Comments (0)Austrian Jewish Journalist wins Legal Victory
January 22, 2008Canada
Sheldon Kirshner
Canadian Jewish News
Karl Pfeifer, a Jewish journalist who brought the wrath of Austria’s right-wing forces upon himself after accusing an Austrian professor of defaming Jews, has won a legal victory in a celebrated case turning on anti-Semitism, freedom of expression and libel.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, recently acquitted him of causing the suicide of Prof. Werner Pfeifenberger.
“I feel vindicated,” Pfeifer said in an interview. “I was optimistic. I expected the judges in Strasbourg to be fair.”
But Pfeifer, who was editor of a Jewish community monthly magazine in Vienna when he challenged Pfeifenberger, admitted that the controversy took an emotional toll on him.
“It is important to fight anti-Semitism, even if one has many sleepless nights. Yet I am a standing rebuke to Austrians who are anti-Semites or those who tolerate anti-Semitism.”
The case began in 1995, when Pfeifenberger, a political scientist who had taught at the University of Muenster in Germany, wrote an article for the yearbook of the far right-wing Austrian Freedom party. In it, he claimed that Jews had declared war on Germany in 1933 after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor.
Pfeifenberger also alleged that Jews had played a manipulative role in European history. In describing Jews as “the internationals,” Pfeifer noted, he resorted to “anti-Semitic jargon.”
In Pfeifer’s view, Pfeifenberger added insult to injury by claiming that Jews fomented a number of decisive historical events, including the 1789 French Revolution.
Irked by Pfeifenberger’s claims, Pfeifer launched an attack on him in the pages of Die Gemeinde, a publication he edited from 1982 until his retirement in 1995.
Pfeifer, born in Baden bei Wien in 1928, fled Austria with his parents in 1938, following its annexation by Germany. The Pfeifers then made their way to Palestine via Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia and Hungary. They were relatively fortunate, having lost 36 close relatives during the Holocaust.
Pfeifer fought with the Palmach during Israel’s War of Independence. He left Israel in 1951 and returned to Austria, where he worked in the hotel business.
In 1979, he became a freelance journalist, writing mainly on human rights. After Pfeifer’s piece in Die Gemeinde was published, Pfeifenberger sued him for libel and demanded the equivalent of $20,000 (US) in damages.
But in 1997 and 1998, two lower appeals courts and one high appeals court rejected Pfeifenberger’s lawsuit.
On Feb. 15, 2000, after the Freedom party formed a coalition government with the People’s party, Austria’s attorney general opened criminal proceedings against Pfeifenberger, saying he had violated a law prohibiting Nazi activity.
Less than three months later, he committed suicide.
Shortly afterward, a weekly, Zur Zeit – which Pfeifer describes as an “anti-Semitic rag” – condemned the “Jewish journalist Karl Pfeifer” and claimed that the “manhunt” he
conducted against Pfeifenberger had prompted him to take his life.
Subsequently, Pfeifer sued Zur Zeit for libel and its editor, Andreas Moeltzer, for slander and defamation of character. Pfeifer triumphed, but an appeals court judge ruled that Pfeifer had “moral” responsibility for Pfeifenberger’s self-inflicted death. In response, Pfeifer appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.
Late last year, it acquitted Pfeifer of complicity in Pfeifenberger’s suicide and ordered the Austrian government to pay Pfeifer 5,000 euros in damages and 10,000 euros in court costs.
The ruling will become official next month, on Feb. 15, if there no objections from any of the concerned parties.
Looking back, Pfeifer regrets that Pfeifenberger committed suicide. “Yes, of course,” he said.
But he contends there was “no causal link” between his article and Pfeifenberger’s death. “The European court decided I was right.”
And while Pfeifer doesn’t believe Pfeifenberger was a neo-Nazi, he suggests that he was a conspiracy theorist when it came to Jews.
Pfeifer is thankful that the Social Democrat party and the Greens supported him during his travails, and that the Jewish community rallied behind him in moral and material terms.
Hannah Lessing, who heads two Austrian government Holocaust restitution funds, is not surprised by Pfeifer’s grit. “He is a very credible man, a real fighter,” she said in an interview from Vienna. “He has been threatened by right-wing extremists and still doesn’t lie low. He is a real anti-fascist.”