Good Living Street

by Tim Bonyhady

  The start of the Great War made the task of the Werkstätte’s new directors all the harder as the market for the workshops’ luxurious products became smaller than ever. The war also transformed how families such as the Gallias lived in their Hoffmann rooms. These rooms were designed for display, made for grand events, conceived on the assumption that their occupants would entertain like never before amid social, economic, and political stability. The war prevented them from doing so. Although the Gallias had no reason to suspect it in July 1914, their heyday on Good Living Street was over. It had lasted just six months.

  II

  GRETL

  1

  Diaries

  I want to write about my life. I cry when someone pulls my leg. I often think I exist only to get annoyed. I lead a lovely life in the middle of my happy family. I do not deserve to be loved. I record this tragic story so as to try to control my feelings and stop myself talking about it. I have been excitable and vehement, which is understandable. When I get older, I will look back and say I was rather childish and stupid. I used to want to marry but who would take me now? Unfortunately I am like a flower, easily damaged if moved. If I did what I would like to do, I would finish up in hell. I don’t think people fully understand me but that is how it goes in the world! I am still very young but I understand much more than people think.

  Gretl made these observations as a girl in the diaries that she kept for most of her life. She started at the age of ten in the European summer of 1906, when she was about to begin her secondary schooling—a turning point in the lives of all Austrian children but a particularly profound one for Gretl, who had received her primary education from governesses. She stopped at the age of seventy-seven, in 1974, when she was in a nursing home in Armidale in northern New South Wales, though she still thought of the apartment in Cremorne as her home. The diaries that she filled in between—the first handsome leather-bound volumes, the last crude cardboard exercise books—were all in the apartment when she died in 1975.

  These diaries were just a fraction of the papers in the apartment, because Gretl and Kathe, like many refugees, retained almost all the documents they had brought with them. Anne’s general rule was to keep illustrative examples. She kept one of Hermine’s concert books, one weather book, and one guest book. She did much the same with the correspondence relating to the Hoffmann rooms in the Wohllebengasse. All the letters between Moriz and Hermine and Hoffmann were there, along with all the quotes, receipts, and invoices for the apartment. This archive was as rare and remarkable in its own way as the furniture, carpets, silver, glass, and ceramics, providing a unique opportunity to cost all the components of a big Hoffmann commission. Anne threw out the lot apart from two of Hoffmann’s letters, which she gave to the National Gallery of Victoria.

  Anne found Gretl’s diaries most difficult. While she was too close to Gretl to see the interest of their great sweep of history stretching from the Austro-Hungary of the Hapsburgs to the Australia of Gough Whitlam, Anne must have realized that these diaries contained the most extensive record of how Moriz and Hermine had lived in Vienna. Anne knew that these diaries contained the only chronicle of Gretl’s life and the most extensive account of her own childhood. Because Gretl had instructed that these diaries be destroyed unread when she died, Anne threw out twenty, perhaps thirty. But wanting to preserve something of how Gretl had experienced the world, Anne kept her first three diaries and the last two.

  Gretl’s materialism as a girl was intense. Just as she listed her birthday and Christmas presents, so she recorded many of the family’s latest acquisitions and newest forms of consumption. When the family occupied their house in Alt Aussee in 1909, she began her first entry with a typical exclamation: “Our villa!” After an evening at the opera early in 1911, she recorded her first ride in a taxi. A few months later, after the family acquired their own car, came “Our first automobile tour” when they took an hour and ten minutes to drive the twenty-two miles from Alt Aussee to the spa town of Bad Ischl for an afternoon tea of chocolate-topped, jam-filled Krapferl at the celebrated Konditorei-Kaffee Zauner. “We have acquired a car and, what is more, a Gräf & Stift,” Gretl wrote, clearly aware that this was no ordinary vehicle. It was “pikfein!!!” she declared, “tiptop!!!”

