Franz Höllering
| Born: |
07-09-1896 |
| Faculty: |
Law School |
| Category: |
Deprivation of academic degree |
Franz HÖLLERING (born on July 9th, 1896 in Baden/Lower Austria), had been a soldier in the Austrian-Hungarian Army during World War I. When he announced to his commanding officer that he was against the war, he was assigned to another post. After the war he first remained in Vienna and graduated at the Law School at the University of Vienna on July 16th, 1921 with the academic degree 'Dr. iur.'.
Then he moved to Berlin where he started a successful career as a journalist and editor: together with Bertold Brecht and John Heartfield he managed the sports paper ‚Arena‘ by the end of the 1920ies and was chief editor int the ‘Berliner Zeitung am Mittag‘ until 1931.
In 1915 his daughter Helga Franziska Hoellering was born, in 1929 his son Michael Georg Hoellering.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, he exposed the Nazi's intentions to go to war and then fled to Prague/Czechoslovakia to escape the Gestapo persecution.
In Prague Franz Hoellering was chief editor of the daily newspaper 'Prager Mittag', which was issued until 1938.
In 1938 he emigrated to New York/USA. His daughter
Franziska Hoellering (later Helga Francis Havas), who studied at the Medical School, was expelled from the University of Vienna in 1938. He was deprived of his academic degree on July 17th, 1942 with the racist argument, that he as a Jew was not considered dignified an academic degree of a German university ('eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwürdig').
After the end of the war he first worked as a translator, and then resumed his career as both a film critic, script-writer and novelist. In 1953 he met Amalie Margret Grisar during a visit in Germany and returned to Germany from his exile in the USA to marry her and to start a family. In October 1954 their first daughter Franziska Martina Hoellering was born, on September 3rd, 1955 ther second daughter Stefanie Theresa Hoellering.
It took 13 years since the deprivation – and a very long time since the end of Nazism – until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on May 15th, 1955.
Franz Hoellering died on January 11th, 1968 in Munich.
Lit.: information from his daughter Franziska Martina Hoellering, Germany, 2013; SCHOENBERNER/KESTEN 2008, 281.
Katharina Kniefacz and Herbert Posch
