“Schubertpark”,former cemetery of the Viennese district Währing”, opened 1769. Famous personalities, such as the musicians and composers Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven and the authors Franz Grillparzer and Johann Nestroy, were buried here before the transfer of their remains to the newly opened “Zentralfriedhof”. This graveyard was closed in 1873 and completely abandoned before it was turned into a park in 1924/25.
“Es lebe der Zentralfriedhof “ (Long Live the Central Cemetery)
Viennese song & lyrics by Wolfgang Ambros, published in 1975, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of the opening of Vienna’s largest graveyard in sarcastic words:
Es lebe der Zentralfriedhof und alle seine Toten! Der Eintritt ist für Lebende heut‘ ausnahmslos verboten. Weil der Tod a Fest heut gibt, die ganze lange Nacht. und von die Gäst‘ ka einziger a Eintrittskarten bra[u]cht. Wann’s Nacht wird über Simmering, kummt Leben in die Toten, und drüben beim Krematorium tan s‘ Knochenmark anbraten. Dort hinten bei der Marmorgruft, dort stengan zwei Skelete, die stessen mit zwei Urnen z’samm und saufen um die Wette.
Am Zentralfriedhof is Stimmung, wia seit Lebtag no net woa, weil alle Toten feiern heut seine ersten hundert Jahr.
Es lebe der Zentralfriedhof und seine Jubilare. Sie liegen und verfaul’n scho da seit über hundert Jahre. Draußt is kalt und drunt is warm, nur manchmal a bissel feucht, wenn ma so drunt liegt, freut ma sich, wann’s Grablaternderl leucht.
Es lebe der Zentralfriedhof, die Szene wird makaber; die Pfarrer tanzen mit die Huren, und de J u d e n mit d‘ Araber. Heut san alle wieder lustig, heut‘ lebt alles auf. Im Mausoleum spielt a Band, die hat an Wahnsinnshammer drauf.
Am Zentralfriedhof ist Stimmung wia seit Lebtag no net woa, weil alle Toten feiern heute seine ersten hundert Jahr.
Es lebe der Zentralfriedhof! Auf amoi macht’s a Schnalzer, der Moser singt’s Fiakerlied und die Schrammeln spüln an Walzer. Auf amoi is die Musi still, und alle Aug’n glänzen weil dort drübn steht der Knochenmann und winkt mit seiner Sensen.
Am Zentralfriedhof ist Stimmung wia seit Lebtag no net woa, weil alle Toten feiern heute seine ersten hundert Jahr.
Translation:
Long live the Central Cemetery and all its dead!
Admission is strictly forbidden to the living today.
Because Death is throwing a party tonight, all night long.
And none of the guests need tickets.
When night falls over Simmering, the dead come to life,
and over at the crematorium, they fry bone marrow.
Back there by the marble tomb, two skeletons are standing,
they’re toasting with two urns and drinking competitively.
At the Central Cemetery, the atmosphere is like never before,
because all the dead are celebrating their first hundred years today.
Long live the Central Cemetery and its jubilarians.
They have been lying there and rotting for over a hundred years.
It’s cold outside and warm down there, only sometimes a little damp,
when you’re lying down there, you’re happy when the grave lanterns light up.
Long live the Central Cemetery, the scene is becoming macabre;
the priests are dancing with the whores, and the Jews with the Arabs.
Today everyone is happy again, today everything is coming to life.
A band is playing in the mausoleum, and they’re really rocking it.
The atmosphere at the Central Cemetery is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,
because all the dead are celebrating their first hundred years today.
Long live the Central Cemetery! Suddenly there’s a snap,
Moser sings the Fiakerlied and the Schrammeln play a waltz.
Suddenly the music stops, and everyone’s eyes shine
because the Grim Reaper is standing there, waving his scythe.
The atmosphere at the Central Cemetery is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,
because all the dead are celebrating his first one hundred years.
Viennese “Leichenwirtshäuser” (in Viennese: “corpse inns” = funeral inns) and “Leichenschmaus” (in Viennese: “corpse meals” = funeral feast)
The newly opened “Schubertpark” with its cemetery in the 1920s, photographed by my grandfather, Toni Kainz, who was the son of the owner of the “Anton Kainz Gasthaus”, opposite the former graveyard, originally a typical Viennese “corpse inn”. These inns have always thrived on the celebrations after a burial, the “Leichenschmaus” (“corpse meal”). Therefore, such inns next to graveyards were called “Leichenwirtshäuser” in Viennese:
“Anton Kainz Gasthaus” opposite the “Schubertpark” in the late 1920s: left: my grandmother Lola Kainz in the entrance, right: my great-grandparents on the “terrace”, called “Schanigarten” in Vienna.
Left: my grandfather Toni Kainz on the “terrace”, in the middle: my great-grandfather, Ignaz Sobotka, serving, and right: my great-grandmother, Rudolfine Sobotka, at the entrance to the terrace of the “Anton Kainz Gasthaus”
When in the second half of the 19th century the inner-city graveyards were closed and later turned into public parks, the so-called “corpse inns”, moved to the outskirts of the city, where the Viennese were now buried and the celebrations after the burials took place in the inns nearby. The “Leichenschmaus” (“corpse meal”) could last several days and no matter the social class or income, it was the aim of every Viennese to have a dignified burial with an appropriate festive gathering of the mourners after the ceremony in an inn with food, lots of drink, mostly alcoholic, and sometimes musicians, who performed the traditional Viennese songs (“Wienerlieder”), often mentioning death in a humorous , sarcastic or ironic way. Among these were the songs that the deceased loved during his lifetime and listened to at the “Heurigen”, the places where even today the young wine is drunk, simple food is served, and musicians perform the Viennese songs the customers want to hear. These traditions are still alive in Vienna.
Opposite the “Zentralfriedhof”, main gate 2, the traditional Viennese sausage stand “eh scho wuascht” offers respite for the visitors of the by far largest cemetery in Vienna in the 11th district, Simmering. Its name illustrates the sarcastic and humorous aspect of the Viennese’ fascination with death: the direct translation of the Viennese dialect phrase is: “it is already sausage”, meaning “it doesn’t matter any longer,” and the “sausage” is a favourite Viennese snack which you can eat there. Sausages are eaten standing, with your fingers or with tooth picks, and these sausages are traditionally named after places, such as Debrecen, Frankfurt, or Krain.
Next to the monumental entrance of the “Zentralfriedhof” there is a much-frequented prestigious coffee house and pastry shop (“Oberlaa”) for the mourners, where they can indulge in Viennese cakes and cheer the deceased.
Another excellent example of “Leichenwirtshaus” (“corpse inn”) is the “Concordia Schlössel”, opposite the “Zentralfriedhof”, which is a favourite spot for visitors of the cemetery, but also a location of “corpse meals” and many other festivities.
My parents, my grandparents, my great-aunt and great-uncle and my great-grandparents were all buried at the “Zentralfriedhof” and mostly the celebrations after their burials, the “Leichenschmaus”(“corps meals”) took place in this location.
This sequence of articles is designed to highlight living and working conditions of the “little people”, the so-called non-élite, in the remote rural area of Upper Austria, called the “Mill Quarter” (Mühlviertel) and its vicinity. The “Mill quarter” is named after the many water mills along the various small rivers, which powered small-and medium-sized rural proto-industries, such as saw mills, textile mills, iron hammers, grain mills etc. My husband, Karl Wurm, was born and raised in this environment in the middle of the 20th century in Anitzberg, south of the important medieval trading town of Freistadt and his family were typical representatives of this impoverished peasant and rural worker’s social strata. Their customs, their culture, their sets of values and harsh living conditions characterised this remote northern region of Upper Austria with its rough climate. After the end of World War II in 1945 and the erection of the “Iron Curtain” between Western Europe and the Soviet-dominated regions of Central and Eastern Europe, the “Mill Quarter” became an even more economically neglected and isolated border region, where the “Western World” ended in front of vast fallow strips of land. The Soviets and their Communist allies in Czechoslovakia had erased villages in the border region and in front of electrified fences and watch towers manned by heavily armed soldiers, the Soviets were “protecting” their satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe from the “West”. This geographical position exacerbated the economic backwardness and the deprivation of the “little people” in the “Mill Quarter”. The biographies of Karl’s family since the end of the 19th century illustrate this research and bring to life the economic and socio- historical data.
Already in the 17th century linen and glass were mentioned as the most important goods produced in the Mill Quarter. Two aspects characterised the economy of the region since the 18th century; the processing and export of local raw materials and the close link between agricultural production and rural craft trade. The farms had to make do with very low productivity rates due to unfavourable climate conditions – low average temperatures and high precipitation rates – , low fertility of the soil and short vegetation cycles. From the early Middle Ages until the 19th century this region north of the Danube played a significant role in the transport of goods from the Alpine foothills to Bohemia, especially salt. Due to the harsh climate and the infertile soil, it was mostly monasteries which started to clear the dense forest land and make the soil arable. Yet several of them had to be moved to other regions because they could not make the land arable enough to even nourish the inhabitants of the small villages the monasteries had set up. As late as 1325 the monastery “Schlägl”, where Premonstratensian monks had undertaken to clear the woodland of the valley of the “Great Mühl” and to make it fertile by setting up six villages with 90 farmsteads. 13th century historical documents of the monastery “Wilhering”, which was founded by Cistercian monks, report that the agrarian production had to focus on rye in winter and oat in summer. Furthermore the monks planted flax, poppy, legumes, and hops, which points to an early brewing of beer in the local monasteries and probably by local farmers, too. Cattle farming and pig husbandry were common. Originally the only town in the region was “Freistadt”, founded around 1200, and over time thirteen more small market towns were set up, where the inhabitants did not exclusively live on the produce of farmsteads. Financial aspects often decided about the foundation of market towns by territorial landowners, so that in especially infertile regions, like the Mill Quarter, a disproportionally high number of settlements received the market right, i.e. the right to hold markets. At around 1500 there were 36 central market places in the Mill Quarter, which mostly served the vicinity and local trade, but the struggle over control of the three trade routes to the north, especially for the transport of salt from Hallstatt, intensified since the 14th and 15th century: first, Linz- Hellmonsödt – Reichenthal, second, Linz-Neumarkt, and third, Mauthausen – Pregarten – Freistadt.
