Walter Ferber

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walter Ferber (born December 24, 1907 in Gelsenkirchen , † April 13, 1996 in Lungern ) was a German publicist and journalist . He sat down for a Christian dominated federalism and became involved after the Second World War unsuccessfully for the reconstruction of the Center Party . Ferber understood “federalism” to be a consistent social principle that applies to all areas of human community life.

life and work

The one, the ninth of 14 children miner family in alder born Ferber attended from 1914 to 1924, the primary school and a grammar school , which he left to begin an apprenticeship. He joined the "Ruhr chaplain" Carl Klinkhammer and appeared at party meetings of the center since 1925/26. According to the teaching he went on tour and worked among others in a ball bearing factory in Schweinfurt and formed self-taught in history, sociology and political science on.

1932 emigrated Ferber to Austria , where he worked in Vienna as a feature editor of the Christian trade union newspaper The new newspaper under Eugen Kogon worked. Due to differences over the political orientation of the newspaper Ferber left the editorial office and lived as a freelance journalist. He published regularly in the weekly magazine Der christliche Ständestaat under Dietrich von Hildebrand and was a member of the study group of Catholic sociologists under the direction of Ernst Karl Winter .

When Austria was annexed to the German Reich on March 11, 1938, Ferber was to be taken into protective custody. He fled, but was no longer able to cross the Czechoslovak border. Back in Vienna he was arrested and taken to the Dachau concentration camp . On September 27, 1939, Ferber was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp , from where he was returned to Dachau on March 2, 1940. In Dachau he was housed in the “Österreicherblock” together with Leopold Figl , Alfons Gorbach , Alfred Maleta and Viktor Matejka , among others .

On October 24, 1942, Ferber was released from the Dachau concentration camp and transferred to a probation unit of the German Wehrmacht . On the transport to North Africa , where this unit was to be used for mine clearance , Ferber managed to escape to Switzerland near Héricourt in France in November 1942 . After being interned for some time, he came to Friborg , where he prepared to re-establish the Center Party. About his time in the concentration camp he published the report 55 Months Dachau in 1945 under the pseudonym Walter Feuerbach .

After the end of the Second World War, Ferber was first editor-in-chief of the new strongly Catholic monthly magazine Neues Abendland in Munich and Augsburg, where he lived in the same house with the publisher Johann Wilhelm Naumann . In addition, he took a lectureship in political science at the Theological University in Dillingen an der Donau . In the summer of 1946 he moved to the French occupation zone , where he hoped to be able to edit a federal newspaper. Due to the restrictive paper allocation, this project did not come about. Ferber found a job at the Black Forest Post . From 1948 to 1950 he published the Federalist Issues he founded . From 1950 to 1953 he worked as a freelance journalist in Germany. However, Ferber failed with his goal, most recently in 1955 with the founding of the Federation of Resolute Federalists , to establish a federalist party, as the CDU and SPD prevailed in the Federal Republic of Germany and the Center Party was largely absorbed into the CDU.

In 1953 Ferber moved with his wife and children from Singen to Lucerne , Switzerland. He had been married to a Swiss woman since 1947. Here he concentrated on his journalistic work. Among other things, he published The Prehistory of the NSDAP in Austria , in which he described National Socialism as a phenomenon that was exported from Germany to Austria. From 1957 he lived in Sachseln . His son Rafael Ferber was a professor of philosophy, his son Christoph Ferber is a translator and literary scholar .

Fonts

  • as Walter Feuerbach: 55 months in Dachau. A factual report. 2nd Edition. Rex-Verlag, Lucerne 1945.
  • Hedwig Dransfeld (1871-1925). Essen 1927.
  • Great Prussia or German Confederation? A contribution to the re-education of German Catholics. Paulusdruckerei, Freiburg [i.Üe.] 1945.
  • Federalism. 1st edition. Naumann, Augsburg 1946.
  • The prehistory of the NSDAP in Austria. A contribution to the revision of history. Merk, Constance 1954.
  • Spirit and Politics in Austria. The intelligentsia and National Socialism before the Anschluss. Merk, Constance 1955.
  • Little history of the catholic movement. Echter-Verl, Würzburg 1959.
  • Ludwig Windthorst. The great German Catholic leader. 1st edition. Winfried-Werk, Augsburg 1962.
  • German Reform Catholics. [W. Ferber], [Sachseln] 1980.
  • Walter Ferber, Barbara Distel and Reinhard Bockhofer: 55 months in Dachau. A factual report. Donat, Bremen 1993, ISBN 3-924444-28-5 .
  • Walter Ferber: Federalist notebooks. 1948-1950; a selection. 1st edition. Nomos-Verl.-Ges, Baden-Baden 1996, ISBN 3-7890-4549-7 .

literature

  • Rafael Ferber : Upright gait. Life and work of the federalism theorist Walter Ferber (1907–1996) . In: Schweizer Monatshefte 77, H. 5. (1997), pp. 31–34. doi : 10.5169 / seals-165747
  • Jürgen Klöckler : Abendland - Alpenland - Alemannien: France and the discussion of restructuring in southwest Germany 1945–1947. Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-486-56345-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Undine Ruge: The invention of the "Europe of the Regions". Critical history of ideas of a conservative concept . Campus, Frankfurt / Main 2003, p. 159.
  2. ↑ Jürgen Klöckler: Abendland - Alpenland - Alemannien: France and the discussion about restructuring in southwest Germany. Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, p. 90 ff.
  3. ↑ Reinhard Bock Hofer: Walter Ferber - a German federalist and a Democrat . In: Walter Ferber: 55 years of Dachau. A factual report . Donat Verlag, Bremen 1993, pp. 63-81, ISBN 3-924444-28-5 . (Here: p. 71.)
  4. ↑ Johannes Ch. Traut: Obituary for Walter Ferber (1907–1996) , p. 82. (PDF) ( Memento from August 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Ferber, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publicist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Gelsenkirchen
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 1996
Place of death Lounging