Ernst Fischer

Ernst Fischer (3 July 1899 – 31 July 1972), also known under the pseudonyms Ernst Peter Fischer, Peter Wieden, Pierre Vidal, and Der Miesmacher, was a Bohemian-born Austrian journalist, writer, poet and politician.

Biography Ernst Fischer was born in Komotau, Bohemia, in 1899 as the son of the Imperial and Royal colonel and teacher of mathematics and descriptive geometry at military schools Josef Fischer and his wife Agnes. He served on the Italian Front in the First World War, studied philosophy in Graz and did unskilled labour in a factory before working as a provincial journalist and then on the Arbeiter-Zeitung from 1927. In 1932, he married Ruth von Mayenburg. Initially a social democrat, Fischer became a member of the Communist Party of Austria (Kommunistische Partei Österreichs or KPÖ) in 1934 after being disillusioned in liberal democracy for not being able to withstand fascism.

In 1934, after Fischer and his wife were involved in the Austrian Civil War, they had to leave Austria. They went to Czechoslovakia, where he began working for the Comintern as an editor. In 1938, they went to Moscow, where Fischer continued to work for the Comintern. They lived at Hotel Lux, a luxury hotel that had been built in 1911, and was taken over by the Communist Party after the October Revolution. Following Adolf Hitler's seizure of power, the hotel became a refuge for communist exiles, especially Germans. The Fischers lived there from 1938 until 1945. Ernst Fischer, however, remained a loyal Stalinist.

After the war until his expulsion in 1969, Fischer continued to be an important figure in the KPÖ. He served as Communist minister of information in the immediate post-war provisional Renner government (27 April 1945 – 20 December 1945) and he published articles in Weg und Ziel, a monthly journal of the KPÖ.

In 195, Ruth von Mayenburg and Fischer were divorced, and Fischer married Louise Eisler.

In 1969, Fischer was expelled from the Austrian Communist Party for opposing the suppression of the Prague Spring, describing the resulting Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia as "Panzer Kommunismus" ("tank communism"). Now, Fischer gradually moved towards the "undogmatic Marxists" in Austria, even renouncing the concept of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Ernst Fischer died on 31 July 1972 in Deutschfeistritz.

Literary works Vogel Sehnsucht. 1920 Krise der Jugend. 1931 Freiheit und Diktatur. 1934 Vernichtet den Trotzkismus. Berlin 1937 (Trotzky Unmasked. New York 1937) Die Entstehung des österreichischen Volkscharakters. 1944 Franz Grillparzer. 1948 Der große Verrat. Drama 1950 Roman in Dialogen. 1955 (with Louise Eisler-Fischer ) Von der Notwendigkeit der Kunst. 1959 (English translation: The Necessity of Art. 1963) Kunst und Koexistenz: Beitrag zu einer modernen marxistischen Ästhetik. 1967 (translated as Ideology and Coexistence ) Was Marx wirklich sagte. 1968 (translated as How to Read Marx) Erinnerungen und Reflexionen. 1969 Das Ende einer Illusion. 1973 Von Grillparzer zu Kafka. 1975 Born in Austria.