In the east of the Mill Quarter Freistadt played the leading trade role with several trade rights and guild organisations of manual crafts. This included a cooperative beer production that was and still is linked to the ownership of a house property inside the city walls. Even today the “Freistädter” brewery is commonly owned by all house owners in the old city. The Saint Paul’s Market (Paulimarkt) in Freistadt reached its peak of glory in the 16th and 17th century, when Freistadt held the monopoly of trade in salt, iron, wine, goods, and provisions to Bohemia. At that time the trade routes of its merchants reached as far as Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, and Wroclaw/Breslau. Next to salt the “Innerberger” iron from the “Erzberg” was of greatest importance and the oxen trade, because the trade route of oxen from Hungary to Germany crossed the Mill Quarter and Freistadt.
Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Thirty Years’ War and Peasants’ Wars had a decisively negative impact on commerce and trade and ended the economic upswing. The agricultural production could not meet the demand, which resulted in an increase in livestock farming and the typical combination of farming and rural craft production. When the population started to grow again, landowners had further patches of forest cleared. In exploiting the persistence of feudal structures of serfdom with socage and tithe in the region, the territorial lords tried to increase their trade and manufacturing activities. The glass production for example used up large amounts of wood; furthermore, forests were cleared to plant tobacco. Yet the exploitation of the riches of the land soon reached its limits in the Mill Quarter and the desired income of the territorial lords, who lived on the socage and tithe of their peasants, could no longer be boosted by exploiting the labour of their subjects. So, they concentrated on beer brewing, sheep wool production and lumber trade, where for example the noble family of Schwarzenberg had canals built in the Mill Quarter, i.e. sluiceways for logs. Still in 1750 half of the peasantry were subjects of the bishop of Passau in Bavaria.
Since the 16th century another important line of production, which was characteristic of the Mill Quarter, was flax and linked to this local raw material the linen production, which reached its peak in the 18th century with a concentration in the Upper Mill Quarter. Much of it was organised as a putting out system, whereby the merchants in town had the linen cloth spun and weaved in the farmsteads in the vicinity. They expanded quickly and even had imported raw materials manufactured at the farmsteads. The merchants exported the finished textiles to Italy, Hungary, and German territories and even as far as the Balkans and Egypt. Linen from the Mill Quarter was traded on markets in Linz, Vienna, Graz, and Bozen in the 1760s. But soon the producers were faced with stiff competition and the textiles from the Upper Mill Quarter were mostly sold in the south-eastern parts of the Habsburg Empire only. In the first half of the 19th century Italian wholesalers managed to boost the textile production again and linen factories were established: Vonwiller 1833 in Haslach and Simonetta in Helfenberg in 1843. The woollen proto-industry, which had been set up in Linz in 1672 had a higher impact on the Mill Quarter than the local industries because of the putting out system which employed peasants in the Mill Quarter for the spinning and weaving of wool. Yet at the beginning of the 19th century the woollen industry slumped and the new cotton industry never took hold in the Mill Quarter. The textile production in the farmsteads was gradually replaced by factory production, so that the textile sector deteriorated in the Mill Quarter and a mixture of handicraft production replaced its dominance in the 19th century, namely a mix of sectors, such as beer, glass, iron, leather, textiles and painting on glass, a speciality of the Mill Quarter, mostly exercised in Sandl.
The peasant economy of the Mill Quarter was mainly built on two pillars, farming, and rural manual crafts. The main aim was subsistence production. This meant that since the 18th century potatoes were a key crop and since the beginning of the 19th century hops, too. Livestock farming was promoted and grain production reduced. In the second half of the 19th century the size of the farms was bigger than on average in Upper Austria, but the productivity was significantly lower than average. To improve the infrastructure, in 1827 and 1832 a horse-drawn railway was constructed from Linz to Budweis in Bohemia for the transport of salt, but when the trainline was adapted to modern times and used steam engines the whole track construction was unusable and tracks had to be rerouted. Compared to other parts of Upper Austria the population of the Mill quarter did not increase in the second half of the 19th century to the same extent as in the rest of Upper Austria and the proto-industrial production missed out on the transformation towards modern factory production of the Industrial Age. This fact explains the economic backwardness of the Mill Quarter, which persisted way into the 20th century.
Literature: Knittler, Herbert, Das Mühlviertel – Grundzüge seiner Wirtschaftsgeschichte, in: Das Mühlviertel. Natur. Kultur. Leben, Linz 1988
Left: scythe, right: sickle, both produced along the “Iron Route”
Johann Wurm, my husband Karl Wurm’s grandfather, a scythe smith like his father:
Left: Johann as a boy (left) with his elder brother (in the middle) and his mother
Right: Johann (right) with a colleague in the festive dress of scythe smiths
Left: Johann as an Austro-Hungarian soldier in the First World War on the Italian front line; right: Johann at his wedding
Left: Johann with his two sons Johann (left) and Karl (in the middle), my husband’s father; right: Johann’s two sons, Johann & Karl, as young men
Johann Wurm, born in Randegg in the “Iron Roots” (Eisenwurzen) region in 1874 and Karl’s grandfather, was a trained scythe smith, just like his father, Karl’s great-grandfather. At the time it was common to pass on the knowledge about special techniques of making scythes in the family and keep it from other apprentices, who might turn into future competitors on the labour market. Like his father, Johann was a travelling craftsman, who worked at several hammer mills or trip hammers along the Styrian and Upper Austrian “Iron Route”. For a longer period, he worked at the hammer mill in Roßleithen, one of the last still existing scythe production sites world-wide.
The hammer mill was run by the family Schröckenfux and comprised several buildings, which formed a small village including accommodation for the travelling scythe smiths and the apprentices and menial workers, a shop, an inn, the living quarters of the management and the manor house of the owner of the mill. Right: Karl in front of the office building of the current iron manufacturing company.
The old hammer mill village and on the right the hammer mill shop
“Iron Route” & “Iron Roots”
Iron was mined at the “Erzberg” (Iron Mountain) in Styria probably since the 6th century by Slaws, who had settled there and had adopted Roman techniques of smelting iron ore. The region north of this important iron ore mining site, where the iron of the “Erzberg” was processed was later called “Innerberger” iron manufacturing area and covered the banks of the rivers Enns, Ybbs and Erlauf. Here the “Iron Route” leads from the “Erzberg” to the two main competing market towns Steyr in Upper Austria and Waidhofen in Lower Austria. This is the region we are concentrating on in this research, whereas the area south of the “Erzberg”, where iron was manufactured and traded was called “Vordernberger” iron manufacturing area and covered Leoben and parts of Styria. The “Innerberger” region is also called “Eisenwurzen” (Iron Roots), which literally means “iron + roots”. This geographical term refers to the fact that where iron was mined, which was a key cultural technique, the workers were not autarkic. The land was not conducive to agricultural activity, so the miners could only survive, if the arable farmland of the Alpine foothills provided them with nourishment and all the ancillary crafts they needed for mining, for example lumbering and charcoal production. The “roots” were the peasants and farmers who provided food and bought the iron produce they needed for their work, such as sickles, scythes, hammers, nails, and horse shoes. Around the “Erzberg”, the miners and the smelters settled; in the higher regions of the Alpine foothills with their steep and narrow river valleys the hammer mills were situated, which processed rough iron, whereas further down the rivers the hammer smithies and trip hammers produced specialised iron products such as nails, scythes, and sickles, just as in Roßleithen. On the fertile agrarian soil, the farmers grew the necessary provisions for the miners and smiths and in the large market towns the iron traders gleaned huge profits from the hard labour and exploitation of the workers in the mines and in the hammers and of the peasants.
The “Innerberger Iron Route”
At the “Erzberg” the territorial landowners made sizable profits over the centuries, while the miners led harsh lives, characterised by deprivation. They lived in small huts, worked in the dark under-ground, and mined iron ore with the help of blind animals and primitive tools that had not changed since the Middle Ages. The working and living conditions of those who worked in the hammer mills in the narrow and humid valleys of the rivers Salza, Jessnitz, Erlauf, Ybbs, Enns, and Schwarzbach, were not much better off. They had to settle far away from their families in solitude, at sites which were very difficult to reach, even on foot. Few were lucky and could set up their own enterprises eventually. By that they gained some wealth as owners of small-or medium-sized hammer mills. In the region they were called “Schwarze Grafen” (Black Counts). Those workers who were the best off were the ones who produced specialised iron wares, which were much in demand, such as scythes. They were also the first ones to rid themselves of the strict dependence on the feudal territorial lord.
