[3] Viktor Matejka was born the third of his parents' children into a lower middle-class Catholic family at Korneuburg, a small town a couple of hours' walk up-river of Vienna.

In the aftermath of the February uprising, with a new "Popular Front" government installed under Engelbert Dollfuss, he was appointed to the post of "Bildungsreferent" (loosely, "chief education officer") of the Vienna "Abeiterkammer" ("Chamber of labour").

[2] He saw to it that students could still benefit from hearing lecturers who were not government supporters, such as Leo Stern who was widely known to have been a left-wing activist member of the (subsequently outlawed) Social Democratic Party before 1934.

[1] Despite working in a prominent position for the government of a one-party state, Matejka also pushed during this period for the reinstatement of employees who had been dismissed from their posts on political grounds.

A series of "scandals" ensued at Ottakring until on 17 July 1936, probably in response to a critical article in the catholic-conservative newspaper Reichspost, Mayor Schmitz had Matejka removed from his post.

Early on he had read "Mein Kampf", the autobiographical manifesto produced during the 1920s by the man who in 1933 took power in Germany and five years later extended his self-conferred mandate to Austria.

[2][4] During the 1930s Matejka also teamed up for a time with Nikolaus Hovorka to produce the pocket-book format political journal, "Berichte zur Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte" ("Reports on cultural and contemporary history").

[1] It turned out that he had been included in the very first batch of Austrian political prisoners to be arrested and transported to Dachau following the annexation ("Anschluss"): he would spend the next six years as a concentration camp inmate.

[2] Also included in that first post-annexation transportation of "prominent persons" was Richard Schmitz, the man who two years earlier, as Mayor of Vienna, had put an end to Viktor Matejka's career as a top-level education administrator in the city.

[4] At some point during 1940 he was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp in a remote mountain location where it had been established in the hills to the west of Prague as a centre for forced labourers working the nearby granite quarries.

Matejka had evidently succeeded in having himself listed among the trustworthy prisoners, and following his return to Dachau he was assigned to work as a library assistant, and then to take charge of the camp book-binding workshop.

[1][4] This provided him with an opportunity to start producing "Pick Books" ("Pickbüchern") with articles cut out of newspapers pasted on their pages which were distributed among fellow prisoners to try and keep them informed.

[8] The articles selected included Hitler speeches and army reports, along with features on the arts, literature, music and philosophy, all neatly cut out and grouped according to subject matter.

The piece, written in the style of a Pradler Ritterspiele, was full of barely disguised unflattering oblique references to the leader which, sources insist, the SS guards in attendance failed to notice.

[1] On 20 April 1945 there had not yet been time for any elections to be held, and it was accordingly through nomination by his party that Matejka joined the Vienna senate (governing executive body), which was a coalition administration dominated by the Social Democrats and led by Theodor Körner.

Employing a succession of drastic displays and images, it courageously tracked the emergence and working through of fascism at a time when many people were driven by an overwhelming urge to forget the whole nightmarish business.

Unlike many politicians, he was also not afraid to campaign for the return to Austria artists, such as Franz Werfel, Arnold Schoenberg and the polymath Oskar Kokoschka, who had been driven into exile during the National Socialist years.

[4] Although they came from different political parties, Viktor Matejka's effectiveness as senator for Arts and Education was enhanced by the fact that he generally sustained an excellent personal relationship with Mayor Theodor Körner.

Matejka resigned his seat in the senate, but represented the party as a Vienna councillor (Gemeinderat) and member of the regional parliament (Landtag) till 1954.

[20][21] Keen both to build the readership and reduce the publication's financial dependency on the Austrian Communist Party, Matejka did what he could to extend circulation to neighbouring states that were still undergoing significant political turbulence, notably Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

However, ethnic cleansing during the 1940s meant there was no longer a large population in those countries with mother-tongue German, while Soviet-backed governments, especially in Prague and Budapest, quickly came to identify "Tagebuch" as a "[western/imperialist] trojan horse".

Matejka sustained a high public profile through his old age as an exceptionally prolific contributor, notably in the letters pages, to serious newspapers and news magazines.

The elegant "Viktor-Matejka-Stiege", beside the Apollo Cinema, close to Matejka's former home in the central district of Vienna-Mariahilf, provides a connection for pedestrians between the Eggerthgasse (...alley) and the Kaunitzgasse.