Walter Fischer

Walter Fischer, during the Spanish Civil WarWalter Fischer (6 January 1901 – 28 April 1978) was an Austrian medical doctor, journalist, radio broadcaster, translator, poet, anti-fascist resistance fighter and Communist Party official. He went to school in Graz, and in 1919 he began medical studies in the same city. In 1920 he joined the Social Democratic Workers Party and the local Association of Socialist Students in Graz (of which he was chairman 1921-1923).

Medical career in Vienna Between 1926 and 1931 Fischer worked as assistant physician at the Vienna General Hospital. He was a member of the Association of Social Democratic Physicians in Vienna 1927 and 1934.

In Moscow he learnt Russian. At the time the Styria party organization was undergoing an profound internal crisis in the wake of the Soviet intervention in Hungary.

Later years

From the beginning of the 1960s he spent a lot of time translating Russian poetry, translating works of poets like Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, Robert Rozhdestvensky and Sergei Yesenin. Some of these translation would appear in and Volksstimme (the central KPÖ organ). Fischer reached out to Stephan Hermlin, after which his translations were published in the East German magazine Sinn und Form in 1964. From 1966 onwards Fischer was a member of the editorial board of Wiener Tagebuch.

Between 1959 and 1968 he was the editor of Der kleine Landwirt and headed the Educational Political Commission of the Central Committee of KPÖ. He remained a member of the Central Committee of KPÖ until 1964. Fischer opposed the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. In response to the shift in KPÖ in 1971-1972, as the party reversed its initial condemnation of the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia and adopted a more pro-Moscow line, Fischer left the party.

During his later years he lived in the '' building in Vienna. Walter Fischer died in Vienna on 28 April 1978. In 1986 an autobiographical work, Kurze Geschichten aus einem langen Leben ('Short stories from a long life'), was published posthumously.