dangerous Travail allemand , such as Gundl Herrnstadt-Steinmetz , Herta Ligeti , Irma Schwager , Selma Steinmetz and Ester Tencer .

After the Nazi era, Spiegel returned to Vienna, took on tasks in the Vienna City Council of the Communist Party of Austria and took part in the development of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW). In this institution she worked closely with Herbert Steiner , the scientific director of the DÖW, as well as with Bruno Sokoll , Selma Steinmetz and Friedrich Vogl . Together with Jonny Moser , Selma Steinmetz and Herbert Rosenkranz , Spiegel was one of the first Nazi researchers in Austria to deal with the history of the victims in the 1960s. Moser investigated the persecution of Jews during the Nazi regime in Austria, Steinmetz that of the Roma and Sinti , Spiegel dealt with women and girls in the resistance and Rosenkranz dealt with the November pogroms in Austria in 1938 . In the 1960s she seems to have inflicted massive intra-party criticism of the course of communism : Tilly Spiegel questions the entire institution and with it Lenin's conception of the party. The fact that she thereby endangered the material and psychological security of many comrades was shown by the reaction: 'hardly any arguments, only outrage, astonishment, icy rejection'.

Her marriage to the communist intellectual Franz Marek divorced in 1974. Spiegel was awarded the Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria . There is no further information about her later life.

Works (selection)

  • Women and girls in the Austrian resistance. Europa-Verlag, Vienna, Frankfurt Zurich 1967
  • Austrians in the Belgian and French Resistance. Monographs on contemporary history, Europa Verlag, Vienna, Frankfurt, Zurich 1969
  • Mitzi - On the death of Maria Frischauf. In: Wiener Tagebuch , September 1966

literature

  • Ina Markova: Tilly Spiegel. A political biography. new academic press, Vienna / Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-7003-2143-9 .
  • Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century. Volume 3: S – Z, Register. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 1292 (No. 9914) ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss : Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life. Saur, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-598-10087-6 , p. 715, digitized

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dolly Steindling: Hitting Back. To Austrian Jew in the French Resistance. University Press of Maryland 2000
  2. ↑ Wiebke Krohn, Domagoj Akrap: Best of all women. Feminine Dimensions in Judaism. Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna , 2007
  3. ↑ Review in: Weg und Ziel . 1970, 31
  4. ↑ Architecture, ethos and worldview. ORF , February 2, 2012
  5. ^ Austrian women in resistance : Short biography Emilie Tolnay . written by Karin Nusko, accessed on May 16, 2015
  6. ↑ Kristina Pfoser-Schewig: France as a transit and country of establishment. In: Displaced Reason. Emigration and exile of Austrian science. 2nd International Symposium, October 19-23, 1987 in Vienna. Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1988, p. 940
  7. ↑ Friedrich Stadler : Expelled reason. LIT Verlag Münster, p. 949
  8. ^ Rita Thalmann: Jewish Women Exiled in France After 1933. In: Sibylle Quack: Between Sorrow and Strength. Women Refugees of the Nazi Period. P. 61
  9. ^ Helmut Kopetzky: The other front. European women in war and resistance 1939 to 1945. Pahl-Rugenstein 1983, pp. 110, 115–116
  10. ^ Alfred Klahr Society : Communications. Issue 3/2010, p. 18
  11. ↑ Lucyna Darowska: Resistance and Biography. The resistance practice of the Prague journalist Milena Jesenská against National Socialism. transcript Verlag, 2014, p. 524
  12. ↑ John Schwantner, Andreas Schwantner, Thekla Schwantner: ideology and reality of National Socialism. Hermann Langbein Symposium 2007, p. 81
  13. ↑ Renée Winter: History Politics and Television: Representations of National Socialism in early Austrian TV (1955-1970). transcript Verlag 2014, p. 152
  14. ^ Günter Hillmann: Self-criticism of communism. Opposition texts. Rowohlt 1967, p. 218, cf. [1]
  15. ↑ Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss: Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 , Volume 1: Politics, Economy, Public Life , Saur, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-598-10087-6 , p. 475, digitized
personal data
SURNAME Spiegel, Tilly
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spiegel-Marek, Tilly; Spiegel, Ottilie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian author, resistance fighter against National Socialism and Nazi researcher
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Bucovina
DATE OF DEATH 1988