Otto Felix Kanitz was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n socialist, journalist and educator. He was also part of the 'Schönbrunner Circle' (Schönbrunner Kreis).

Childhood

Kanitz was born as the third of four children of Jewish parents. After his parents divorced in 1902, the three sons stayed with the father whilst the daughter was adjudged to the mother. When the father converted to Catholicism and took a catholic wife, one year later, the sons were baptized as well, but soon given to an orphanage in order to not disturb their stepmother. Young Kanitz had five years of primary school and three years of secondary school before starting an apprenticeship.

Social activity

As soon as in 1911, he engaged in Max Winter 's election campaign, and beginning in 1912 he gave speeches before youth groups. From 1916, he was active in the Kinderfreunde movement where he was mentored by Hermine Weinreb and Anton Afritsch. Besides his involvement in the aforementioned movement, he prepared matura

Matura

Matura or a similar term is the common name for the high-school leaving exam or "maturity exam" in various countries, including Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia,...

, wrote poems and theater plays and contributed to the Kinderland journal. In 1918, after his matura, he was employed by Kinderfreunde and started to study philosophy and pedagogy with Wilhelm Jerusalem

Wilhelm Jerusalem

Wilhelm Jerusalem was an Austrian Jewish philosopher and pedagogue....

 who considerably influenced his development towards tolerance, albeit whilst strongly opposing institutionalized religion and any misuse of power. His goal was to eradicate the 'Dienermentalität' (servant mentality) which he felt was a characteristic of those of the supposed lower-classes under the Habsburg Monarchy. He had the opportunity to realize practical educational reforms together with Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. In collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement as a core member of the Vienna...

, Max Adler, Marianne Pollak, Josef Luitpold Stern and Otto Glöckel

Otto Glöckel

Otto Glöckel social-democratic politician and school-reformer during the First Austrian Republic...

.

Kanitz was a proponent of the Kinderrepublik anti-authoritarian education movement. After successfully running two such holiday camps in 1919, in Gmünd, Lower Austria

Gmünd, Lower Austria

Gmünd is a town in northwestern Waldviertel in the Austrian state of Lower Austria, the capital of the Gmünd district. The municipality consists of the Katastralgemeinden Böhmzeil, Breitensee, Eibenstein, Gmünd and Grillenstein...

 (the only such project ever to operate in Austria, which housed a total of some 700 children), he was appointed director of Kinderfreunde's newly to be founded Schönbrunn school:

When after the breakdown of the Habsburg Monarchy

Habsburg Monarchy

The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...

 Vienna's Vice Mayor Max Winter succeeded in getting a considerable part of Schönbrunn Palace

Schönbrunn Palace

Schönbrunn Palace is a former imperial 1,441-room Rococo summer residence in Vienna, Austria. One of the most important cultural monuments in the country, since the 1960s it has been one of the major tourist attractions in Vienna...

 to establish a school for educators and teachers and a children's home, it was under the condition that they would start a project within a time period of three days. Kanitz then moved in with 100 of the participants from the holiday camp.

Anton Tesarek was appointed director of the children's home in Schönbrunn Palace, while Kanitz was to lead the school. Meanwhile, Kranitz completed his PhD in 1922. Another one of his initiatives, a conference near Salzburg in 1922 with the co-founder of the German Kinderfreunde Kurt Löwenstein

Kurt Löwenstein

Kurt Löwenstein was a German USPD/SPD politician, Socialist reform pedagogue and one of the founders of Socialist Youth of Germany - Falcons.-Family and education:...

, resulted in founding the International Falcon Movement.

Second World War time

From 1932 to 1934, Kanitz was a member of the Federal Council of Austria

Federal Council of Austria

The Federal Council of Austria or Bundesrat is the second chamber of the Austrian parliament, representing the nine States of Austria on federal level. As part of a bicameral legislature alongside of the National Council of Austria , it can be compared with an upper house or a senate...

. Kranitz's pamphlet Kämpfer der Zukunft was banned by the Nazi beginning with their first book burnings in 1933. He was one of the many socialist authors of the inter-war period who were forced to move out of Austria after the 1934 anti-socialist crackdown. It is taken for granted that he soon later returned to Austria out of home-sickness. Being a Jew and a prominent socialist, he was taken into custody in November 1938 and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp

Buchenwald concentration camp

Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...

 where he is believed to have been executed.

A plaque dedicated to Kanitz has been placed on the back of the Austrian Parliament Building

Austrian Parliament Building

The Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna is where the two Houses of the Parliament of Austria conduct their sittings. The building is on the Ringstraße boulevard in the first district Innere Stadt, close by the Hofburg Palace and the Palace of Justice.The main construction lasted from 1874 to 1883...

 in Vienna, and a street in Vienna's 23. district bears his name. Whether the grave with his name really contains his ashes is uncertain.

Primary and Secondary Literature

• Kanitz, Otto Felix: Kämpfer der Zukunft. Für eine sozialistische Erziehung. Vienna 1929. Herausgegeben von Lutz von Werder. Frankfurt/M: März Verlag 1970.
• Kanitz, Otto Felix: Das proletarische Kind in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Jena 1925. Herausgegeben von Lutz von Werder. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch 1974. ISBN 3-436-01852-X.
• Kanitz, Otto Felix: Schönbrunn. In: Die Sozialistische Erziehung (Wien) Jg.2 (1922) S. 259-265.
• Kanitz, Otto Felix: Zehn Jahre Kolonie Gmünd. In: Die Sozialistische Erziehung (Wien) 9.Jg. (1929) S.198.
• Kotlan-Werner, Henriette: Otto Felix Kanitz und der Schönbrunner Kreis. Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialistischer Erzieher 1923-1934. Wien: Europaverlag 1982 (Materialien zur Arbeiterbewegung 21).
• Jakob Bindel (editor): 75 (Fünfundsiebzig) Jahre Kinderfreunde: 1908-1983; Skizzen, Erinnerungen, Berichte, Ausblicke. Verlag Jungbrunnen, Wien-München 1983. ISBN 3-7026-5536-0
• Herbert Gantschacher
  Herbert Gantschacher
  Herbert Gantschacher is an Austrian director and producer and writer.- Education :...
  
  : Witness and Victim of the Apocalypse ARBOS 2007. Chapter 13 page 12 and chapter 14 page 6.

External links

• WEB - Lexikon der Wiener Sozialdemokratie at www.dasrotewien.at Link to dasrotewien.at Profile of Otto Felix Kanitz
• http://ifm-sei.org/c/show/24 History of IFM