LIFE AT THE IRON CURTAIN: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF THE RURAL POPULATION IN THE “MILL QUARTER” AFTER 1945

LIVING CONDITIONS OF THE PEASANT POPULATION AND RURAL ARTISANS IN THE REMOTE AUSTRIAN "MILL QUARTER" IN THE 19th & 20th CENTURY, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Left: My husband Karl Wurm at the current Austrian-Czech border, where the Iron Curtain ran until 1989 at the border stream Lainsitz / Luznice. Right: The “Schwarzenberg Canal”, a sluiceway for logs built at the time of the Habsburg Monarchy, where the Iron Curtain separated the two regions, the “Mill Quarter” (Mühlviertel) and Southern Bohemia, from 1948 until 1989

Border stones between Austria (Ö) and Czechoslovakia (C) in the “Mill Quarter” today

Left: Part of the Iron Curtain at the borders of Austria, Czechoslovakia, East and West Germany; right: Current map of the Bohemian Forest region: Southern Bohemia and the “Mill Quarter”

Left: Anti-tank barriers at the Iron Curtain in Southern Bohemia; right “Death Strip”, preventing people from leaving Czechoslovakia and entering the country from Austria

Iron Curtain memorial in the “Mill Quarter”

Iron Curtain memorial trail

My husband Karl’s mother Rosa Wurm, née Traxler, was born on 11 July 1927 (second on the left, sitting). Her family had moved from Kaplitz / Kaplice in Southern Bohemia a few kilometres south to Passberg in Austria.  After World War II she trained as a cook.

Left: the family’s farm house in Passberg, “Mill Quarter”; right: Rosa as a young woman

The British Prime Minister described the situation of the Cold War in Europe in 1946 with the words “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an IRON CURTAIN has descended across the continent.”

The border across the “Bohemian Forest”

For the regions of the “Mill Quarter” and Southern Bohemia this meant that the landscape around the Bohemian Forest, which had been united and disputed along a thousand-year-old border, was since 1948 divided with nearly no communication possible between the two parts. In the area between the Danube and the Moldau many different peoples had found their home over centuries. The Celtic “Bojer” lent their name to “Bohemia” and “Bavaria” and later many different Germanic and Slavic tribes settled in the wooded landscape of the dense Bohemian Forest. The borders which were gradually formed and marginally moved during these centuries were not determined by natural barriers, but by territorial claims to power of various rulers, who traversed the Bohemian Forest north and south.

In the Middle Ages the Bohemian Kings and the Bavarian Dukes were the highest-ranking authorities in the region. Yet the expansive efforts of the local rulers, the “Witigonen” family, in clearing and cultivating the densely-wooded area offered them some independence from the powerful players in the medieval “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation”. Their territorial claims incorporated possessions which were in the sphere of influence of the Bohemian kings, the Bavarian Dukes, the Austrian Dukes and the mighty diocese of Passau. The”Witigonen’s” chance of uniting the region from southern Bohemia to the Danube was thwarted in the 13th century and since the 14th century today’s border between Bohemia and Austria was consolidated step by step.

When the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Dukedom of Austria were united in 1526 under the Habsburgs and continued to exist as an imperial unity until 1918, in some way the border always remained. Tolls were levied between the provinces of Upper Austria and Bohemia and trade between these parts of the Habsburg Empire was controlled at checkpoints. In 1775 all tariff barriers inside the Habsburg Empire were removed and a common economic zone was established. Just a year earlier, in 1774, the market reeve of Oberplan (now Horni Plan in Czechia) had to settle a dispute over a cow, which was “smuggled” from Ratschin near Oberplan south to Schindlau near Ulrichsberg (now in Austria).

Nevertheless, in 1788 a precise measuring of the border between Bohemia and Austria was initiated, although it was no longer a customs boundary. Yet it was still an administrative boundary, which was relevant with respect to civil and social legal decisions. Who wanted to travel from Bohemia to Austria or vice versa had to have a special pass until 1857, be it for tradesmen or apprentices on the “Walz”, perfecting their skills and completing their apprenticeships, or just for visits of relatives and friends. Only nobility, members of the clergy and civil servants could move freely in the Habsburg Empire.

