Three Tearless Histories. Erich Hackl
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before her husband.
5
IN JANUARY 1920 Maria Pfeiffer, also known as Mitzi and sixteen at the time, starts work in Leopold Klagsbrunn’s firm as a clerk, a position she had had from May 1918 to February 1919 with C. Hauptmann’s Widow & Sons (Roofing Felt and Tar Production). According to her niece Grete, the Klagsbrunns treated her like a daughter. In return, her employer certifies that she is hard-working, capable of working independently and absolutely trustworthy.
Their close relationship with Maria Pfeiffer also includes her family, Grete’s mother Leopoldine and her brothers Rudolf and Josef. Rudolf Pfeiffer occasionally helps out in the firm as a driver. Actually he’s a varnisher by trade, Josef trained as a saddler. They probably kept being made redundant or were out of work for longish periods during the world economic crisis. In a photo from the early thirties the two of them, in baggy trousers and large peaked caps, are standing in front of the fence of the Klagsbrunn’s villa, behind them the house with the wooden gables and the carved balcony rail on which Mitzi and Fritzi are leaning. You can’t tell from their posture which is the employer and which the employee.
Maria Pfeiffer comes from a working-class family, her brothers are members of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party and, in addition, Josef is a section leader in the Republikanischer Schutzbund. Both take part in the February uprising and after the defeat try to escape to Czechoslovakia. While Rudolf is arrested on the border and jailed for a few months, Josef manages to get to Brno. From there he carries on to the Soviet Union, where he joins the Communist Party. In 1936 he gets his wife and children to come and join him in Moscow then, in the same year, volunteers for the Spanish Civil War. He fights in the XIII, then in the XI International Brigade, ending up as a lieutenant of the Republican Peoples’ Army. On an undated photo that was taken outdoors, in or near Almería, he is sitting in a basket chair in front of huts, trucks and a bare, steeply rising slope, a beret on his head, his left arm in a sling and resting his bandaged left foot on a chair. After the defeat of the Republic he is interned in the Saint-Cyrpien Camp in France but is already back in the Soviet Union by the middle of April 1939. One month before that Leo Klagsbrunn and his family arrived in Brazil.
6
THERE OUGHT TO BE MORE that could be found out about about Peter and Kurt’s years in Vienna than Grete Gabmeier’s sketchy memories of Kurt’s graduation celebration with his classmates in a beer-garden next to the Mautner mansion in Prager Strasse, to which her family was also invited. When Grete was born, Kurt was nine years old and, wondering what a new-born baby looked like, had accompanied his mother when she went to see the mother and child in hospital. He was, so the exceptionally pretty Grete was told, horrified at the sight of her. Such an ugly child, he is said to have cried out. She remembers the two of them—both Peter and Kurt—as rather quiet boys. But they will have had many friends, both in the district and at the University where, at an interval of five years, they studied medicine. That at least is what is suggested by letters from Kurt’s fellow student, Eva Rhoden, who also came from Floridsdorf. She managed to escape from Vienna, four months after the Klagsbrunn family left, with the help of the Gildemeester Organization, a fund to help non-religious Jews who wanted to emigrate that was controlled by the Gestapo and used to rob them of their assets.
Did Peter and Kurt have steady girlfriends in Vienna? We can probably assume that Peter did; in 1938 he was in his mid-twenties and sociable like his father. In the synagogue, so Victor was later told, by a family acquaintance in Berlin, he always stood right at the back and cracked jokes. Kurt is said to have enjoyed taking photographs even while he was still in Vienna. At that time there was as yet no suggestion that his hobby was to become both his vocation and his occupation.
7
ON MARCH 12, 1938, German troops invaded Austria. On that very same day officers Bricka and Denstedt, from Floridsdorf District Police Station, carried out a search of Leopold Klagsbrunn’s house and the garage of his coal depot. According to the report, the following objects were found: “1 Nash (6 cylinder) 55 horse power, license number A 5068 less good repair necessary, 1 license plate, 1 registration certificate.” Rudolf Pfeiffer is named as witness to the search. It’s possible his sister hastily called him over so that the visit of the policemen wouldn’t turn into a humiliation of her employer. It’s also possible that the two officers feel ashamed anyway at having to inconvenience Klagsbrunn, who is well known to them, with a search of his house; that they apologize for having to trouble him and quickly take their leave. Or, on the contrary, that they want to make the most of their sudden power.