  A typical Christmas saw her receive clothes, jewelry, books, and much else—for example, a ball dress, dancing shoes, dancing gloves, a silver wristwatch, a gold brooch, perfume, a table lamp, nightdresses, a box of stamps, a cape, a small embroidered handbag, a leather jewelry box, a volume of Goethe’s poetry, another of Schiller’s verse, and a copy of Hamlet. In 1909 Moriz and Hermine gave her a new room in the Schleifmühlgasse and promptly set about refurbishing it. The scale of the family’s apartment is suggested by how her new furniture comprised not only a bed, bedside table, dressing table, two wardrobes, and a desk but also a sofa, a table, and four chairs.

  How did Gretl view these presents? Was she aware of her privilege, which saw her parents punctuate their summer holidays in Alt Aussee with one- and two-day excursions around the Salzkammergut and southern Germany and a weeklong tour of the Dolomites? Did Gretl appreciate her good fortune in escaping the long winter in Vienna when the family went for a fortnight to the sea at Abbazia, where they divided their time between the aptly named Palace Hotel and the Savoy? What did she think of being able to go to the theater and opera in style and see many of the world’s greatest musicians, such as Bruno Walter, Pablo Casals, and Arthur Rubinstein?

  Gretl’s usual response was a brief expression of delight. “I’m so happy,” she would write, “I could go mad!” Just once, she acknowledged that she was being overindulged, and her manner of doing so was conventional, as Alma Schindler’s diary reveals. When Alma listed her twenty-four Christmas presents in 1898, she concluded: “In a word: a vast amount. Spoilt. And what do we do in return? … Nothing!” Gretl echoed these sentiments in 1907. “I received far too much. Unbearable.”

  Gretl revealed much more of herself in many other entries that, because of when and where they were written, might seem particularly ripe for Freudian analysis, though I have not undertaken that here. While some of her entries were filled with humor and self-mockery, many others were imbued with intense emotion, especially when writing about her relationships with Moriz and Hermine, which could not have been more different. She fought constantly with Hermine but idolized Moriz. After a particularly tempestuous disagreement with Hermine, Gretl observed: “If Father were here, everything would be better, because he is fair.” He was her “sweetheart,” “the person she loved most,” her “Herzallerliebstes,” a term usually reserved for a lover, not a parent.

  Her siblings—especially her twin sisters, Käthe and Lene—occupied her almost as much. When she first wrote about them following her eleventh birthday in 1907, she thought herself so close to the “little ones” that she did not need other friends. But within a year she recognized that she treated Käthe and Lene much worse than Erni and, when the twins responded by declaring Gretl “appalling and disgusting,” she reciprocated. Gretl described Käthe and Lene ironically as “sweet small things.” She called them “common dogs.” Because Hermine made no attempt to disguise her preference for the twins, Gretl’s attachment to Moriz grew.

  Gretl also dwelled on her own character, especially her weaknesses. So she observed that she was too quick “to call a spade a spade”—one of those English phrases that upper-middle-class Viennese often used to display their education and sophistication—and recognized that she would pay for her bluntness and honesty. She knew that she had “a little bit of a temper” and was very easily offended but could or would not change it. She accepted the judgment of others that she was difficult and at times contrary. She was incensed that her beloved father, even more than her mother, thought her “arrogant, snobbish, and God knows what else besides.”

  Her progress through the Catholic Church gave her great joy. When she had her first Communion in 1908, the eleven-year-old Gretl wa
s overcome by emotion at receiving the body of her Lord for the first time, aspired to be better than ever, and wondered whether she could be as happy again. Moriz and Hermine gave her a celebratory drink of vanilla liqueur. She declared it the most beautiful day of her life. Her confirmation in 1909 was an even bigger event, involving Hermine’s three brothers and a wealth of presents. Guido Hamburger and his wife Nelly, who had already converted to Catholicism, hosted a family lunch. Otto Hamburger, who remained a Jew but whose son, Robert, had been baptized in 1903, gave Gretl a prayer book. She was delighted by her acquisition of a new Christian name, Cornelia, in honor of Nelly, who sponsored her confirmation. “So many names!” Gretl exclaimed. “This marvelous day! I have been confirmed!!!”

