The Katoikos.eu family is mourning the loss of Viktor Sukup, a regular contributor and a personal friend of many of us. After a two-month long search, Viktor’s body was discovered just before Easter in a remote part of Cape Verde, where he fell to his death into a ravine while on a hike.
Viktor’s passing is a major loss, first of all for his family, his wife Marta, his son Antonio in Macao, his daughter Paula in Lisbon and his brother Matthias in Vienna. The gentle and sociable person that he was, Viktor had many friends, who are already missing his enthusiasm, analytical mind, joie de vivre and hospitality.
We have benefited from all of these, and from the generous contributions that Viktor made to Katoikos.eu, with articles on a broad range of topics that he liked and mastered, from EU-Latin America relations to the Greek financial crisis, the Franco-German Axis, developments in Austria, Portugal and Argentina.
Viktor indisputably had many interests and was a most interesting person himself. He was fluent in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish, and of course in German, his mother tongue, he was also learning Greek and probably other languages too. He enjoyed switching from one language to another and from one topic to the next, effortlessly.
He held various jobs, fitting with his many interests. He had a distinguished career with the United Nations, including posts in Africa, and was a professor at the Universities of Buenos Aires and Tandil in Argentina. He retired in 2013 in Brussels, after serving for several years with the European Commission’s Development Cooperation Directorate. In addition to reading and writing, he had many hobbies as a retiree too, like traveling, playing with dogs and playing chess.
During his career and throughout his life, Viktor developed his skills as a political scientist as well as an economist, but foremost as a researcher full of curiosity who possessed an infinite capacity to absorb knowledge. It is almost impossible to say how many articles he wrote and how many books he read about his favourite topics. Among his credits are several books, two of them being: “Europa y la Globalizacion: Tendencias, Problemas, Opiniones” (published in 1999) and “Les Caraïbes face aux défis de l’avenir” (published in 2013). It was almost impossible to see him walking without books, articles or photocopied newspapers under his arm, with the French satirical paper Canard Enchainé never missing. And it was practically impossible to restrain him in terms of words or topics when he set free the spring of ideas and knowledge that he had inside him.
Viktor was a citizen of the world, cosmopolitan in conviction and character. His love for the spirit of the Wiener Kaffeehäuser was almost the only sign of his Austrian origins, apart from his love of mountains. He always accepted to speak at conferences in various countries in order to deepen his understanding of the different parts of the world.
Viktor loved to go to Cape Verde, a country for which he had a lot of affection. That country was destined to be the last one he would visit on his 68-year-long trip to this world, and that country is now hosting his earthly remains. May he rest in peace and may his writings keep his memory alive for us all.
–Katoikos.eu
Articles by Viktor Sukup published in this newspaper can be found here.
This brief tribute to Viktor benefited from the contributions of:
Dario Groppi
Giulio Groppi
Pascal Hansens
Georgios Kostakos
Alejandro Zurita
The editorial team of Katoikos
