Jura Soyfer

Jura Soyfer (December 8, 1912. Kharkov, Russian Empire – February 15/16, 1939, Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany) was an important Austrian political journalist and cabaret writer.

Jura Soyfer was the son of the industrialist Vladimir Soyfer and his wife Lyubov. The well-to-do Jewish family employed French- and English-speaking governesses for Soyfer and his older sister Tamara.

In 1921, the family fled from the Bolshevist revolution and arrived in the town of Baden near Vienna. They later moved to Vienna. At the age of 15, Soyfer began studying socialist writings and became a staunch Marxist. In 1927, he joined the Verband der Sozialistischen Mittelschüler (the Association of Socialist Mittelschule pupils). His early experience with languages meant that Soyfer soon developed a feeling and love for language and wordplay. In 1929, this led to his becoming a member of the Politischen Kabarett der Sozialdemokraten (Political Cabaret of the Social Democrats) where he gained his first experience in writing for the stage.

From December 1931, Soyfer wrote two weekly political satires, one in the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers' Newspaper) and the other in the social-democratic weekly Der Kuckuck (The Cuckoo). He also wrote two articles for the Politische Bühne (Political Stage, a socialist newspaper connected to the Red Players group of actors). These demanded that theatre become more politicised, and that it should stop producing mere distraction and entertainment. In this respect Soyfer approaches Bertolt Brecht's "epic theatre".

Soyfer also satirised the key authoritarian figures of the Austrofascist (1933/4 to 1938) period like Engelbert Dollfuß, Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg and Kurt Schuschnigg.

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