VIENNESE CONFECTIONARY PRODUCTION & SWEET SHOPS SINCE THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19th CENTURY & THE IMPACT OF THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REGIME 1938-1945

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)

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)

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”.

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.

A VIENNESE FEMALE REFUGEE CROSSING THE ATLANTIC OCEAN FROM BRITAIN TO AMERICA ON AN ALLIED CONVOY DURING 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 Kluger
Käthe 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.

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.

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 UK
Käthe’s payment of 25 US dollars for entry in Bolivia, confirmed by the Bolivian embassy in London
Käthe’s permission to join her husband in Bolivia, issued in London on the 2nd of February 1944

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.

VIENNA 1945: THE END OF WORLD WAR II: LIFE IN THE LIBERATED AND OCCUPIED CITY & HOW DID RESTITUTION WORK FOR THE NON-ELITE

The “Viennese Diary of 1944/1945” by Josef Schöner (1904-1978) offers a personal impression of the life in the city of Vienna during the last days of the war and the months after the liberation of the city by the Soviet Red Army. Schöner was an Austrian diplomat who had been dispatched to the United States and was forcibly retired by the Nazis in 1939 after the “Anschluss” (the Nazi takeover of Austria). During the war he worked in the restaurant business of his parents and was called back to diplomatic service after the end of the war. The experiences of my grandparents, Lola and Toni Kainz, and their daughter, Herta, my mother, are an important source of information about life in Vienna during the last months of the 2nd World War and the time after liberation. My great-grandparents, Ignaz and Rudolfine Sobotka, in the photo below with Lola, their daughter and Herta, their granddaughter, returned from the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt to Vienna in the summer of 1945, but they never talked about their experiences during their imprisonment.


Ignaz and Rudolfine Sobotka with their daughter Lola (left) and their granddaughter Herta (right) after their return from the KZ Theresienstadt in the small flat of Lola and Toni in Mariahilferstrasse 41

This article furthermore deals with the way restitution worked for the victims of Nazi persecution after the war, focussing on the non-elite who had survived Nazi concentration camps and the ordinary Viennese citizens of Jewish descent who returned from exile. The overall number of those who came back to settle in Austria again was embarrassingly small: only 6 per cent. This can be explained by the fact that they were not at all welcome in post-war Austria.

The decision of the Allied Forces in 1943 to insist on “unconditional surrender” of Germany implied that Germany would have no say at all in the new world order after the end of the 2nd World War. The Allies then started to discuss the destiny of the many small states which had been incorporated into the Nazi “Third Reich”. Austria was just one of them and certainly not the most important one. A new order in Central Europe was considered important because it had become apparent that the Western inter-war policy of the 1920s and 1930s had failed in the region. The British were the first to weigh the pros and cons of four different options for Austria after the end of the war.  First, Austria could become an independent state as between 1918 and 1938; second, it could remain in a union with Germany; third, Austria could be part of a new, not yet clearly defined “Danube Confederation” or fourth, Austria could be split up and the western part would join Germany or Switzerland and the eastern part the “Danube Confederation”. But the Soviet Union had its own interests in the Central European region and Stalin insisted on the restoration of an independent Austrian Republic. The British wanted to boost the resistance among the Austrians against the Nazis and made that a condition for a preferential treatment of Austria after the victory over Nazi Germany. They were certain that Austria had to rely on massive foreign aid to survive as an independent state and that’s why they preferred a “Danube Confederation”. But the Soviets were strictly against any form of a Central European confederation of states. At the same time there was no clear strategy visible in the USA and the British did not want to alienate either the Americans or the Soviets. In a draft of July 1943 Austria was declared the first free country which had been a victim of Nazi aggression and the decision how Austria would be treated in future would depend on the behaviour of the Austrian people, who were responsible for the war, too. The “Anschluss” was imposed on Austria and was therefore null and void. In order not to become a basis for German aggression again in future Austria was to be restored as an independent state. Already in this draft the responsibility of the Austrians for the war was deliberately expressed in an ambiguous way. At that point in time also the governments of the Commonwealth countries discussed the destiny of small European states like Austria and the South-African Prime Minister Jan Smuts vehemently opposed a promise to Austria that it could expect preferential treatment to Germany and he further rejected the idea of promising independence to small states which were economically too weak to survive. He pleaded for a South German state, which would achieve two goals, namely a breaking up of Germany and the integration of Austria in a state with Bavaria. This was a solution which did not please the British Foreign Office under Anthony Eden who preferred a Central European Confederation and refused to offer preferential treatment to Bavaria, the region of origin of National Socialism. The Soviet Union pleaded for the Austrian independence and stated that they would not expect Austria to come under the Soviet sphere of influence.  Interestingly, the Soviets did not want to stress Austria’s responsibility for the war.

