Otto Filipsky

Otto Filipsky (born 18 October 1912) is an Austrian centenarian who is the oldest living man in Austria.

Biography
Otto Filipsky was born in Znaim, Austria-Hungary (now Znojmo, Czech Republic) on 18 October 1912. He did not speak Czech, as there were only German school in the town where he was born. "Until Hitler came, it was peaceful," said Filipsky on the coexistence of the German and the Czech ethnic group.

In 1938, Austria was already annexed, and Filipsky, living then in Czechoslovakia, received the call from the Czechoslovak army, but I did not want to have to shoot my brothers and immediately thought of leaving for Austria. In adventurous circumstances, the father of two, whose children were already half-orphans at the age of three and twelve months after the death of his first wife, succeeded in deserting a patrol and fleeing to Austria. The war nevertheless caught up with Filipsky. At the German Wehrmacht he was deployed in Yugoslavia. In the last days of the war his life was again hanging by a thread. His company commander, who had connections to the resistance, made it possible for him in Vienna to settle with a fake order instead of being deployed to the south-east wall. "I owe my life to him, and after the war he gave me a job at Überreueuter, where I stayed until I retired, I started small and worked my way up." The trained book printer, typesetter and bookbinder later worked in electronics. "I was often on duty ten hours a day to get involved." When the change to computer was due, Filipsky retired.

To his great joy, he found his two children safe with his acquaintance after his return from the war, with his second wife, he got two more. "She has never made a difference between her own children and the other two." He settled in Retz, only 15 kilometers from Znojmo and yet separated by an iron curtain. He would have liked to see a joint national exhibition linking these two cities together again. On his 100th birthday, he was honored by the Znojmo Deputy Mayor, and only a month earlier he was with his son back in his native city.

Otto Filipsky was still in very good health at the time of his 106th birthday. Even at the home games of Rapid Vienna, he is still occasionally there since he gets free tickets and sits in the honorary box.

He did not get his driver's license until the age of fifty, and the blue haze left the former heavy smoker only in the middle of his life. "I want to tell everyone: Do not start it, it's a vice". What would someone still want to give with his life experience to today's youth? Filipsky thinks for a long time. Then he says: "In the past, people were happier than they were today, we were much more frugal, I was happy about every new pencil and I could only buy my first bicycle from my apprenticeship - on installments!