On the other hand, there were the powerful merchants in the towns Steyr, Ybbs, and Waidhofen, who traded the rough iron as well as the finished iron products in the market towns and who acquired special privileges from the territorial rulers. The trade routes for iron and iron wares crossed the trade routes for bread grain, lard, oat etc. Along these roads, the “Three Markets Road” (Dreimärktestrasse), three market towns, Scheibbs, Gresten and Purgstall, developed into important trading centres, where bourgeois merchants grew rich as well. Any trade down-river was much more profitable at the time before the introduction of steam ships, and especially long-distance trade was the most profitable. This meant that also the territorial rulers craved the profit from these riches, imposed taxes and distributed privileges to merchants and market towns. Military conflicts now and then halted the economic expansion of the iron production in the region and that is why the iron industry experienced cyclical up- and downswings. Eventually, the industrialisation of the 19th century led to a boom of this sector along the “Iron Route”. The prices for food and lumber rose, and the wages, too. The working time during the week was expanded from early in the morning, around 3.00 or 4.00; until 18.00 in the evening. But from the middle of the 19th century on the cheap competition from England hit the local producers and many had to shut down. For a comparison: In 1572 there were 72 iron masters in Ybbsits – the 16th century was a boom time for iron production in the region – , in 1808 there were only 63, in 1860 53, in 1885 40 and in 1908 the number was reduced to 28 iron masters.
Johann Wurm in front of an iron ore mine
Johann on top of a wagon transporting iron ore out of the mine
The noble family Jörger were the perfect example of aristocratic capitalist entrepreneurs of early industrialisation in the Habsburg Empire. During this period, making profit and raising funds had become the main goal of industrial production; not as in earlier times, when raising capital was always a means to a specific end, such as building castles or waging wars. In the era of early capitalism profits, interest or rent added to the capital of the noble entrepreneur. That could be reinvested and lead to more profit – an economic concept that is still valid today. As a noble landowner Helmhard Jörger (1572-1631) was entitled to set up manufacturing businesses on his territory and he did so by erecting a factory in Pernstein in Upper Austria, which produced scythes with the help of machines. He introduced a newly invented hammer to form the rough scythes into finished products, the “Breithammer” (wide flat hammer). The guilds in the cities, which felt they had the monopoly on the production of scythes, protested, but in vain. Helmhardt Jörger used his privileges as a member of the aristocracy and exploited his far-reaching network to penetrate new markets with his new machine. He produced large amounts of scythes until the home market was saturated and too limited for the quantities his factories manufactured. So, he linked up with a Dutchman who had settled in the Habsburg Empire, Jobst Croy. He was a Calvinist and had supposedly left the Low Lands in the 1560s. He was one of the most colourful and dubious personalities of early capitalism in Austria. With the money of his wife, he started to do business here by approaching the imperial court and the Austrian nobility. The Netherlands, just as Italy, were financial pioneers. In Amsterdam the first joint stock bank and the forerunner of the first stock exchange were established in 1609, at the time when the Habsburgs were ruling the Low Lands. Jobst Croy agreed with Helmhard Jörger on a contractual pre-emption right, by which Croy would buy a certain amount of Jörger’s scythes at a fixed price and would use his international trade network to find new markets for Jörger. Early capitalists typically used this form of division of responsibilities between producer and seller. Croy was one of the early merchant bankers who traded in “loan notes”, an early form of bonds. The problem was, when merchants and traders lent money to royal or imperial rulers, they often had to wait a long time until the rulers were willing to repay at least part of the debt, if at all. In this way the Habsburgs, for example, ruined many of their financiers, often of Jewish origin. To those who had to sell their loan notes, because they were threatened by bankruptcy, Croy and other merchant bankers offered relief; Croy bought those bonds before expiry date at a much-reduced value and in the end, when the debt was paid, he made a profit from the difference. This banker’s practice developed into the discounting bills of exchange later. Many of these early merchant bankers were also involved in capitalist mining, because only few early industrialists had the funds to exploit mines industrially, as it took a long time and lots of money from starting a mine project until the first profits could be reaped. This was true for the Styrian “Erzberg”, too. The iron merchants in Steyr, for example, lent money for the mining of iron ore and in exchange they took control of all the “Innerberger” iron, which was transported to the north of the “Erzberg”. But eventually they were short of funds, too, and got indebted. They owed large sums to the “big players” of early capitalism, for instance the Welser family of Nuremberg. When the iron merchants could not repay the debt, the Welser got access to the high-quality steel production of the “Erzberg”, which was in especially high demand in times of war. In this way Styrian steel blades were even used in North American acts of war.
Travel diary entry of my mother, Herta Tautz, on 20 September 1977 in Krakov, Poland. On their 25th wedding anniversary my parents, Herta and Werner Tautz, the creators of travel slide shows to the East Bloc countries, clinked glasses with Russian champagne at the Holiday Inn hotel
“Austria island of the blessed”?
The writer Jörg Mauthe ironically called Austria the “island of the blessed”, because many Austrians considered the country as a kind of “special case” since the early Cold War, which could be kept out of any political and military crisis or conflict and some still believe this today. Unfortunately, this concept has always been imaginary and never realistic and it is just as illusionary today. Since 1945 Austria has always been an “object” in the international arena rather than a “subject”, an actor. Local knowledge about the early incidents of infringement of Austrian territory by foreign conflicts is rare. There were Ukrainian partisans crossing Austria in the spring of 1945, terrorist attacks in the late 1940s, military emergency plans of the Western Allies in case of a Soviet aggression during the early Cold War years and intensified secret service and spy activities of all four Allied occupation armies, the Soviets, the Americans, the British and the French. Furthermore, the Soviets secretly supported the October strikes in Austria in 1950, they militarily suppressed the Hungarian anti-Communist revolution in 1956, when a wave of refugees swept across Austria and there was the Lebanon crisis in 1958 with Western military jets violating the Austrian airspace – to name just a few incidents. In all these and the following foreign conflicts, which affected Austria, the country never played an active part on the international stage that could influence its destiny; except during the 13-year chancellorship of Bruno Kreisky from 1970 until 1983. The State Treaty of 1955 marked the resurgence of Austria as an independent state and the withdrawal of all occupying armies on the condition of Austria’s neutrality. The first test of this neutrality was the crisis in Hungary on the eastern Austrian border in 1956 and the threat of a Soviet invasion, imagined or real. Austria had to be aware that in this East – West confrontation it was well-advised to establish a fair balance between and a safe distance from the Soviets as well as the Americans. While Austria started out with a pronounced pro-American policy, yet in the face of multiple international crises Austria approached the Soviet Union as well and tried to style itself as a hub in the Cold War and a crossroads between East and West. Bruno Kreisky, first as foreign minister and then as chancellor, developed a form of “active neutrality”, different from the Swiss one, and put it into practice as a “policy of the possible”. With the end of the Cold War in 1989 Austria had to re-define its neutral position in Europe, which led to Austria joining the European Union in 1995. The concept of the “island of the blessed”, which had always been just fiction, was consequently obsolete.
Until the coming down of the Iron Curtain, Austria bordered Communist dictatorships along more than 1,000 km. The frontier to Hungary and Czechoslovakia was hermetically sealed off with electric fences, trenches, and guard posts, a true “Iron Curtain”, as the British prime minister Winston Churchill had called it in a speech in 1946 already before the start of the Cold War. Due to the many Cold War crises, such as the building of the Berlin wall in 1961, the Cuban crisis in 1962, the uprising in Prague 1968, the Polish upheavals in 1980/81, Austria had to re-define its neutrality progressively. In 1955 the British predicted that Austria would act “neutralistically” – this negative term was used because Moscow had insisted on Austria’s neutrality, although the Western Allies had been against it – and that Austria would be a “double agent between East and West”.
Werner’s contemporary photo impressions of everyday life in Vienna during the early Cold War
The start of the Cold War
After the end of World War II, the process of a formation of two fiercely competitive blocks – East and West – started the Cold War in 1947 in Austria. This was the beginning of the establishment of a bi-polar world and a new international order after the break-down of a European system of states which had been created by the National-Socialist expansion of the “Third Reich”. This culminated in a military power struggle and an ideological confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The two contrasting poles developed their own unique social, political, and economic orders, which they tried to impose on the rest of the world in a competitive manner. The atmosphere between the two power centres was characterised by a constant fear that the opposing side could infringe on the influence sphere they claimed for themselves and by that threaten their security interests. This led to the political division of Germany and Europe and a mentality of permanent siege and fierce competition for spheres of interest and military presence world-wide. In this so-called “Cold War” there was no clearly defined aggressor and no clearly defined defender. The ideological confrontation was characterised by a constantly changing situation that was dictated by the actions and reactions of the other side. Objectively it cannot be stated without doubt who started the Cold War. While immediately after the end of the war, the USA acted in a rather circumspect way towards its former ally, the Soviet Union, Stalin already exercised an aggressive expansionary policy in Eastern Europe. After a phase of permanent mutual mistrust, the United States reacted much more aggressively to the new post-war Soviet “security policy” at the beginning of 1946. Both world powers progressively stepped up their willingness to go into a geopolitical confrontation between 1945 and 1947. Despite its own military and economic capacities, the USA progressively perceived the Soviet Union as a threat to Europe and the rest of the world.