Left: Customs house between Austria and Bohemia in the Habsburg Monarchy. Right: Former Customs House in St. Oswald, “Mill Quarter”, which was erected in 1920 after the end of the Habsburg Empire and the setting up of the state of Czechoslovakia.

What is important to note is that this border was never a language barrier. As long as the administrative state did not interfere and create multiple political and national dependences, different languages did not cause problems. It is known that many members of the local nobility and citizenry were bilingual, German and Czech. Not only did most people in the Czech area speak German as well, also in towns of the “Mill Quarter”, such as Haslach and Freistadt, not just noblemen, but also citizens spoke Czech and not just German. Christoph von Zelking, who donated the famous gothic altar in the church of Kefermarkt, wrote in his last will that his sons had to know Latin, Italian and Czech apart from German, if they wanted to inherit his property.

In 1855 the first map of the Habsburg Empire was drawn up which showed the different linguistic areas and mixed language zones. Since 1869 the Habsburg census incorporated the language spoken, but it was disputed whether the mother tongue or the language spoken in daily life was to be the basis of these language statistics. At this time of rising nationalism, the political border was competing with the linguistic border. The expansion of the administrative state in the fields of education, law enforcement, the military and public security had drastically changed the importance of language. Nationalist ideology poisoned the atmosphere and when the state demanded that in mixed language areas, civil servants had to speak both languages, for example German and Czech, this caused many animosities, because more Czech speakers spoke German, too, than German-speakers Czech. This consequently led to a preference of Czech civil servants employed in the Habsburg administration of the region of Southern Bohemia.

From an economic point of view, the “Mill Quarter” and Southern Bohemia had always been closely interlinked. The “Schwarzenberg Canal”, a sluiceway, shipped logs from the Moldau region to the Danube and down to Vienna. The fast-expanding capital city of the Habsburg Empire was in urgent need of lumber that could no longer be provided from the Viennese Forest or the forests in the vicinity. So, building a sluiceway for floating logs from the Bohemian Forest to the Danube was a convenient solution. The first plans for this most ambitious and technically complicated project were made in 1775. The challenge for the engineers was how to overcome the European main watershed near Rosenhügel. The canal, when it was completed brought great wealth to the noble Schwarzenberg family, as they owned large stretches of woodland in the Bohemian Forest. The engineering project was praised as the “Eighth World Wonder”.

Left: Spot of the European main water shed between Danube – Black Sea and Elbe – North Sea. Right and below: The restored “Schwarzenberg Canal” sluice way.

The horse-drawn railway between Linz and Budweis / Ceske Budejovice, which transported salt from the salt mines of the “Salzkammergut” to Bohemia, was another innovative technical project crossing the Bohemian Forest, but much less successful economically. The 197 kilometre-track connected Gmunden in the “Salzkammergut”, Linz and Budweis. The first part was opened in 1832 and the line was completed in 1836. The transport of passengers and goods was much more profitable from Southern Bohemia to the south than vice versa. Due to technical problems on the narrow and hilly tracks the change from horse-drawn to steam-driven engines came much too late in 1855/56 and only from Gmunden to Linz, which track was flatter and wider. In the meantime, they had even experimented with oxen-drawn engines, because oxen were cheaper than horses. The railway entrepreneur Franz Anton Gestner, who had initiated the horse-drawn railway, was not innovative and forward-looking enough. From Linz to Budweis the passenger trains took 14 hours, two hours more than the stagecoach and from Linz to Gmunden another six and a half hours and freight transport was just as bad. As the railway line was not profitable, the horse-drawn line Linz – Budweis had to be abandoned in 1872, because it was already outdated when it was opened. In comparison, in England the first steam-driven railway opened in 1825 between Stockton and Darlington. On the contrary, the existence of a horse-drawn railway even hindered a modern infrastructure development of the Bohemian Forest.

