Obituary: Peter Pulzer

Abstract

The world of German, Austrian, and Jewish studies, but also that of comparative politics and British affairs, lost one of its great ones! Peter Pulzer lived the first nine years of his life in a turbulent Vienna witnessing a brief civil war between the Socialists and their clerical-conservative, Austro-fascist, and right-radical opponents, the triumph of Austro-Fascism, and its demise at the hand of the Nazis whose Anschluss in 1938 annulled Austria's existence as an independent country. Peter grew up in a deeply assimilated, middle-class Jewish family that was close to the Social Democratic Party and had the young boy classified as konfessionslos in his elementary school devoid of Jewish kids where Peter was categorized alongside a few Protestant boys in a predominantly Catholic environment. Peter's classification did not prevent him from being forced to attend a Jews-only school that was far away from his home. He witnessed how his father and grandfather were violently removed from their apartment and how his father joined the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde—the official organization of the Jewish community—much to his chagrin, since Peter's father deemed himself completely a-religious as well as ethnically apart from Jews. It was not until Yom Kipur of 1938, when Peter was nine years old, that a family friend took Peter to a synagogue where Peter came to see the “Torah.” This friend also taught Peter Hebrew, which his parents accepted as constituting an asset for a possible emigration to Palestine. Other hopeful possibilities were the Anglophone world of Britain, Canada, the United States, and Australia, with Britain emerging as the ultimate option by dint of a retired Anglican clergyman from Hertfordshire sponsoring the family! Peter maintained close contact with this man's family throughout his life.