Towards the end of World War II, the British Foreign Office had expressed ideas for a post-war resurrection of the state of Austria as independent from Germany and the British found that this independence could best be guaranteed by an “ultimate association of Austria with some form of Central or South-East European Confederation”. Yet the Soviets were strictly against any confederation of Austria with Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, which would in their eyes create a Catholic conservative alliance that could threaten the Soviet Union. When Winston Churchill launched his idea of an independent Central European block of states, Stalin rejected this concept categorically, because he feared a resurrection of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a “Danube Confederation” of Austria, Bavaria and other neighbouring Catholic states under Otto Habsburg, the successor to the throne of the abolished Habsburg Empire, which could as a result form a block with other Catholic European states, such as Spain, Italy, France, and Poland.
The Soviets wanted to exploit the Austrian economic capacities as a compensation for the massive war damage, which had been caused by the German “Wehrmacht” in the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of Austrians had served in the German “Wehrmacht”. At the conference of the ministers for foreign affairs in Moscow in April 1947, US General Mark W. Clark blocked an agreement for a State Treaty for Austria, because he feared that the huge Soviet reparations demand would politically destabilise Austria. Earlier in spring 1945 the US had shown very little interest in the future political development in Austria and had concentrated on their projects for post-war Germany, but when in October 1945 the Soviets tried to take over the two biggest financial institutions in Austria, the “Creditanstalt-Bankverein” and the “Länderbank”, the US started to be alarmed. The US had already promoted an “Austrification” of the media and had launched the radio broadcasting station “Rot-Weiß-Rot” (RWR) and the newspaper “Wiener Kurier”, both with a rather pronounced anti-Communist tendency. When the first post-war elections in Austria in November 1945 resulted in a devastating defeat of the KPÖ (Austrian Communist Party) with only 5.41 per cent, the Soviet political officers were not amazed because they had never believed in the predicted 20 per cent for the KPÖ, as the Communist party had not achieved more than 10 per cent in the works council elections despite excessive Soviet election campaigning. From now on the Soviet policy in Austria became much more rigid. The Soviets demanded from the newly elected Austrian government a strict persecution of Nazis and the dismissal of all NSDAP members and former Austro-Fascists from official positions. Before the start of the Cold War in Austria the Soviets were prepared to forego the seizure of “German property”, if it had been Jewish business property that had been robbed by the Nazis and if it was economically not too important for Soviet Union. They either tried to return it to the original owners or put it under provisional administration. After the election in November 1945 the Soviets confirmed the importance of the continued stationing of Soviet troops in Austria and blamed the Western Allies for the failure to come to an agreement on the Austrian State Treaty. They hoped that the KPÖ would profit from the negotiations concerning Austrian sovereignty and independence, but to the contrary. The Austrians put the sole blame on the Soviets for the continuing presence of Allied occupational troops in Austria in the end. Access to Russian archives after the coming down of the Iron Curtain in 1989 proved the strong dependence of the KPÖ on the Soviets, but these researches also showed that the Soviets recognised the special geographical position of Austria as a “country between the two blocks”, Surprisingly, the data showed that they did neither favour a Communist coup d’état in Austria nor a separation of the country into an eastern and a western part like Germany.
“Textile Quarter” in the 1st district of Vienna near the Danube Canal
Textile trading on “Naschmarkt”. Left: former textile wholesale and retail trading of Josef and Henriette Singer & partner at Rechte Wienzeile 1b (Bärenmühlendurchgang) in the 4th district of Vienna, Naschmarkt
Textile wholesale and retail business “Singer & Partner”
A typical example of a small enterprise in textile trading of Jewish-born Viennese after World War II is the partnership of Josef and Henny Singer at Rechte Wienzeile 1b (Bärenmühlendurchgang) at the “Naschmarkt”. Henriette (Henny) Singer, née Katz, born in 1923, was my aunt. She had survived the Holocaust in Palestine,
where she met her future husband, Josef (Pepi) Singer, born in 1921, another Austrian refugee. Both were born in Vienna and had to flee the deadly persecution of the Nazis as youngsters; they were both Jewish-born, but from assimilated families, agnostics and committed Austrians. Soon after the end of World War II they returned to Austria, where Pepi worked as a cutter at a tailor’s shop. Henny had trained as a dressmaker in Tel Aviv and soon after her return and before her marriage she worked in the “Textile Quarter” in Vienna at the company “Altmann & Co” on Salzgries 16 in the 1st district of Vienna as a salesgirl. Pepi later continued the family tradition of textile trading by founding his own small wholesale and retail business with a partner. His father, Schmaje (Sami) Singer had been born in Waschkoutz in the Austro-Hungarian region of Bukovina (in 1918 Waschkiwzi became part of Romania after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then was incorporated into the Soviet Union and since 1991 it has been a town in Ukraine). Sami moved to Vienna, where he married Hedwig Adler, born in Pohrlitz / Pohorelice in southern Moravia, also in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (after World War I it became a region in Czechoslovakia, today Czechia). In Vienna he worked as a “Modewarenhändler” (a “trader of fashion”) before the Nazi takeover in 1938. Sami Singer died in exile in Jerusalem and Pepi returned to Vienna with his mother Hedwig. They all three, Pepi, Henny and Hedwig, lived together with others who had just returned from exile in a big flat in Favoritenstrasse 40 in the 4th district of Vienna. Henny and Pepi married in June 1949 in Vienna and started a textile trading business with a partner.
Left: Sami Singer’s certificate of citizenship stating his profession as “fashion trader” in Vienna.
Right: Henny’s employment in the Viennese “Textile Quarter” at “Altmann & Co” in 1949
Back in Vienna, both Henny and Pepi became members of the” Association of those Persecuted due to their Origin” in 18 March 1948, see the two documents below:
As agnostics they both officially left the Jewish Community (“Israelitische Religionsgemeinschaft – Cultus Gemeinde”) in December 1951:
Henny’s birth certificate with the respective remark on the back about quitting the Jewish Religious Community
Pepi’s birth certificate with the respective remark on the back about quitting the Jewish Religious Community
Together with another couple Pepi and Henny rented a wooden cottage on stilts in Greifenstein at the Danube, near Vienna, and spent their weekends and summer holidays there. Pepi loved his small motorboat and took family and friends on short cruises on the Danube in the 1950s and 1960s:
Left: Pepi at the steering wheel, Norbert Katz, Henny’s favourite uncle and a former Viennese footballer on visit from England, on the left and her uncle Karl Elzholz a mechanic at the Vienna Tramways in the middle – both of them my great-uncles
Right: from left to right: my grandmother Lola, Pepi, Norbert and Karl
Pepi and Henny loved to entertain family and friends
On two different visits of the Katz family from England to Vienna. Left: Pepi with Norbert and his wife, my great-aunt Agi; right: Pepi and Henny in the middle, Norbert and Agi on the right
Pepi died of cancer in 1970 and Henny continued the textile trading business until 1976, when she handed back the business license for trading in textiles and took on various secretarial jobs as an employee until her retirement:
Left: death certificate of Josef Singer, right: Henriette Singer returning her business license
The entrance to the Singer’s textile wholesale and retail shop, Rechte Wienzeile, today
Henny with my great-aunt Käthe Elzholz, the wife of Karl, on the left and with my grandmother Lola on the right
Left: Henny with Käthe and with Henny’s new partner Richard Brauneis, a tailor. Right: Henny with Käthe
Henny died in 2010 and is buried at the “Südwest Friedhof” together with “her two men”, Pepi and Richard
Post-World War II trading at the “Textile Quarter”
After the Second World War Vienna was totally destroyed and the economy was on its knees. Antisemitic persecution and the Holocaust had wiped out the Jewish minority and the few who had survived the murderous Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler in exile were not welcome in their native country. Austria quickly styled itself as the first victim of Hitler and restitution and restoration were hindered by the 2nd Austrian Republic’s administration and judicial system, where ever possible. Applications for restitution were complicated and long-winded and involved great financial losses and concessions on the side of the victims of illegal NS expropriation. What’s more, the largest part of the Viennese Jewish population had not been well-to-do before the war. They had been workers, traders, or employees in different sectors of the economy and therefore had no rights to claim compensation at that time. Only few returned, such as Henny and Pepi, and tried to make a living again in Vienna, the city that had robbed them of their youth, family and belongings; had chased them away and murdered their friends and relatives. Immediately after the war a few of those survivors set up business again in the “traditional Jewish” wholesale and retail textile trade, many of them in the former “Textile Quarter” (Textilviertel) near the Danube Canal (Franz-Josefs-Kai) around “Rudolfsplatz”, others in the vicinity of “Mariahilferstrasse” and “Naschmarkt”, traditional trading quarters, too. The old “Textile Quarter” experienced a true revival in the 1950s, when released NS concentration camp (KZ) survivors from Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia ended up in Vienna after the expulsion from their former home countries, now under Soviet rule. The “Textile Quarter” was turned into their economic, social, and cultural home and acted as place of revival of the tiny Jewish community. For the Viennese the “Textile Quarter” represented the opportunity to pick up a bargain, when looking for any type of textiles from bedlinen to towels, shirts, coats, workwear and even shoes and accessories. What they could not find in one little shop, they chased down in the neighbouring one.