Left: Salt transport on the horse-drawn railway to Southern Bohemia; right: Museum horse-drawn railway in Kerschbaum at the border to Bohemia

Left: Tracks of the former horse-drawn railway in the “Mill Quarter”; right: Former railway station in Kerschbaum

The majority German-speaking Bohemian districts Krumau / Cesky Krumlov and Kaplitz / Kaplice, where Karl’s mother’s family came from, were economically oriented to the south towards the Danube region in the 18th and 19th century. In the 19th century an extensive migration from Bohemia to Upper Austria took place. Czech workers were involved in building the horse-drawn railway and in Linz the tobacco factory and other large constructions. They worked in coalmining in the “Hausruckviertel” and in the weapons factory in Steyr. For many Czechs Upper Austria was the first stop on their move to Vienna. They were mostly employed in Linz and Steyr as industrial workers, craftsmen, and in domestic service jobs. While in 1858 2,000 Czechs were registered in Upper Austria, in the second half of the 19th century Czechs from Bohemia made up 10 per cent of the population of Linz and 15 per cent in Steyr.

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BREXIT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR EUROPE’S CENTRE

CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Trieste, Italy

Britain’s current decline is relative rather than absolute. The average citizen of today’s Britain is far richer than was the average citizen at the time of the British Empire. Other advanced economies have suffered from years of slow growth while Britain’s science and medical research boom. But the evidence of decline is too evident to ignore. Britain’s core political institutions are in a state of decay. In the past, big crises have produced great leaders, such as Lloyd George during World War I and Winston Churchill during World War II, but today’s politicians range among the mediocre. In a recent survey a quarter of Britons say they would vote for a far-right party because the mainstream parties have let them down. Economic growth has been slow since 2015 despite low interest rates and a fall in the value of the pound. Productivity growth has been marginal and real wages have been falling for a decade. A growing proportion of the population is trapped in a cut-throat economy, in which the young fear to be much worse off in future than their baby-boomer parents.

This is not the first time Britons have been gripped by fears about decline. In the 1890s they worried that America and Germany were replacing Britain as the workshop of the world. In the 1950s they worried that an old-fashioned establishment was strangling the forces of progress. The 1970s saw a particularly fierce debate, as the country was plagued by strikes and three-day weeks. But three aspects make today’s worries especially troublesome. The first is disappointment. For the past 40 years Britain felt that it had put decline behind it. Margret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and David Cameron cemented the new consensus that economic growth, deregulation and privatisation were the key to permanent wealth increase. This was a huge benefit to the new elite that could pride itself that it was more progressive than the old one while stuffing its pockets with gold. But this new consensus also suffered from mounting problems. There was the problem of one-off windfalls: selling off council houses was wonderful for the tenants and the Treasury, but left Britain short of social housing. There was the problem of regional imbalance. The boom in financial services poured money into the south-east while the north remained in economic trouble. This Thatcher-Blair consensus finally ended with the financial crisis of 2008 and the Brexit vote of 2016.

The second problem Britain is facing is the lack of collective agreement in deciding to leave the European Union. Brexit was driven by a particular combination of despair about the way the old consensus had left so many people behind and of optimism that by freeing itself from the EU Britain would be able to reignite its growth engine. The despair was probably justified, but the optimism definitely not because most of Britain’s problems are internally generated. There is nothing about membership in the EU that prevents British entrepreneurs from trading with the rest of the world. Indeed the EU has just signed a trade deal with Japan and is negotiating with the USA about lowering trade barriers. Most economists predict that any version of Brexit – hard or soft – will depress Britain’s growth rate. If Britain leaves without a deal, the consequences will be dramatic. The Brexit secretariat is already drawing up contingency plans to stockpile medicine and food and put electricity generators on barges in the Irish Sea. The third problem is that of compounded error. Irresponsible politicians may well feed the people’s appetites for populist and nationalistic decisions. The Brexit debacle has already injected the poisonous charge of betrayal into the heart of politics. Tony Blair said that politics at the moment is about either riding the anger of finding the answer. The trouble is that fresh answers are hard to find and the anger is mounting daily.