  Her God was not only interventionist but also prepared to help those who did not believe in him, as became apparent when Theobald Pollak returned to Vienna to die in his apartment after searching in vain for a cure for his tuberculosis in sanitoriums. As Pollak’s condition deteriorated in 1912, Gretl’s first close experience of long, painful death, she was so upset to see his suffering that she asked her Lord to end it. When Pollak died in his sleep a few days later, Gretl credited her prayers with his release even though Pollak had remained a Jew.

  Her ignorance of things Jewish was manifest a few months later when she saw a play about the Rothschilds and wrote, with surprise, of the play’s “Jewish milieu.” Yet Gretl herself was part of Jewish society. The number of Jews at the Frauen-Erwerb-Verein where Gretl went to school was disproportionately high because Vienna’s Jews put exceptional store in education. Although they were only 10 percent of the city’s population, Jews accounted for almost half of Gretl’s fellow students. While Alt Aussee attracted an array of wealthy visitors, including many aristocrats, it was especially popular with Viennese Jews and recent converts to Christianity. A small number bought villas, but most rented, including Freud, who went there with his family for four summers in succession.

  Gretl’s status was usually that of a child, even after she finished school in 1912. When she scratched Lene early in 1913, Moriz and Hermine slapped her face and hit her as punishment, which sixteen-year-old Gretl accepted because she had attacked Lene “without reason.” When Gretl had another fight with Käthe and Lene late in 1913, Hermine advised the seventeen-year-old to find a husband who would discipline her with force but did not do so herself. Instead, Hermine prohibited Gretl from accompanying the rest of the family to church, only to change her mind because the priest would notice Gretl’s absence. The greatest punishment Hermine could conceive that evening was to refuse Gretl her customary good-night kiss.

  Nonetheless, Gretl edged toward adulthood. She was delighted when Moriz and Hermine let her join their dinner parties from mid-1912. She was thrilled six months later when they let her have her first “adult New Year,” which saw her go to bed at two-thirty after a performance of Strauss’s Fledermaus at the Hofoper and a dinner of hors d’oeuvres, soup, duck liver fillets, venison with Cumberland sauce, gelato to cleanse the palate, and fruit and cheese. A year later, she did much the same, seeing Puccini’s La bohème before dining with her uncle Adolf and aunt Ida. Yet she craved more, eagerly looking forward to when she turned eighteen and would be out in “society” so much more often.

  Her position in the family was that of the eldest of three daughters, almost three years older than her twin sisters, and the one “beauty” of the three, according to contemporary taste, blessed with long wavy hair and a shapely figure. Gretl’s appearance mattered intensely not only to her but also to Moriz and Hermine, who did their best to embellish it through repeated gifts of fabulous clothes and jewelry. As her wardrobe kept on changing and growing, one of her nicknames was “die fesche Gretl,” “the natty Gretl.”

  Gretl’s infatuations were all at a distance. Like many other students at all-girls schools in the early 1900s, she had a crush on one of her female teachers. She began to adore Frau Kappelmann in her first year at secondary school and was soon dreaming about her every night. She also idolized the singer Richard Mayr, one of the stars of the Hofoper, even more than she worshipped the conductor Bruno Walter. She almost always recorded Mayr’s name with two or even three exclamation marks after seeing him perform. He loomed largest in her collection of autographed photographs. She thought of him as “the King,” a “God-blessed singer,” her own “sweet Mayrlein.”

  Her aspirations were shaped by the educational opportunities for girls in Vienna. When she started her secondary schooling in 1906, only the Gymnasien, or elite senior schools for boys, offered the eight-year program, with a curriculum dominated by Latin and Greek, that led to admission to university. The Frauen-Erwerb-Verein, or Association for the Livelihoods of Women, which ran her school, had been at the forefront of women’s education in Vienna in the late nineteenth century but then slipped behind. Its six-year program, dominated by modern languages, literature, and music, enabled its students to attend university lectures but did not entitle them to embark on degrees. Its goal was to enhance its students’ prospects of marrying well.

  Gretl wanted to become her father’s personal secretary—a role filled by the daughters of some other upper-middle-class Viennese families. As a governess had begun teaching her shorthand, she had some skills but knew she needed more. Gretl thought she could obtain them by working with Moriz during the day and attending a commercial school at night. Yet Gretl had to pluck up the courage to present this possibility to Moriz because she expected him to think such work beneath her, and she was deeply hurt when he dismissed her suggestion with a laugh.

