Ferenc Schlaffer

Ferenc Schlaffer was born in the Hungarian village Pornóapáti in 1950. His native village is some meters off the border between Austria and Hungary and in those days it was inhabited by mostly Germans. Also his family was of German origin, thus they spoke German language at home, too. His parents earned their living from the land they possessed. His mother, Anna Éder, was a housewife who first worked in their private land, later in the cooperative. His father, János Schlaffer, was an independent smallholder for a while, later he got a job at the forestry. His family planned several times to leave the country because of the poverty and the injuries they had to sustain during the reprisals against the Germans considered to be guilty for the war crimes. They lost their family house as well as a part of their land. Ferenc Schlaffer attended his schools in Pornóapáti and in the near village of Felsőcsatár. Then he went to Szombathely and he studied in an industrial school to be a skilled roofer. He finished school in 1968 and he was employed at Vasép, (Iron Constructions), in Szombathely. He worked there for a couple of months, then he decided to leave Hungary just some days after he had turned 18. He returned home after a work shift, he handed over his wage to his mother and he directed himself to the border fence which was some hundred meter off their family house. He climbed up the fencing and jumped over to Austria. He jumped off in Deutsch Schützen. On the Austrian side of the border Ferenc Schlaffer went to the border station, he was brought to Eisenberg. Later he was transported to a refugee camp in Traiskirchen. First he wanted to go to live in the United States of America, but at the end he changed his mind and he remained in Austria. Nevertheless he was officially banished from Austria for four years, he didn’t have to leave the country. He lived in Traiskirchen and he worked as a roofer in Wien for different companies. After a while he succeeded to move to Wien, too. He was given the Austrian citizenship in 1980 and he could visit Hungary at the first time after his emigration. He had an Austrian wife, but later they divorced. He lived together with another Austrian woman and they had a child. His daughter Natalia died in 2005. In 1989, he remarried. His second wife is Erzsébet Gunyhó, of Szombathely. She works in Austria as a nurse while Ferenc Schlaffer has already retired. The couple lives both in Wien where they rent a flat and in Szombathely where they have a family house.

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