Finally on 1 November 1943 the “Moscow Declaration” confirmed that Austria was the first victim of Nazi Germany and would be restored as an independent republic once Hitler was defeated. At that point in time it was not to be predicted of how great the importance of this document would be for the future of Austria in 1945. Despite its ambiguity this declaration is the most important document for Austria before the State Treaty of 1955. The “Moscow Declaration” must have been known in Austria in November 1943 because the Nazi newspaper, the “Völkischer Beobachter”, reported about it. In conclusion it can be said that the British had invested much more thought in the future of Austria than any other of the Allied partners. They now started to plan the zones of occupation after the war and were prepared to offer the whole of Austria to the United States because their projected zone of occupation in southern Germany was rather small. But the Soviets insisted on a joint occupation of Austria by the Soviets, the Americans and the British. During this time of strategic planning, the war continued and the destruction of the German and Austrian cities and infrastructure was stepped up by Allied bombardments. In the spring of 1944 the south of Austria had come under attack of Tito’s Communist Partisans from the south. In September 1944 Churchill and Roosevelt agreed on the zones of occupation for Germany and the Soviet, British and American diplomats came to an understanding that the one who reached Vienna first, would invite the other two Allies to join in. On 31 October 1944 the British stipulated what should happen in case Austria was reached by the Allied troops before the unconditional surrender of Germany. Most importantly these directives included a warning that Austria could not escape its responsibility for the participation in the war and that it would be held accountable. Yet the degree to which Austrians contributed to the liberation of their own country would be taken into account. This proclamation stated that the British considered Austria an enemy state because Austria was waging a war against the Allies and that’s why the British considered themselves as victors and not liberators. The Soviets wanted to occupy the Burgenland and the eastern parts of Lower Austria and Styria and a third of the city of Vienna. The Americans expected that their zone of occupation in Vienna included an airfield. Basically, the Americans and the French had no special interest in occupying parts of Austria. Their focus was on Germany, but they accepted the British invitation to participate in the occupation of Austria.

“KINDERTRANSPORTS” FROM VIENNA TO GREAT BRITAIN 1938/1939

Agi with her twins, Susi and Josi

Agi Katz, the younger sister of my grandmother had found refuge in England as a maid in the household of her sister Käthe’s mistress, but she could not bring her two-year-old girl twins, Susi and Josi with her. Käthe had helped to organise from across the channel to have the girls transported via a “kindertransport” to England to Quaker foster families. Unfortunately the twins had to be separated not only from their mother, but also from each other, which caused serious and long-lasting emotional damage. They were reunited with their parents after the war. The family then decided to become British citizens and remain in the UK. In 1948 the Evening Standard printed a picture of the twins then aged 12, “Flowers at Victoria Station. 12-year-old twins Susan and Josephine Katz of Isleworth (Middlesex). They were waiting for their grandparents, septuagenarians Herr and Frau Ignaz Sobotka to arrive from Vienna for a holiday here.” (see below)

