Benedikt Kautsky (1894–1960)

Benedikt Kautsky was the son of Luise and Karl Kautsky, socialist activists. He was born in Germany, where his mother served as a Berlin city councillor and his father edited the Socialist Democrat paper Die Neue Zeit. In 1924, the family returned to Vienna, his mother's home city. He became an economist and served as secretary of the Vienna Department of Labor, and editor of Employment and the Economy. In 1938, following the Nazi Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, the family fled to Prague and then to The Netherlands. Kautsky was arrested and spent three months in the concentration camp at Dachau before being transferred to Buchenwald, and then to Auschwitz. He sent for forced labor in the IG Farben-Werks. He survived and after the war, published the letters to friends by Rosa Luxemburg that his mother had collected. From 1950 to 1958, he was a lecturer at the University of Graz and head of the Otto-Möbes School of Economics. In 1958, he was appointed Deputy Director-General of the Creditanstalt-Bank Corporation.