While the elegant department stores in the city centre, most of them founded by Jewish entrepreneurs at the end of the 19th century, did not survive the Nazi period of persecution and expropriation, the “Textile Quarter” experienced a revival in the 1950s. But the area and the shops were anything but glamorous. They were tiny, crowded and crammed with cheap textile wares. The window displays were not designed in any way, but tried to show everything that was on offer. Yet the shops were social meeting points and the customers appreciated the chats with the proprietors and the children loved the sweets they received from the shop owners. There was the shop of “Mr. Doft” or the “Zalcotex” business, which had been set up by the partners Schmidt and Zahler, both originally from Stanislav in the Austro-Hungarian region of Galicia, and was well-known for its wholesale and retail trading in shirts made of nylon and its dressing gowns and pyjamas. Another famous shop in the quarter was “Wachtel & Co”. Mr. Wachtel came from Lemberg (Lviv) in Galicia, too, and had survived several NS concentration camps. After his liberation he was looking for work in Vienna, like many other former Jewish concentration camp prisoners.
The textile business “Wachtel & Co” near Rudolfsplatz in the 1st district of Vienna
Rudolfsplatz today and the official representation of the textile industry in Austria
The Austrian government did not welcome the founders of these small businesses, on the contrary. The antisemitism that was already prevalent in Vienna before the Nazi period was as widespread and persistent as ever. The only difference was that it simmered under the surface and was not openly expressed for fear of repressions from the Allied armies, the Soviets, the Americans, the British and the French, which administered Vienna and Austria until 1955. That’s why non-Jewish Viennese often “lent” their business licenses to the Jewish owners and rented the business locations in their names for the Jewish traders for a fee. Due to the success of these small enterprises the businesses soon expanded and rented neighbouring premises. Mr. Wachtel started with workwear and later added shirts, socks, pyjamas, children’s wear, underwear, and towels. He was well-liked as a competent retailer in his shop and he furthermore acted as a wholesaler and delivered his textiles to small shops in the country. 60 per cent of his customers were regulars, who also came for a chat. Before Christmas the customers were queuing up in front of the door of his small shop and consequently, Mr. Wachtel was fined by the police for obstructing the pavement in front of his shop.
The founders of “Haritex”, Mr. and Ms. Edelman, came from Romania and they specialised in shawls, which they imported from Italy and Japan, and fashionable bleached jeans from Padova. As wholesalers they delivered their wares to market stalls all over Austria. Another famous shop in Vorlaufstrasse was “Silesia”, the only business that had already existed before the war in the “Textile Quarter”. One of the brothers Geiringer was murdered in Dachau and one could find refuge in England. When Leo Geiringer returned to Vienna, his former shop was in ruins, commercially and physically, and the reconstruction turned out to be very difficult under the conditions of post-war Austria. His customers were mostly dressmakers and tailors, who bought fabric and sewing accessories. In the first difficult years after the war “Silesia” entered into barter agreements with the tailors and dressmakers: they brought wool from farmers to the shop in exchange for fabrics and sewing accessories. Apart from professional tailors, who were under pressure because the customers moved from made-to-measure clothing towards off-the-peg clothing, “Silesia” increasingly targeted private amateur dressmakers. Twice a year the tailors were supplied with so-called “collections” or “bundles” of samples of what was on offer in that season. Every season 6,000 to 7,000 such sample booklets were glued together by women on the upper floor of the shop. When in the 1970s Jews facing repression emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel via Vienna, several of them remained in the city and as the women had no qualifications and did not know German, Mr. Wachtel offered them these jobs to make a living.
“Haritex” and “Landhaus” shops in the “Textile Quarter” today
“Heinrich Klos” sewing accessories
Since the 1980s and 1990s more and more of these enterprises closed, when the proprietors retired and their children, who had studied, took on other jobs. Another trigger for the economic downturn of the “Textile Quarter” after three decades of economic boom was the foundation of a fashion centre in the 11th district of Vienna, in St. Marx, in 1977/78 by Leopold Böhm, the owner of the textile business “Schöps”. He had been able to flee Vienna in time and served in the British army. After his return he built up a successful Austrian fashion chain store together with his uncle Richard Schöps, offering affordable textiles. The fashion centre in St. Marx offered more space and parking facilities, which attracted customers not just from Vienna, but from the rural regions in the vicinity, too. Some of the wholesalers of the “Textile Quarter” moved there, but did not survive the transfer for long, because they suffered from the location on the periphery and they lacked the retail business revenue of the “Textile Quarter”. “ADA STEIN Textilimport”, on the contrary, profited from the transfer. Erich Stein had fled from the Nazis with his family to Italy and had survived in hiding in Naples. He married Ada Bardi, an Italian, and in the 1960s he started importing textiles from Italy to Austria in his private car. He then opened a bigger shop in Marc-Aurelstrasse in the “Textile Quarter” and launched the brand “MarcAurel l4”. His Viennese business bought fabrics near Lake Como and had them sewn in Toscana, near Florence. His slogan was “Vienna-Florence-Paris”: Vienna – the headquarter, Florence – the production site, Paris – the inspiration for the designs (where the designs were spied). A successful line of children’s clothes, which he named after his wife “Bardi”, was launched as well. Every Monday the new clothes were delivered in trucks to Marc- Aurelstrasse, where the customers were already waiting, sorting through the card board boxes, filled with the “latest fashion from Florence and Paris”. Erich Stein moved to the fashion centre in St. Marx and together with his wife organised fashion shows there, offering free of charge drinks and snacks to their customers. As his business, now called “ADA STEIN Textilimport”, was located directly next to the entrance, it soon became a popular meeting point. When in 1995 Austria joined the European Union, imports from Italy were no longer profitable and the business shut down a year later.
My grandmother Lola Kainz, née Sobotka, as a sweet shop girl around 1930 in Vienna /left)
A typical Viennese sweet shop window display with glass containers for candy (right)
Traditional sweet shop in Vienna
My grandmother, Lola, born in 1902, worked as a shop girl in a Viennese sweet shop around 1930 after having given up her education as a pianist at the Viennese Musical Conservatory. At that time Vienna abounded with sweet shops and the job as a sales girl in a sweet shop was quite prestigious, but badly paid, as virtually only female personnel were employed there. Sales girls in sweet shops were supposed to be pretty, well-mannered, and polite. So, qualification criteria for the job were prettiness, good manners, and politeness and the selection process was tough because the number of applicants was usually abundant. It is known that for instance the company Altmann & Kühne put a special focus on the appearance and behaviour of its female sales personnel. When Lola worked at a sweet shop in Währingerstrasse, she was spotted by the young son of the innkeeper of the nearby “Gasthaus Anton Kainz” in Währingerstrasse 146, Toni Kainz. It was love at first sight on Toni’s side and every day Toni bought sweets in the shop – candy which he did not even like very much – just to see Lola. Lola was a pretty, young woman, a bit superficial, who loved life – socialising, fashion, entertainment and a good laugh (That’s what she later told about herself). She even ignored her father’s strict order stipulating that his four daughters were not allowed to have their hair cut short, as it was the fashion of the 1920s and early 1930s in Vienna. Her father, Ignaz Sobotka, had been the manager of the brewery in Kaiserebersdorf near Vienna. After secretly having had her hair cut short – see photo above -, she came home with a funny hat sitting at an awkward angle on her head and she did not even take it off in the family dining room. When her father told her harshly to take off her hat, her funny face and clown demeanour made him laugh and she escaped punishment, much to the astonishment of her three sisters. She was the sunshine of her otherwise severe father.
“Anton Kainz Gasthaus”,18th district of Vienna, Währingerstrasse 146, the inn of Toni’s father in the early 1930s with Lola in the entrance (left) and now (right)
The young couple Toni and Lola
In order to reach her workplace in the 18th district of Vienna, Lola had to take public transport from her parent’s flat on Margaretengürtel 98/8 in the 5the district of Vienna. Here is her monthly tram and “Stadtbahn” (city train) ticket of March 1927:
Lola had worked in another sweet shop before, “Confiserie & Patisserie Alfred Spitzer” in the first and 7th district of Vienna (below left)
In June 1930 the sweet shop owner of Währingerstrasse 158 rented out his shop and had to make her redundant. He wrote the following appraisal, an excellent assessment of Lola’s job performance (right)
A sweet shop on Währingerstrasse in the 18th district of Vienna
In 1932 Lola and Toni were married and from then on Lola worked in the inn of her parents-in-law:
Viennese chocolate & sweets production
At the Emperor Charles VI’ court in Vienna the exotic product “chocolate” was introduced in 1711, but chocolate drinks were already popular before among the high clergy. Pietro Buonaventura Metastasio even composed a “Cantata alla Cioccolata” at the court of Charles VI in Vienna and the ascetic preacher there, Abraham a Santa Clara, scolded the aristocratic ladies in his sermons for their habits of drinking chocolate at eleven in the morning. Empress Maria Theresia issued an order for Viennese balls in 1752, which stipulated that tea, coffee and chocolate were to be offered at Viennese balls “of good quality, high quantity and at a cheap price”. She herself did not even like chocolate, but her husband, the Emperor Franz Stephan, did. The haute bourgeoisie of Vienna followed in the footsteps of the aristocracy, which is documented in the dialogues of Viennese comedies of the 18th century and even in the libretti of operas, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutti” and “Don Giovanni”, where chocolate is much in demand. Mozart himself wrote that he loved walking in the “Augarten” (a park in the 2nd district of Vienna) in the morning, where he had his breakfast with coffee, chocolate, and tea. He even sent large amounts of chocolate from Vienna to his much-revered master in Italy, padre Martini. As chocolate was extremely expensive at the time, the amounts consumed were very small, from 1812 until 1816 400 tons of cocoa beans were processed in Vienna. Yet before 1800 the majority of the population had never tasted chocolate, as it was a status symbol and a stimulating luxury drink.