The twins, Susi and Josi, still in Vienna

With the permission of the British, Dutch and Swedish governments aid organisations in “Greater Germany” (Germany and the occupied territories) organised kindertransports in 1938 and 1939 on special trains to send endangered children west to safety. The children on board these trains left their parents and other family members at the railway stations of Prague, Vienna, Frankfurt, Berlin, Leipzig, the free city of Danzig and the Polish city of Zbonszyn. Descriptions and eye witness reports abound of chaos, tears and the pain of the parents. The kindertransports from Austria took the train route through Germany via Cologne, over the border to the Netherlands, up to the Hook of Holland, across the North Sea by boat to dock at Harwich. Some of them were sent to London from there, others were transported to Dovercourt Bay, a holiday camp taken over to accommodate arriving youngsters. Newspaper reports describing the violence of the November pogroms prompted public sympathy and government action in the UK. The Times reported on 14 November 1938, “The position of Austria’s Jews is becoming daily more precarious… Although the more violent demonstrations have ceased the Nazis have prohibited non-Jewish stores, restaurants and cafés from selling to Jews. As no Jewish shops have been allowed to reopen the effect has been to reduce many Jews to a position dangerously near starvation.” The plight of children struck an especially resonant chord. Stories circulated in the UK about attacks against Jewish orphanages and children roaming the countryside on the verge of starvation.

IDENTITY CRISES AND ASSIMILATION

The Austro-Hungarian Empire in those days was characterised by ambivalence: on the one hand the multi-lingual international aspect, on the other hand increasing nationalism. This atmosphere formed the basis for the famous cultural climate that produced outstanding artistic, philosophic and scientific results. These cultural and political clashes, multiple identities and this special way of life created lots of contradictions that triggered innovative solutions. This atmosphere also produced the founders of national mass movements of the Jews and the Czechs: Theodor Herzl founded Zionism, Heinrich Füger and Miroslav Tyrs the sports club Sokol, the centre of the Czech national movement.…

THE ROLE OF AUSTRIAN BANKS IN NAZI GERMANY’S EXPANSION TO CENTRAL, EASTERN & SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

Palais Ephrussi, Viennese Jewish banking Family (exiled): Edmund de Waal, “The Hare With Amber Eyes” describes the destiny of this banking family

The German state-owned VIAG (Vereinigte Industrieunternehmungen) and the Deutsche Bank gained control of the majority of shares of the Creditanstalt-Bankverein CA from the time of the “Anschluß” of Austria to the Nazi German “Third Reich” in 1938 onwards, originally by taking over the shares of the Austrian state. From the very beginning the German majority shareholders viewed the bank as an important tool for German penetration into South-Eastern Europe, not only because of the geographical position of Vienna, but also because the Viennese banks, many of which had merged with the Credit-Anstalt in the interwar years, had been very active in this area before 1918 and still had much experience in the region. Contrary to the image the CA wanted to create after 1945, the leadership of the CA, and especially its most important director, Josef Joham, viewed the German takeover of Austria as an opportunity to recover the position the CA had held in South-Eastern Europe before and to turn Vienna into the financial hub of the Nazis’ activities in Central Europe and the Balkans. In fact, the CA often took the initiative in expanding its banking activities in the German satellites and occupied territories. It constantly made reference to its historical role in the region and viewed its acquisitions as restitution and/or compensation for its losses and exclusion by the successor states after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The German control of Austria and the CA provided a welcome opportunity to restore the position Viennese banks had enjoyed during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The close co-operation between the CA and the Deutsche Bank, namely between the two directors Josef Joham and Hermann Josef Abs, had already started before the “Anschluß”. As Joham had supported the old regime in Austria, but anticipated the “Anschluß” of March 1938, he sought protection for himself and the bank through the alliance with Abt and the Deutsche Bank. Yet first the German VIAG took over the majority of shares from the Austrian state and Deutsche Bank got hold of only 25 per cent of the shares of the CA, but in 1942 the Deutsche Bank finally acquired the majority of shares in the CA.…