19 February 2008, 7.00 pm
Did a "Jewish" journalist drive a "Catholic" to his death?
Does the Vienna High Court have one standard for a "Jewish" journalist and another for an extreme right wing politican?
Does the fact that the seven court cases of Karl Pfeifer from 1995 until 2002 drews so little attention in Austria, have to to do with antisemitism in Austrian society?
In February 1995, Karl Pfeifer, the editor of the official monthly, journal of the Vienna Jewish Community published a review criticising Dr W P who had written an article alleging that Jews had declared war on Germany in 1933. Dr W P brought defamation proceedings against Pfeifer, who was ultimately acquitted in May 1998, when the courts found that his criticisim had a sufficient factual basis.
Five years after the article's publication, in February 2000, the Vienna Public Prosecutor launched criminal proceedings under the National Socialism Prohibition Act against Dr W P because of his article. He committed suicide shortly before his trial. In June 2000, the right-wing weekly
Zur Zeit carried an article referring to Pferifer's article, alleging that it had unleashed a manhunt which eventually resulted in the death of the victim.
Between 2000-2003, Karl Pfeifer was forced to defend his integrity against
Zur Zeit and the far-right MEP, Andreas Molzer, in four Viennese courts. In each case he was unsuccessful. In one judgement, the Vienna High Court attributed to Pfeifer "only an allocation of a moral responsibility" in relation to the suicide of Dr W P.
In its judgement at the European Court of Human Rights (Pfeifer v Austria, 15 November 2007, Application no: 12556/03), Austrian jurisdiction was overruled.
Karl Pfeifer describes the process he has been through since 1995 as "legal purgatory". The lecture will consider his motives in pursuing the case to the European Court of Human Rights resulting in the overturning of the original judgement; the judicial process and subject matter of the case in relation to Austria and her past; the significance of the judgement in the fight against antisemitism; and his decision to disseminate the case through writing and lecturing internationally.
Karl Pfeifer was born in Bade bei Wien and fled with his parents in 1938 to Hungary, and with Youth Aliya to Palestine. He was educated on a kibbutz and in 1946 volunteered for Palmach, and fought during the War of Independence in the Negev. He returned to Austria in 1951, and after graduating from Hotel School, worked in several countries. In 1979 he became a freelance journalist and between 1982 - 1995 was editor of the offical monthly publication of the Jewish Community, Vienna. He writes regularly for
Searchlight, London and for the Budapest weekly
Hetek, in Vienna. He is also Curator of the Documentation Centre of Austria Resistance (DOW).
This lecture is part of a series of lectures in the coming year at the Wiener Library, held together with Kingston University, examining some of the ways in which the establishment and recognition of certain principles in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the Second World War evolved, and how these are viewed in society today. For example, the creation of the State of Israel, the founding of the European Union, the drawing up of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Genocide Convention were directly shaped by the Second World War and the Holocaust. The series attempts to ask in which ways certain moral value systems, held since the end of the War, are increasingly being attacked, ignore and eroded.
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