Faber, Emma

Emma Faber-Johanny
Born Emma Johanny, 9 October 1894, Vienna, Austria
Married 14 December 1913 to Rudolf Faber (born 1881)

SUICIDE ATTEMPT FRUSTRATED BY HUSBAND’S HOMECOMING. (By Air Mail) Vienna. Frau Emma Faber-Johanny, the Austrian woman who swam the English Channel last summer, made a determined attempt to commit suicide here by Veronal poisoning, being saved only after a desperate struggle with her husband, who returned home several hours before she expected him. The couple are unemployed and in serious financial straits, and Frau Faber-Johanny was heartbroken because the Marathon Committee had refused to include her Channel swim among the best sporting achievments of 1934 and give her a golden pin for it. In her attempts from 1931 to 1934 she spent all the savings of herself and her husband, amounting to about £400, and when eventually she succeeded, public interest had waned to such an extent that on her returnn to Vienna only two people besides her husband were at the station to greet her. She had hoped to obtain a post as swimming instructor, but failed, and had even tried in vain for employment in a circus. Prince Starhemberg, the Vice-Chancellor, has now come to her aid, and she has a prospect of a post as a swimming instructor
The Straits Times, 8 February 1935

Died 1962 Vienna