Search results
Abraham Louis Fischer (23 April 1908 – 8 May 1975) was a South African Communist lawyer of Afrikaner descent with partial Anglo-African ancestry from his paternal grandmother, notable for anti- apartheid activism and for the legal defence of anti-apartheid figures, including Nelson Mandela, at the Rivonia Trial.
- Prominent Family
- As A Young Man
- The Rivonia Trial
- Matter of Time
Born in 1908, Bram Fischer was the son of a prominent family in the Free State colony (it later became a province of South Africa). Bram’s grandfather, Abraham Fischer, served as the president of the Orange River colony. His father, Percy Fischer, became Judge President of the Orange Free State. They belonged to a community where status mattered, a...
By the age of 23, he had declared his opposition to segregation. He won a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford and used the opportunity not only to visit the European continent at a time when National Socialism was on the rise, but also the Soviet Union. And he had met Molly Krige, an independent, free-spirited and unconventional young wo...
As the apartheid regime became more brutal, Bram and Molly’s political involvement deepened, and they became regular targets of the Special Branch. They had to weather banning orders, and Molly imprisonment, all the while raising two daughters and a son with cystic fibrosis. Bram was being called on, more and more frequently, to defend those who fe...
It was only a matter of time until the apartheid authorities, which had been biding their time, would begin to pursue Bram Fischer himself. Within a matter of weeks, he was detained and released. In September 1964, he was detained again, but allowed to leave for London to argue in an important case. Many urged him to remain in the UK, but he return...
Mar 28, 2015 · Abram Fischer, commonly known as Bram Fischer (1908-1975), was honoured at the University of Witwatersrand with an honorary doctorate and colloquium on March 26, for his place in the history of the struggle against apartheid.
In 1974 it became known that Fischer was seriously ill with cancer and liberal newspapers and political leaders mounted an intensive campaign for his release. They were successful and he was moved to his brother’s home in Bloemfontein a few weeks before his death in May 1975.
Jul 16, 2018 · In 1998 Stephen Clingman’s award-winning Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary was published. A documentary Love, Communism, Revolution and Rivonia: Bram Fischer’s Story was widely acclaimed.
Bram Fischer was steeped in the social, political and intellectual climate of the Orange Free State. And yet he seems to have had the privilege of a liberal, though, Afrikaner upbringing: Grey College and university as well as Oxford. He was already a successful lawyer in the Johannesburg Bar when
People also ask
Was Bram Fischer a Liberal?
Who is Bram Fischer?
Was Bram Fischer idealised in a post-1994 context?
Who was Abram Fischer?
In 1974 it became known that Fischer was seriously ill with cancer and liberal newspapers and political leaders mounted an intensive campaign for his release. They were successful and he was moved to his brother’s home in Bloemfontein a few weeks before his death.