For candy the most important ingredient was sugar, which until the middle of the 18th century was cane sugar, whose trade and production was extremely costly and cumbersome. Apart from apothecaries, who were allowed to use cane sugar for the concoction of medicine, only the rich classes of the society could afford cane sugar. But in 1747 the fodder beet, indigenous in Europe, was discovered as an excellent natural resource of sugar. From the fodder beet the sugar beet was cultivated and changed the manufacturing of sweets in Europe dramatically. The sugar beet cultivation and the production of beet sugar turned into a flourishing business sector at the end of the 18th century and the Habsburg Empire turned into one of the biggest producers of beet sugar. Within a few decades sugar had become a commodity that was affordable for a much larger part of the population. Consequently, the manufacturing of candy and other sweets experienced a boom in Vienna and the Habsburg Empire. Yet the fabrication of confectionary products was still a very complex procedure done by hand. A cook of Prince Joseph von Schwarzenberg, Franz G. Zenker, left several recipes for manufacturing “Zuckerl” (candy) in 1834, for example “vanilla bonbons” or “venus bonbons”. Every bonbon was wrapped in colourful paper together with an appropriate motto and on the outside jokes or funny words were printed, which expressed taste, spirit, and wit. The recipe book was aimed at middle-class housewives and their cooks. The commercial production of candy and sweets was to a diminishing degree still in the hands of pharmacists and increasingly in the hands of confectioners. In 1861 the Viennese “Lehmann” directory counted 240 confectioners in the city and with the enlargement of the territory of Vienna in 1895 there were 400. They soon faced fierce competition from the rise of large industrial producers, such as Victor Schmidt. While important Viennese companies, for example Pischinger, Cabos and Manner (see table of Viennese producers below), focussed on the production of wafers, cocoa, chocolate, cakes, and biscuits, Ullmann, Heller, and Schmidt concentrated on the manufacturing of candy and sweets; whereby different types of cough lozenges were always part of their product range. All these companies had their specialities, often with glamorous foreign names, for example “Rock Drops”, “Military Rocks”, “Candy Caramels”, “Brioni”, or “Grado Bonbons”.
Different types of traditional Viennese candy (“Zuckerl”)
In 1887 Anton Hausner warned against the use of toxic materials in the industrial production of candy and in wrapping papers, namely various colourants, and essential oils, such as white lead, chrome yellow or Prussian blue, and he recommended natural plant and animal substitutes, for example saffron, curcuma or indigo.
Henny Singer, née Katz, after her return to Vienna in 1948. All photos of her before the war were destroyed when her mother, Alice Katz, and her younger brother, Gerhard Katz, were deported to Opole and murdered
Henriette (Henny) Singer, née Katz, my mother’s cousin, was one of these adolescents who managed to flee from Vienna on an illegal transport to Palestine via the Danube, when the Second World War had already started, and to escape the holocaust. Her mother and her younger brother were not so fortunate and were murdered by the NS terror regime, probably in Opole, Poland. My mother, Herta Tautz, née Kainz, born on 24 November 1933, was 10 years younger than her cousin Henny, born on 23 February 1923. Henny was the niece of Herta’s uncle Norbert Katz, a famous Viennese footballer. See article:
Norbert Katz, Austrian national football team player
Before the outbreak of the Second World War the two girls did not see much of each other because of the age difference, but after the war and Henny’s return to Vienna they kept in contact until Herta’s worsening dementia made communication impossible. Henny died on 9 November 2010, five and a half years before Herta.
Henny had her birth certificate and her certificate of residence re-issued after the war because all her documents were lost in Vienna after the deportation of her mother and brother to the “Generalgouvernement” (the German- occupied territory of Poland) on the 15 February 1941
Henny was born Henriette Gertrude Katz in the 17th district of Vienna, Hernalser Hauptstrasse 62, as the first child of Josef Katz, the elder brother of Norbert Katz, the Viennese football star, who was her favourite uncle, and Alice Katz, née Hübsch.
Until August 1930 Henny lived with her family in the 17th district of Vienna, Hernalser Hauptstrasse 62
Both parents were assimilated Jews, born in Vienna. Her father Josef Katz, born on 4 October 1897, worked as a bank clerk at the Viennese Mercurbank in its branch office at Taborstrasse in the 2nd district of Vienna. He was only 38 years old, when he died in January 1936 of pneumonia and left Alice to care for herself, Henny, and her younger brother Gerhard, born on 28 November 1926. At the time of his death Henny was not quite thirteen years of age and her brother not yet ten. Alice was a housewife and received a pension for herself and her children from the Mercurbank. In the course of the Nazi takeover in Austria and the expropriation and disenfranchisement of all Viennese Jews, which entailed the total deprivation of all civil rights, the Mercurbank ceased its pension payments to Alice. In 1930 the family had moved to a flat in the same district, in Jörgerstrasse 49/2, where they were evicted soon after the “Anschluss” (the Nazi takeover in Austria in March 1938), because they were Jewish citizens. They were then transferred with few of their possessions to a so-called “Sammelwohnung” (collective camp) in Neuwaldeggerstrasse 41, where they lived in overcrowded circumstances with many other disenfranchised Viennese Jews, who had been evicted, too. See article:
The birth certificate of Alice Katz and the marriage certificate of Alice and Josef Katz of 1921
Josef Katz’ death certificateAlice Katz’ Viennese certificate of residence, which states that she was deported to Opole in Poland on 15 February 1941. The Gestapo transport list mentions the names of Alice and Gerhard as numbers 910 (Alice Katz) and 911 (Gerhard Katz) from Vienna, Aspangbahnhof, to Opole on 15 February 1941:
Henny managed to get a secretarial job at the “Israelitische Kultusgemeinde” IKG (the official Jewish representation) in Vienna in 1938, to help support the family. The IKG offices had been closed by the Nazis after the “Anschluss”, but were later reopened in order to organise the quick emigration of Jews from Vienna under NS orders of Adolf Eichmann. In the first years of the NS terror regime the Nazis aimed at “cleansing” the “Third Reich” of all Jews by expropriation and forced emigration before they switched to the policy of extermination of all Jews on the territory of Germany and all occupied countries. In this repressive atmosphere Henny, who came from an assimilated Jewish Viennese family, got in contact with Zionist youth organisations and the Youth Aliyah, founded by Recha Freier in Berlin, which organised transports of 15-to 17-year-old Jews to Palestine, which was under British mandate at the time. Henny participated in the preparation courses of the Youth Alijah to get ready for a life in Palestine, which included Hebrew language classes, information on history and culture in Palestine and practical training for a life in an agricultural kibbutz. It was clear that Henny would rather take over tasks such as sewing or jobs in the household than strenuous agricultural work because she suffered from a hip problem since her birth, congenital hip dysplasia. Her friends in the IKG urged her to leave Vienna, when the repressions and persecutions of Jews in Vienna worsened dramatically, but she did not want to leave her mother and younger brother behind. Her mother was completely exhausted and depressed by then and expressed the opinion that she and her family had never done any wrong, so what could happen to her and her son? Unfortunately, she misjudged the dramatic threat to the lives of Jews in Vienna because she saw herself as an “ordinary Viennese citizen”. She counted on her clean conscience as a model citizen, yet Jews had no citizen rights any more at that time.
Henny had planned to join her uncle, Norbert Katz and her aunt, Agi Katz, who had fled with their two-year-old twins, Susi and Josi, to England, but with the start of World War II in September 1939 the UK borders were closed to refugees from the “Third Reich”. See articles:
So finally, Henny decided to leave for Palestine on her own on a Youth Aliyah transport on 4 December 1939. In Bratislava she boarded the DDSG (“Donau Dampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft”, the former Austrian, now German state shipping company) ship “Grein” and travelled on to the Black Sea harbour Salina in Romania, from where she was transferred onto an ocean-going vessel that took her through the Dardanelles and across the Mediterranean to Haifa in Palestine. She was sixteen years of age and would turn seventeen in February 1940. A friend of Henny’s, Bernhard, who worked with her at the IKG and who also lived in the same collective camp in the 17th district of Vienna, Neuwaldeggerstrasse 41, had assisted Henny. He had put her name on the list of illegal youth transports to Palestine and had procured the visa for Bolivia. Henny was never supposed to go to Bolivia, but as the British authorities did no longer allow any Jewish migration to Palestine, the passengers on the ships down the Danube and across the Mediterranean needed “final visas” for other countries to receive transit visas for the countries they were crossing, and only few embassies of Latin American countries in Vienna still issued them.
This document was issued after the war, too, and shows the move of Henny and her mother (her brother Gerhard is not mentioned here) to a collective camp (“Sammelwohnung”) in Neuwaldeggerstrasse 41and the deportation of her mother. An interesting fact is the mentioning of Henny’s departure to “Bolivia”. This means that Henny was on an illegal transport and had no official permission to enter Palestine. The organisation of the transport procured visas for Latin-American countries, e.g. Peru or Bolivia, for those children and youths who did not manage to receive a British certificate of immigration for Palestine. These “final visas” were necessary to get transit visas for the countries they were crossing, such as Slovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania because they guaranteed that the refugees would not be staying in those countries.