For Leopold Klagsbrunn the political upheaval is not unexpected. For some time he’s been thinking about emigration plans. Perhaps he’s hesitated until now because of his sons; Peter hasn’t long to go to his doctorate, Kurt has just started his fourth semester. Two countries are under consideration for refuge: the USA and Brazil. The widow and son of Leo’s brother Hugo, who died in 1928, are living in Connecticut or New York, his brother-in-law Albert Kohn in Rio de Janeiro. Albert is also a chemist and works for Brasil Perfumista, the magazine of the Brazilian perfume industry. Fritzi’s parents happen to be visiting him at that very moment. They’re going to stay there. But that isn’t the reason why Leo and Fritzi decide on Brazil: it’s the only country that will also grant their sons visas. The United States would have given the parents alone an entry permit.
Allegedly they talked to Maria Pfeiffer before this, without obligation, about whether she could see herself taking over the business and the house in the near future. She is perfectly familiar with the work, gets on well with both customers and suppliers but can also, where necessary, be forceful and persistent. Her savings, if she has any at all, will be nowhere near enough for anything like a reasonable purchase price for the house, depot, stock and the two vehicles (as well as the car there is a truck), but she has a relationship with Arthur Egger, an engineer with the Austrian Federal Railways (from now on the German Reich Railways), who would perhaps be able to get his hands on some money; moreover she could cover part of the purchase price with a loan. Leo knows that he must keep his demands within reason. He wants to avoid compulsory aryanization. And to do something for Mitzi for all her years of faithful work. (He had a soft spot for her; it is said he was attracted to her as a woman as well: blonde, a bit of a tomboy but motherly too, despite or because of the fact that she was unable to have children. Malicious gossip—we’ll soon hear it—suggests the two are having an affair.)
On the day after the house search Leo instructs a lawyer, Dr. Leopold Heindl, to draw up a bill of sale for the coal business which both parties sign on March 29, 1938, which is before the Property Transfer Office, the expropriation authority that has to approve every disposal of Jewish property to private individuals, begins to operate. The price for the business, including goodwill, depot, stock, equipment, arrears and debts, is set at 20,000 Austrian schillings (after the currency changeover that is 13,333,33 reichsmarks); the purchaser undertakes to pay it off in regular monthly installments of 400 schillings, starting on April 1. In a verbal appendix she agrees to bear all the expenses the Klagsbrunn family will incur until they leave the country, up to the full amount of the purchase price, less arrears and fees for the contract.
On July 14 Leo has to fill out the ‘Register of the property of Jews as of April 27, 1938’. He indicates that he sold his business in March and possesses a house valued at 10,270 reichsmarks—according to the expertise of the Floridsdorf builder Franz Mikolaschek—in addition to that a life insurance with a surrender value of 2143 reichmarks, a pocket watch with a chain, a wrist watch, various items of silver, two carpets, two runners, to a total value of 920 reichsmarks, plus pictures and bronze pieces of no artistic value. There has been a mortgage of 2000 marks on the house since June 1928 in favor of Auguste Ferwerda, Amsterdam, that was deducted from the purchase price. ‘Aunt Gusti’, as she is called in several letters from Maria Pfeiffer, is Fritzi’s sister. She’s married to a Dutchman, a senior employee of Shell, and will spend the years of the World War in Indonesia.
On August 5 the bill of sale of the property at 9 Pilzgasse (house and garden) for 10,000 reichsmarks is also drawn up. In it Maria Pfeiffer agrees to take over the mortgage and to pay back the balance of 8,000 reichsmarks “within at most five years from today’s date, and until such time to pay interest at 4 per cent per annum.” The Property Transfer Office approves