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BRITISH WORLD WAR II INTERNMENT CAMPS FOR ENEMY ALIENS ON THE ISLE OF MAN: HUTCHINSON INTERNMENT CAMP

LIVES OF THE NON-ÉLITE IN VIENNA FROM THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE TO THE NAZI REGIME AND POST-WAR AUSTRIA, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Passport of Norbert Katz, marked “J” for Jewish by the Nazis
The passport was issued in Vienna on the 7th of July 1939 and Norbert was allowed to take only 30 pounds to the UK

Agi and Norbert at their wedding in Vienna

The husband of Agi, Norbert, an excellent Austrian football player, managed a last-minute escape to England with the help of his sister-in-law, Käthe in a domestic household. Unfortunately as a fit young “enemy alien” he was considered a threat to British military security and interned on the Isle of Man after the outbreak of World War II.

Norbert Katz as a young man

What were possible escape routes out of Austria? As a reaction to the threats against Jews in Germany and Austria and the resulting refugee crisis the US President Roosevelt initiated an international conference on the refugee problem out of Germany. From 6 to 14 July 1938 the Conference of Evian took place in Evian-les-Bains in France. Representatives of 23 countries took part. To allay fears that the United States would demand great concessions, the invited nations were told that no country would be expected to receive a greater number of emigrants than was permitted by its existing legislation and all new programmes would be financed by private agencies and not public monies. The purpose of the meeting was to facilitate the emigration of political refugees from Germany and Austria, not Jews. Despite extensive media coverage the conference ended without achieving significant results. On the contrary, the participating countries stated that they would on no accounts change their existing refugee policies. Representatives of the threatened Jewish communities were deeply disappointed by the results. The governments that participated were still unwilling to solve the problem and fell back on palliatives. The more difficult the tasks became, the smaller their will to deal with them efficiently. An Intergovernmental Committee, headquartered in London, was established to improve coordination, but it was still in a preliminary stage of development when the war broke out.

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MAID SERVANTS IN ENGLAND: AUSTRIAN JEWISH WOMEN IN EMIGRATION 1938/39

LIVES OF THE NON-ÉLITE IN VIENNA FROM THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE TO THE NAZI REGIME AND POST-WAR AUSTRIA, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Passport of Agnes Katz, issued in Vienna on the 7th of July 1939, marked with a red “J” for Jewish by the Nazis
Agi landed in Dover on the 18th of August 1939 and there is a handwritten note : “for domestic employment”. She was allowed to take only 30 pounds with her.

Käthe as a young woman in Vienna

My great-aunt Käthe, born in 1901, was a bank clerk at the Wiener Bank Verein and had lost her first husband, Poldl Kluger, soon after the wedding, victim of a lung disease, in illness that was wide-spread in Vienna at that time. When she lost her job at the bank in 1924, being tall and slim, she made ends meet by accepting occasional jobs as a fashion model. After the civil war in 1934 and the coup d’état of the Austrian fascists, Käthe, an assimilated and agnostic Jewess and a socialist, realised that sooner or later she would have to flee Austria. Being single facilitated the decision-making process. She diligently prepared for her escape from the Nazis by learning English and acquiring cooking skills. She then applied for the position of cook in a wealthy English household and landed in Dover on the 7th of November 1938. Having arrived at a safe haven in England with a domestic permit, she tied to get out of Austria as many of her family as possible. She worked in 25, Warkworth Gardens in Isleworth in Middlesex and managed to convince her generous and understanding mistress to hire her younger sister, Agi, as a maid in the same household and by that offered her a last-minute escape from deportations from Viennese collection points in the 2nd district to the concentration camps of the Nazis. So let’s look at this special rescue model, a window of opportunity for young Jewish women from Austria in 1938, which was closed in 1939.

Käthe’s employment as a bank clerk at the “Wiener Bank Verein” 1924

Käthe’s passport stamped with a “J” for “Jude”

Detail of the passport

Around 20,000 Jewish women, three quarters from Austria, fled in 1938/39 to England with a so-called “domestic permit”. This was a work permit for foreign domestic staff which British employers could use since the 1920s to alleviate the chronic shortage of maid servants despite otherwise very strict immigration restrictions. A considerable percentage of these women were not actually domestics by trade, but had only been able to enter the UK on permits for domestic work. They found themselves in a relationship of dependency to their mistresses, but work as a maid guaranteed a livelihood because domestic servants were the only ones who had permission to legally work in England. Yet they were officially not allowed to leave the areas of these private households. The majority of male refugees with a permission to enter the UK needed an affidavit from an influential personality or an institution.

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