Dr. Otto Färber

Otto Färber came from a Protestant family in Urach (then part of the Kingdom of Württemberg) and grew up in Marbach and Bad Cannstatt. After graduating from high school in 1911, he began his studies at the Technical University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim. After one year, he transferred to Tübingen to study history at the university’s Faculty of Philosophy. He had been interested in religious and ecclesiastical issues since his school days, which is why he converted to Catholicism in 1912. He then joined the Cheruskia Tübingen fraternity in 1912.

During World War I, he was seriously wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians. After the war, he earned his doctorate in Freiburg in 1918. He then worked first for the Catholic Academic Committee and subsequently in the party office of the Bavarian People’s Party; in 1924, he moved to Karlsruhe to work as a journalist for Badenia Verlags AG. From 1924 to 1934, he served as an editor at the *Badischer Beobachter* and as editor-in-chief of the *Zentrums-Pressekorrespondenz* in the state of Baden.

In 1934, as an opponent of the Nazis, he emigrated to Innsbruck, where he worked as a journalist for the “Allgemeiner Tiroler Anzeiger” from 1935 to 1937.

On March 12, 1938, Otto Färber witnessed the downfall of free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht.

Immediately after the occupation of his homeland, he was arrested and deported to the Dachau concentration camp on June 17, 1938. After his release, he worked as an accountant. From 1941 to 1943, he was drafted into the German Wehrmacht and served as a Russian interpreter on the Eastern Front. He subsequently worked as an accountant in Göggingen, Württemberg.

After the war, Otto Färber resumed his work as a journalist in Germany and also served as the Austrian Honorary Consul General for Württemberg from 1956 to 1965. In 1960, he was admitted to the Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem (OESSH).

Out of gratitude for having survived the concentration camp, he donated funds to build a chapel in Bairbach near Telfs. He died on March 15, 1993, at the age of 102.