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Fairy tales were much promoted before, during and after the National Socialist period in Vienna and in the whole of Austria and Germany
Children’s and youth literature was regarded as an important tool for influencing young people and inoculating them with the National Socialist ideology by the NS leaders, but they were not the first ones. The Austro-Fascists, who took power in Austria in 1933 by ousting the democratically elected Austrian parliament of the First Republic, cleansed the libraries and schools of “unwanted” children’s and youth literature and promoted a limited selection of pedagogically backward books to entice the young for their nationalistic, fundamentalist Roman Catholic view of the world. Fairy tales and legends, especially Germanic and Nordic myths, were considered appropriate topics for young people by Austro-Fascists as well as by National Socialists in Vienna. Yet the Austro-Fascists were not well-organised enough to come up with a coherent pedagogical concept of creating Austro-Fascist children’s and youth literature. Despite their tightly-knit party structure the National Socialists, who represented a strong underground power in Austria during their time of illegality in the Austro-Fascist period between 1933 and 1938, had no clear-cut view of what a National Socialist children’s and youth literature had to look like as well, when they took power in Austria in March 1938. The only consensual aim was to serve the NS ideology, but the NS representatives of various institutions and authorities followed different strategies to reach this common goal. It is surprising that too blunt propaganda of NS ideology in children’s books, which was for instance offered by fervent former illegal Austrian National Socialist writers, was rejected by the “Reichsschrifttumskammer” (NS Chamber of Writers). Their aim was to influence the young subconsciously via sentiment and emotions without making the intended manipulations too visible. So, in a nutshell, children’s books were to be sophisticated indoctrination tools.
In fact, most skilled and well-known authors of German-language children’s books had fled Austria, were persecuted, or were not prepared to be abused by the regime for its ideological purposes. Consequently, the NS regime lacked gifted writers of children’s literature. The majority of the material produced for the young in this period constituted of easy poems, rhymes and lyrics for patriotic songs and marches, which could be publicly recited and sung individually or in groups at youth camps, party celebrations and in schools. Another important category were handbooks for organising group events, camps, and meetings of the HJ (obligatory membership of all boys in the NS “Hitlerjugend”) or BdM (obligatory membership of all girls in the NS “Bund deutscher Mädchen”), filled with appropriate National Socialist games, poems, songs, sports events, and activities in preparation for war. An important requirement for children’s and youth literature was its facility to be read in public and not alone. Reading material was supposed to promote NS group activities; stories and rhymes were supposed to be read out loud by mothers, teachers, youth leaders to enthuse the young for the ideas of National Socialism. Book worms were not appreciated, on the contrary, reading alone in your room was seen as dangerous subversive treason. Jews, who the Nazis staged in their xenophobic propaganda as the worst enemies of Hitler’s “Third Reich”, were characterised as bookish, learned, reading alone in their study rooms; all negative characteristics for the Nazis, who promoted a fit, sporty and outdoors group spirit of the “young German”.
Herta on her third birthday on 24 November 1936 – she was an avid reader of picture books already then (left), and hiking in the Vienna Wood with her mother, Lola (right)
Herta Kainz, my mother, was exactly such a bookworm; a shy withdrawn little girl who was born in Vienna on 24 November 1933 and started school in September 1940 in the midst of NS terror in Vienna. Her mother, Lola Kainz, was a born Jew who had converted to Roman Catholicism when she married Herta’s father, Toni Kainz. Herta was an only child who was much loved and cared for by her parents and her family, but she had to live under very precarious conditions because of the Jewish origin of her mother and her mother’s family. Herta was brandished a “Mischling 1. Grades” (a first degree mixed-race child) and excluded from all activities “Aryan” children were supposed to participate in. Her father Toni, who stood by his wife and daughter during these trying times, had been dispossessed by his family, innkeepers in the bourgeois Viennese district of Währing, and was working as a fishmonger. He was drafted by the Nazis and participated as a sapper in the German military campaigns Of World War II in France and Poland before he was considered “unreliable” by the Nazis, because he refused to divorce his Jewish wife and was transferred to the home front working as a fishmonger in war food supply.
Herta’s mother, Lola, was constricted to do forced labour in the war industry. Herta as a small child had to watch the deportation of her beloved grandparents, Ignaz and Josefine Sobotka, and the exclusion, stigmatisation, and discrimination of her mother. Lola was for instance not allowed to go to a doctor or hospital or to enter the school building, where Herta started primary school. Herta was supposed to sit separately in the last row to mark her out as an “inferior mixed-race child”, who was not allowed to participate in any school festivities. Only thanks to the altruistic commitment of her young teacher, Helene Pfleger, who ignored the NS regulations risking her own career and life, the needs of the children, including Herta’s, were put first in Ms Pfleger’s classroom and not NS ideology. Herta and her teacher stayed in contact all their lives and Herta was for ever thankful to Ms. Pfleger for the love and care she had given to her. At home Herta was in constant fear of a knock at the door of their small two-room flat in Mariahilferstrasse, because that could mean that SS men were coming for her mother. Already as a small girl she knew she had to run for help to her father’s fish shop as soon as her mother was deported by the Nazis. This threat and this fear remained deep in her psyche for a long time. As a result, stories and books became her rescue haven; a dream world she could withdraw to from the terror of the real world around her. Her books and the diary she started to write after the war are the primary sources of this analysis of children’s and youth literature during the Austro-Fascist, National Socialist and post-war years in Vienna. As her family was poor, she owned very few books and those were second-hand books. What is more, buying at an antiquarian’s was the only chance to acquire books which were not on the NS lists of recommended books.
The main source of reading material for poorer children were public libraries, where the lending of books was usually free of charge for pupils. In 1878 the first two public libraries were opened in Vienna, followed by several workers’ libraries before and after World War I, which were founded by workers’ associations that wanted to promote the education of the Viennese working class. The Austro-Fascists closed the workers’ libraries in 1934 and after eliminating “unwanted” books from these libraries, reopened them. In 1938 the Nazis cleansed the libraries of all Jewish and politically ostracised authors, who had not already been eliminated by the Austro-Fascists, and renamed them “City Libraries”. Immediately after World War II the Viennese public libraries were opened again in 1945 and stocked with books, some of which provided by the Allied liberators, mostly by the Americans. But many of the old books remained on stock or were re-edited with slight alterations omitting crass racist passages and blunt Nazi ideology.
Herta during her first school year 1940 and after the war on the balcony of the family’s new flat on Lerchenfeldergürtel in the workers’ district of Ottakring
Second-hand bookstores, where Herta’s parents bought the few books for her they could afford during and after World War II
My great-aunt, Katharina (Käthe) Elzholz, a very tough and courageous woman, crossed the Atlantic alone on an Allied convoy during World War II in the winter of 1944 to join her husband, Karl Elzholz, in Bolivia. Käthe, a bank clerk, had fled the Nazi persecution of Jewish citizens in Vienna in November 1938 taking on a job as a cook in an English household. She married Karl Elzholz, who had fled to Bolivia and whom she knew in Vienna, on 11 August 1943 in London in a long-distance civil wedding ceremony. Due to intense fighting on the Atlantic, the “Battle of the Atlantic”, she could not risk the dangerous voyage to Bolivia until 14 February 1944. At her arrival on 2 April 1944, she was given this commemorative brooch by her husband (see above).
Käthe, born on 17 July 1901, was a widow after the early death of her husband Poldl Kluger. She had been forced to quit her job as a bank clerk due to the Nazi race laws introduced in Austria in March 1938 and had to work as a fashion model to earn her livelihood. She clearly saw the threat the racist NS ideology posed for those in Austria who were born Jews – she herself was not devout – and tried to flee the country as soon as possible and help her family members to do the same. She was the eldest of the four “Sobotka sisters”: Lola (my grandmother), Agi and Marianne (Mitzi). As the eldest sister Käthe felt responsible for their well-being as well as for that of their parents, Ignaz and Rudolfine (Ritschi) Sobotka. She took cooking lessons, learned English and eventually managed to get a work permit and a visa as a domestic servant in England (see article “Maid Servants in England”). Unfortunately, Käthe was not able to get her elderly parents out of Vienna and regrettably also her sister Mitzi together with her husband Karl could not procure visa for Ignaz and Ritschi to join them in Bolivia. They ended up in the concentration camp “KZ Theresienstadt”, but miraculously survived (see article: “The KZ Theresienstadt”).
All Käthe’s small savings were taken by the Nazis because Austrian Jews had to pay the “Reichsfluchtsteuer” (a tax levied on Jews who managed to leave the country) and they were not allowed to take any valuables abroad. Käthe was allowed to bring 2.10 pounds as “travel allowance” to England and she was denied any exemption limit and travel relief, as visible in her passport.
Käthe’s passport marked with a large red “J” for “Jude” (Jewish) and her married name Katharina KlugerKäthe was born 1901 in Eywanowitz. Moravia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and moved with her parents to Vienna at the age of three. She lived in the 6th district, Mariahilferstraße 41 at the time of her flight to England.On the right side of her passport the denial to grant her any exemption limit or travel relief is stamped by the NS authorities and the amount of money she was allowed to take with her (British pounds 2.10) is noted by the bank in Vienna, the “Länderbank Wien”. On the left side her landing on Dover, England, is stamped on 7 November 1938 and her arrival in Surrey on 8 November 1938.
