Felix Czeike


Felix Czeike was an Austrian historian and popular educator. He was an author and partly also editor of numerous publications on the history of Vienna and was the director of the. His main work is the six-volume Historische Lexikon Wien.

Life

Czeike, born in Favoriten, studied history, geography, German studies and art history at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1950. From 1954 he worked in the Vienna City and State Archives and in 1976 took over their management, which he held until his retirement in 1989. In 1977 he founded the Vienna branch of the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft for urban history research, which was integrated into the City and State archives, and which he headed until his death. From 1993 to 2003 he was president of the. In 1979 he was appointed associate professor at the University of Vienna, and in 1985 was awarded the title Hofrat by the Federal President.
Even after his retirement, Czeike devoted himself to the history of Vienna. His main work is the six-volume Historische Lexikon Wien published from 1992 to 2004 with about 3,700 pages and 30,000 keywords, which is regarded as the standard work concerning the history of Vienna and is usually simply called der Czeike by experts. The Große Groner Wien Lexikon, published by Czeike in 1974, can be regarded as a preliminary stage. Its topographical part goes back to Richard Groner's "Vienna as it was" and Ernestine Krug collaborated on its biographical part. Czeike was supported in the creation of the Historisches Lexikon Wien by the collaboration of his wife Helga, who is also mentioned as co-author in some of his other books. In addition, he called on the human resources of the Vienna City and Provincial Archives and employed a team of experts with whom he had accumulated specialized knowledge about Vienna.
The encyclopedia was made available online in 2014 by the City of Vienna as a digitalised version and at the same time served as a database for the Vienna History Wiki.
On 23 April 2006, Czeike died unexpectedly during a stay in Merano. He is buried in an honorary grave in the Hietzing Cemetery.
His life's work includes numerous books and hundreds of other publications dealing mainly with the history of Vienna.

Awards