Fischer, Johann

Austria, 1919 - 2008

Johann Fischer was born on October 5, 1919, in Eggendorf am Wagram, located just a few miles from today’s Maria Gugging. He was the third of seven children, and his parents ran a small farm with a vineyard. He attended elementary school and completed an apprenticeship as a baker up to his examination as a master tradesman. In 1940 Fischer was drafted into the German military and was then captured as an American prisoner of war. One year after the war ended, Fischer returned back to his parents’ farm and ultimately began to run it. From then on, he led the life of a winegrower and cherished the wish to marry and found a family. Fischer sought psychiatric treatment for the first time in 1957. He became a permanent patient at what was then the “Mental Health and Care Facility at Gugging” in 1961 and finally, in 1982, a part of the group of Gugging Artists. Fischer passed away on September 23, 2008, at the age of eighty-eight.