From England Käthe managed to get a work permit and a visa for her younger sister Agi Katz to work as a maid in the same household and to have Agi’s two-year-old twins, Susi and Josi, brought to England on a “Kindertransport” (see article “Kindertransports from Vienna to England”) to join their parents. My grandmother Lola was at that time considered “safe” in Vienna as she was married to non-Jewish Toni Kainz, my grandfather. Käthe’s youngest sister Mitzi fled with her husband, Karl Elzholz, to Bolivia in January 1939 (see article: “Viennese in Exile in Bolivia”.) Karl was nearly 20 years older than Mitzi. After their arrival in Bolivia Mitzi fell in love with a young German refugee, Bill (Wilhelm) Stern, and wanted to marry him. The couple decided to divorce and while Mitzi married Bill, Karl asked Käthe, his former wife’s elder sister, to marry him. They had known each other in Vienna as in-laws and were closer in age to each other. Karl was 11 years older than Käthe, so when they finally married on 11 August 1943, Käthe was 42 and living in England, 25 Warkworth Gardens, Isleworth, Middlesex, and Karl was 53 and living in Sucre, Bolivia, running a small shirt manufacturing business together with Mitzi and Bill.
Käthe on the left and Karl on the right in Vienna before the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938
Below a copy of their marriage certificate can be seen: It was issued by the Bolivian ambassador in London. Karl Elzholz was represented in London by Norbert Katz, the husband of Agi and brother-in-law of Käthe and formerly also brother-in-law of Karl, when he was still married to Mitzi. So, they were all family and at that time Kathe, Agi, Norbert and the twins lived together in the flat in Isleworth. Two other refugees from Vienna, Irene Pollak and Fritzi Kappermann and their husbands, Austrian refugees in London, acted as witnesses to Käthe’s marriage in London.
The civil marriage certificate issued in London 11 August 1943The marriage certificate issued in Sucre, Bolivia 8 July 1943, mentioning Karl’s earlier divorce from Marianne (Mitzi)Confirmation of the long-distance marriage of Käthe and Karl by the Bolivian and British authorities
As soon as Karl had proposed to Käthe and they had decided that she would join him in Bolivia, she started to learn Spanish. For Käthe moving to Bolivia meant fleeing the war in Europe. During the war Käthe’s sister Lola, my grandmother, and her family, who had remained in Vienna, had no idea what was happening to their relatives in England and Bolivia and they were immensely surprised to hear about the divorce of Karl and Mitzi and the marriage of Karl and Käthe and Mitzi and Bill after the war. It can be assumed that Karl and Käthe both suffered from the loneliness and isolation typical of refugees in a foreign country, especially as they both lived in the same household with relatives who had their own families: Käthe with her sister Agi’s family and Karl with his former wife Mitzi and her new partner Bill. Although they were no longer young, they seemed to have yearned for a partner with whom they got on well. Käthe and Karl had been planning their marriage since 1942, which is documented by some photos Karl sent her to England from Bolivia. At the back of the photos Karl described where he lived, what Sucre and the shop they ran there looked like:
Karl wrote in March 1942 from Sucre: “In this house with the two signs, El-As, there is our shirt factory and shop. In the first shop window with the bald head that’s me and in the second window that’s Marianne with her partner. We own and run the shop together. I live in the back of this house.”“The shop with the two shop windows and your Karl. I hope I can see you soon in the shop; one cannot expand the business very much because there is a lack of material here. But we are satisfied and I hope you will like it, too. Your Karl”Karl wrote to her on 24 December 1942: “My dear Käthe! Today is Christmas Eve. They don’t celebrate Christmas here as in Europe, but gradually the festivities are introduced here as well. The weather is warm – naturally – as it is summer here. The photo shows the shop where the shirts are made. With the next letter I’ll send you more photos. Hopefully we’ll be together soon. Greetings and kisses Yours Karl!”Agi, Käthe and the twins after the war in England
Käthe had endured the “Blitz”, the heavy German bombardment of London and its surroundings from September 1940 until May 1941, and the imminent threat of a Nazi invasion, which if successful, would have meant deportation to NS concentration camps and near certain death for her and her sister Agi Katz, her husband Norbert Katz, a famous Viennese footballer (see article: “Viennese Football”), and their young twins. In 1943 Käthe was waiting for an opportunity to get a place on one of the ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean in an Allied convoy to join her husband Karl in Bolivia. Yet for the time being the “Battle of the Atlantic”, which reached its peak in March 1943 with the highest losses of ships in Allied convoys due to German submarine – “U-boat”- attacks, made a crossing for her impossible and much too dangerous.
Käthe and Karl were finally reunited on 2 April 1944 after Käthe had undergone a long journey of 48 days from England by boat to Argentina and then on to Sucre in Bolivia.
Käthe’s ID in the UKThe stamps document Käthe’s voyage from the UK to Argentina by boat and her entry in BoliviaKäthe’s payment of 25 US dollars for entry in Bolivia, confirmed by the Bolivian embassy in LondonKäthe’s permission to join her husband in Bolivia, issued in London on the 2nd of February 1944US World War II warships
The problem for Käthe was to get permission to purchase a place on an Allied convoy crossing the Atlantic Ocean amid World War II. Convoys, groups of merchant ships and liners sailing under the protection of an armed escort, had been organised by the British since the Napoleonic wars, but became crucial in the First World War, when the Germans waged “unrestricted” submarine warfare against Allied shipping routes. If the US had not come to Britain’s rescue in 1917 the German attacks would have turned out calamitous for the British. At the beginning of World War I the British Admiralty had not given due weight to the threat of the then new German maritime weapon, the submarine or “U-boat”. They regarded the convoy system as outmoded because coal-fired ships travelling together in large numbers would form a prominent target for the enemy. Furthermore, the military authorities were reluctant to use warships defensively as convoy escorts, but rather use them in open battle confronting the enemy. What’s more, the British shipowners and speculative investors opposed the concept of leading their ships through the war zone under the protection of the Royal Navy. They preferred that their ships would be sailing independently because they were faster as no stragglers in a convoy slowed down their passage. Furthermore, no logjams were created in the respective harbours of arrival, which was unavoidable if thirty or more ships arrived simultaneously at a destination. Above all, the shipowners and speculators profited as handsomely when their ships were sunk by the enemy as when their cargoes reached their destinations safely. They not only benefitted from huge insurance pay-outs in case of the loss of a vessel, but at the same time from the growing demand for ships to replace the losses. It is no exaggeration to say that the more ships were sunk by the Germans, the richer the British investors became. For all these reasons, the British were slow to react to the growing threat of an ever-larger German U-boat fleet. Yet the Germans no longer abided by the international “Prize Rules”, which stated that no merchant vessel could be sunk by a submarine until it had been searched and its crew provided with a place of safety. Following the unilateral repudiation of the “Prize Rules” by the Germans, the number of Allied sinkings rose sharply. The deployment of US warships on escort duty in 1917 transformed the course of World War I at sea. The US saved Britain from being starved into surrender and proved the importance of the convoy system in protecting the Allied lifeline across the Atlantic from U-boat attacks, which the British Admiralty had resisted for so long.
During the interwar years, Britain lobbied unsuccessfully for an outlawing of submarines; they only managed to get international support for a reform of the “Prize Rules”; a quite ambiguously formulated treaty, the “London Naval Treaty” of 1930. In 1936 more than 30 nations added their signatures to the “Second Naval Treaty”, including Germany. Again, the British Admiralty was convinced that the Germans’ unrestricted submarine warfare during World War I had proved so disastrous for them that they would not make the same mistake again. Royal Naval officers neglected to analyse data that showed that escorted convoys supported by aircraft had saved the nation in 1917 from collapse. The Royal Navy was proud of its warships and cruisers and did not want to “waste” them in a mundane task of escorting merchant ships – it was a far too defensive concept for them. The sinking of the “Athenia”, a passenger liner, within hours of Britain’s declaration of war in September 1939 shattered the British Admiralty’s concept. The British Prime Minister Churchill as First Sea Lord was informed on 4 September that the Germans had sixty U-boats and that a hundred more would be in operation by early 1940. On 6 September the Admiralty made the formal decision to re-introduce the convoy system, but the Royal Navy was alarmingly short of escort vessels and those available were mostly unsuitable in size and type and their crews were untrained. Air support for the convoys by the RAF (Royal Air Force) was virtually inexistant. The limited supply of fighters and bombers was not to be used for such defensive tasks as safeguarding British maritime supply lines. But Hitler’s “Third Reich” was far from ready to confront the US on the Atlantic Ocean, too, which is documented by Hitler’s anger about the sinking of the “Athenia” and the Germans’ breach of the “London Naval Treaty” of 1936. Hitler had a continental war in mind; he wanted to subjugate Europe and then to invade Russia, which would require a close cooperation of the German army and the air force. The German navy would have to take third place. So, both Germany and Britain were ill-prepared and ill-equipped for the “Battle of the Atlantic”. Yet in November 1939 unrestricted U-boat warfare was the German commander Dönitz’ official, though still unstated, policy. Although individual merchant ships sailing alone were now attacked by German submarines, the targets that really mattered for Dönitz in terms of tonnage of freight were the convoys. Locating and destroying convoys by means of concentrated attacks of U-boats, so-called “wolf packs” of eight up to twenty U-boats, presented the opportunity for the “Third Reich” to strangle Britain’s Atlantic lifeline.
