Walther Soyka

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Walther Soyka (born August 17, 1926 in Vienna , † July 25, 2006 in Bremen ) was a publicist and opponent of nuclear power .

Life

Soyka grew up as the eldest son of the engineer and writer Richard Soyka (1895–1975) in Vienna. According to his own statements, he passed his Abitur at the Realgymnasium in Vienna in 1943 and was drafted into Yugoslavia in 1944 at the age of 17. Soyka was a member of the SS and a concentration camp overseer. He worked in the Hallein concentration camp near Salzburg, a satellite camp of the Dachau concentration camp .

After the war Soyka studied political science in Vienna until October 17, 1961. He later stated that his degree was “political science” (graduated rer. Pol.), Which is why he was also referred to as a “trained political scientist”.

Soyka was married to Wilma Gertrud Soyka for the first time. Both had eight children, including the composer Ulf-Diether Soyka and the musician Walther Soyka . His second marriage was to Nicoll de Bruin. This marriage produced five children.

Act

At the end of the 1960s / beginning of the 1970s, Soyka took an active part in the referendum against nuclear power plants in Austria, which was initiated in 1969 under the leadership of his father Richard Soyka and the “Federation for Public Health”. In 1970 he founded a "Society for Biological Safety" through which he initiated the referendum against the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant . In this context, he was removed from the hall by police officers during the building permit process in Zwentendorf in 1972 when he - endowed with the authority of residents - wanted to object to the construction of the nuclear power plant.

From 1972 to 1981 Soyka worked as a research assistant at the University of Bremen . There he belonged with Jens Scheer , Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake and other physicists to the SAIU project (“Pollution at the workplace and in the industrial region of Lower Weser”), which mainly dealt with the risks of nuclear energy. Soyka did not hold any of its own courses, but was a member of the working group that analyzed an advertising booklet distributed by the nuclear industry (“For a better understanding of nuclear energy - 66 questions - 66 answers”). The results were published in 1975 in a book that quickly became a standard work on nuclear energy criticism among environmentalists. Soyka was one of the leading figures in the anti-nuclear movement during this time. In 1981 he was one of the most prominent citizens of the Free Wendland Republic . Through Soyka, Robert Jungk had become an opponent of the so-called "peaceful use" of atomic fission technology.

Soyka belonged to the environment of the right-wing extremist League for God Knowledge of the Ludendorff movement. In February 1976 Soyka founded the “Institute for Biosafety” in Bremen together with the right-wing extremist and Ludendorffer Roland Bohlinger. Members of the institute's board of trustees were Manfred Roeder and the Ludendorffer propagandist Eberhard Engelhardt. By means of the controversial institute, according to Florian Mildenberger , the Ludendorffers temporarily broke into the German and above all Austrian ecological movement.

Soyka and Bohlinger spread in 1978 that there was an increased number of leukemia cases in the vicinity of the Lingen nuclear power plant , as the institute determined on the basis of surveys. The report was picked up by the German Press Agency , whereupon the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Lower Saxony state government described the figures as scientifically unreliable. Soyka was unable to provide any scientific proof of his claims.

Soyka organized thousands of class actions against nuclear power plants in the FRG, but was certified by various courts that he was operating "the business-like handling of foreign legal matters (...) without having the necessary permission from the competent authority". Hundreds of nuclear power opponents who had given him a power of attorney felt that they were insufficiently informed about the court costs incurred, were left at their expense and then withdrew their trust.

Soyka published numerous publications as part of his “Institute for Biosafety”. He ran as a non-party member of the list of the right-wing extremist German People's Union for the 1998 federal elections.

literature

  • Rainer Alsheimer, Apocalypse now? : eschatological on the Internet and elsewhere , In: Swiss Archives for Folklore 95, Issue 1, 1999, pp. 47–59, on Soyka specifically pp. 56–57

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DER SPIEGEL 12/1987 of March 16, 1987, p. 272, available online
  2. ^ The Ostpreußenblatt of March 28, 1987, p. 4 available online
  3. ^ A b Anton Handelsberger, Chronicle of the market town of Zwentendorf from Roman times to the atomic age , town of Zwentendorf 1994, p. 250
  4. ↑ so Der Spiegel issues 44/1978 p. 135 and 20/1981 p. 75; The Standard , August 4, 2006 edition
  5. ↑ Dieter Pesendorfer, Paradigm Shift in Environmental Policy: From the Beginnings of Environmental Policy to Sustainability Policy: Model Case Austria ?, Springer Verlag 2008, p. 89
  6. ^ Anton Pelinka, Rupert Breitling, Populismus in Österreich , Junius Verlag 1987, p. 152
  7. ↑ a b Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, A Messenger of Bad News , In: Strahlentelex No. 374-375 of August 1, 2002, p. 4 available online
  8. ↑ Walther Soyka died , In: Strahlentelex No. 472–473 of September 7, 2006, p. 5f online
  9. ↑ a b Gerhard Hertel, The DVU - Danger from the Right Wing , Academy for Politics and Current Affairs Munich, Volume 12, Hanns Seidel Foundation 1998, p. 26 available online ( memento of the original from October 7, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hss.de
  10. ^ Richard Stöss, political parties handbook: the parties of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1980 , Volume 2, Westdeutscher Verlag 1984, p. 1558
  11. ^ Hartmut Herb, Jan Peters, Mathias Thesen, The new right-wing extremism: Facts and trends , Winddruck Verlag 1980, p. 157
  12. ↑ Florian Mildenberger, eroticism, polygamy, motherhood. The changes of Mathilde Ludendorff , In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 54, 2006, H. 7/8, P. 642
  13. ^ H. Michaelis, Nuclear Energy, 2 volumes, 1979, dtv Wissenschaft series, page 682
  14. ↑ Wolfgang Köhnlein, Horst Kuni, Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, low dose radiation and health: medical, legal and technical aspects with a focus on radon , Springer Verlag 2013, p. 130
  15. ↑ DER SPIEGEL 20/1981 of May 11, 1981, p. 75
personal data
SURNAME Soyka, Walther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian publicist and opponent of nuclear power
DATE OF BIRTH 17th August 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 2006
Place of death Bremen