  She expected to marry sooner rather than later. When her parents refused to let her accompany them to Moravia for Theobald Pollak’s funeral in 1912, because they feared she would become overwrought, the fifteen-year-old Gretl declared that she would visit Pollak’s grave on her honeymoon, which she expected to be her first opportunity to decide where she went. On other occasions she expressed her frustration with her parents by expounding about how she would run her own household and raise her own children. Because she could not enroll at university or enter the workforce, there was little else for her to do.

  2

  Tango

  Gretl was happiest on the dance floor. She deemed herself the queen of the first ball she attended in 1908 as an eleven-year-old because she received more bouquets than any other girl. Her first dance with adults, in 1911, was even more exciting. It was at her family’s apartment in the Schleifmühlgasse on the afternoon of December 26, which Roman Catholics celebrated as Saint Stephen’s Day and Gretl described as the second Christmas Day. She wore the red ball dress, shoes, and gloves that her parents had given her on Christmas Eve. After dancing until she was exhausted, she declared it “the most beautiful day of my life,” just like her confirmation three years before, only this time she added: “That is no exaggeration.”

  With her schooling over in 1912, she went dancing much more often. After Moriz and Hermine gave her a bright blue outfit that Christmas, she began her first season, attending six balls in two months. Her next season, a year later, was twice as busy, prompting Moriz and Hermine to fit her out with two more ensembles. Only one of the balls she attended was a public event, held at the Kursalon, or casino, in the City Park. Another was a private function at the Kopetzky dancing academy. The others were in family apartments. Moriz and Hermine held one in the Schleifmühlgasse in 1913, followed by another in the Wohllebengasse a year later. The rest were staged by other wealthy families with children about the same age.

  Eleven-year-old Gretl when she attended her first ball, 1908. (Illustration Credits ill.28)

  As Gretl prepared to attend these dances, a hairdresser would come to the family apartment—at least once drawing her hair back in the fashionable Grecian style. She occasionally was accompanied not only by Erni, who was a year older, but also by Käthe and Lene, who were three years younger. Usually, though, she went alone or with Erni. She was always escorted to and from these balls—som
etimes by Hermine, sometimes by her aunt Ida, who had no children of her own, sometimes by the parents of other young women who were attending the dance. If Gretl was in bed around midnight, she thought it unfortunately early. She generally had no grounds to complain, since she often danced into the morning, arriving home at three, five, and once not until six-thirty. On these occasions she recorded with satisfaction how late she got up the next day.

  One in ten of the guests at these balls was a “von,” a measure of the limited extent to which the family mixed with the aristocracy. Most guests were of Jewish origin. While some of these Rosenbergs, Eggers, Mandls, Mondscheins, Luzzattos, Pollaks, Schweinburgs, and Bambergers had left the Kultusgemeinde, many had not. Gretl’s one response to this company voiced the antipathy to Jews felt by many converts as they rejected their old identity. She described a play staged at the Mandls’ ball as a piece of “Jewish upstartery.”

  Gretl recorded the names of the young men she talked to and those she found most interesting, always assessing the quality of their conversations. She also identified whom she sat between at supper or who served her at the buffet and described the decorations, food, and drink with a keen eye for their presentation. The one brand she identified was WW—the monogram of the Wiener Werkstätte that adorned its salesrooms, wrapping paper, and many of its products. At one ball staged by her parents’ friends the Luzzattos, the women all received flowers in WW bands. At another their hosts used WW table cards.

  The entertainment at these balls was diverse. It once included films. It occasionally included raffles, lotteries, or gambling. It often included performances—sometimes amateur by a few of the guests, more usually by professional magicians, comedians, cabaret artists, or actors. The larger part of each evening was spent dancing. Gretl always noted how often she was asked to dance—usually a lot, once more than any other young woman there. She listed who asked her and whether they included the best dancers. She identified the young men who gave her bouquets and the total she received, which ranged from eight to twenty-one, though those bouquets were unusually shabby.