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Marie Jahoda über ihren Vater Carl Jahoda My father [i.e. Carl Jahoda] was the youngest of 5 brothers. [...] Leaving school at 14 years of age, he attended a commercial school for two years and then...? I do not know. [...] In his twenties, he lived and worked for an export firm in Constantinople.1 It must have been there that he acquired his fluent French and wide reading. [...] Returned to Vienna, he established a firm for engineering equipment and lithography. The capital for this came from a cousin, who became a not very constructive, not much loved partner in the firm. [...] I see my father at the end of the year, working in the evening at home at the big dining table, making Bilanz. Huge columns of figures had to be added up, by hand of course, in two different books, and in the end they had to match to the last penny; if they didn't he had to start all over again. Another evening without a game of chess with Edi [Jahoda] or me. I thought it pedantic.When and where he wrote his fine poetry I do not know. He read ›serious‹ books, never novels. Ernst Mach impressed him deeply. He became a member of the Mach Society,2 met there Josef Popper-Lynkeus, who became his admired mentor and friend, and our second family god. Die Allgemeine Nährpflicht, a radical economic proposal to solve the social question by a mixture of state and private enterprise stimulated my father to publish a pamphlet3 in which he suggested what he regarded as a practical, non-revolutionary way to make that great dream come true: instead of compulsory military service, he proposed a voluntary insurance company to meet the basic needs for everyone life-long after four years of participation in the state economy. He soon realised the impracticability of his idea, as testified by a long poem he wrote, full of psychological insight, about how jealously, greed, and stupidity would prevent a rational solution. I remember only the last line: Es wird die Nährpflicht an den Ochsen scheitern. Just before Christmas in 1926, we were woken in the middle of the night by my mother's [i.e. Betty Jahoda, née Propst] scream. My father had suffered a terminal heart attack. He was 59 years old. Marie Jahoda Albu: Reconstructions. [Keymer, Sussex: Published by the author] 1996, S. 3, 7, 8.
1 Konstantinopel:
seit 1930 Istanbul (İstanbul),
Türkei. Anmerkung
Reinhard Müller.
2 »Verein
Ernst Mach«:
Carl Jahoda gehörte wohl zu einem nicht vereinsmäßig
organisierten Kreis von Anhängern Ernst Machs, denn der »Verein
Ernst Mach«
wurde erst im November 1928 gegründet. Dieser sozialreformerische
Bildungsverein in der Tradition der sozialdemokratischen
Volksbildungsbewegung, der 1934 behördlich aufgelöst wurde, hatte
zum Namensgeber den Physiker, Philosophen und Psychologen Ernst
Mach
(1838-1916), der übrigens mit dem Erfinder, Philosophen und
pazifistischen Sozialreformer Josef
Popper-Lynkeus
(1838-1921) befreundet war. Anmerkung
Reinhard Müller.
3 Vgl.
[Carl
Jahoda]: Die
Nährpflicht-Versicherung. Eine Studie zu Popper-Lynkeus »Die
Allgemeine Nährpflicht als Lösung der sozialen Frage«.
Von einem Mitglied des Vereines »Allgemeine
Nährpflicht«.
Als Manuskript gedruckt. Wien: [Selbstverlag] 1919, 33 S.; vgl. auch
Carl Jahoda: Zur
Frage des Abbaues der staatlichen Lebensmittelzuschüsse. Brot und
Wasser. Wien: [Selbstverlag] 1921, 13 S.
Anmerkung
Reinhard Müller.
© Reinhard Müller -- Graz, im Oktober 2006 |
DAS ELTERNHAUS über Betty Jahoda über Carl Jahoda über Edward Jahoda über Franz Jahoda über Fritz Jahoda über Georg Jahoda Karl Kraus --"-- über Susan Jahoda über Anton Kuerti über Rosi Kuerti über "Mitzi" Gedichte Stammbaum |