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Richard Verderber (23/1/1884–8/9/1955), winner of the Olympic Games

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Picture: Colonel Richard Verderber in the Gottscheer Kalender of 1937.
Colonel Richard Verderber in the Gottscheer Kalender of 1937.

The „Gottscheer Kalender“ (Gottschee Calendar, published from 1921 to 1945 by a group of Gottscheer intellectuals lead by Wilhelm Tschinkel, avialable as a book at http://www.gottschee.org/pubs.html) writes in 1937:

Richard Verderber, at this time retired Austrian colonel, born 1884 in Gottschee No. 115, in the house “Balersch”. He gained two victories as a higher lieutenant under the colours of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy at the Olympic Games 1912 in Stockholm. He reached the second place for team sabre fencing and the third place for men’s foil fencing. Victory prices were a silver and a bronze medal. Moreover he became Europe champion for sabre fencing (champion de l’Europe).

(See also http://www.pipeline.com/~jbglad/Gottschee.html where extracts of the Gottscheer Kalender are published. You find additional informations about Richard Verderber in the retrospect of the Gottscheer Kalender for the time from September 1936 to September 1937 at http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/~hleustik/gottschee/archiv/g-kalender/jrb-36-37.htm.)

Photo: Richard Verderber as fencer until the Second World War.
Richard Verderber as fencer until the Second World War.

Portrait of Richard Verderber in fencer clothes until the Second World War.
Portrait of Richard Verderber in fencer clothes until the Second World War.

Photo: Richard Verderber after the Second World War.
Richard Verderber after the Second World War.

Richard Verderber married Pauline Weil on 16/6/1919, who was a Jew converted to Catholicism. When the Germans occupied Vienna in 1938, they required all Jewish residents to declare exactly their assets. A collection of these declarations is held in the Austrian State Archive in Vienna. A list was published in the internet (look at http://www.avotaynu.com/HolocaustList). There is an entry “Verderber, Richard, born 23/1/1884)” and in fact colonel Richard Verderber had to declare his assets, too. But Richard Verderber could shelter his wife from persecution during the Third Reich.

The Austrian Fencer Community (ÖFV) reports in its historical overview (look at http://www.fencing.at/data/geschichte.html) that Richard Verderber, at that time still captain, was the chairman of the amateur section of the Austrian Academy of Fencing (AdFÖ) in Vienna. In 1946 colonel Richard Verderber helped to found again the Austrian Fencer Community.

Richard Verderber died on 8/9/1955 at his home in Vienna. He did not have children.

(For additional information I thank very much Karl Robatsch of the ÖFV (for the three last photos above, too) and the historian Michael Wenusch. A short curriculum vitae of Richard Verderber is printed in his dissertation „Geschichte des Wiener Fechtsports“, Wiener Universitäts-Verlag, Vienna 1996, p. 52–55.).

A detailed military biography of Richard Verderber can be found under http://www.austro-hungarian-army.co.uk/biog/verderberrichard.htm.

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