by Tim Bonyhady
Ferdinand Andri’s group portrait of the Gallia children, 1901. Erni, aged six, occupies the dominant position at the front of the picture as the eldest child and only son. Gretl, aged five, is seated behind. The two-year-old twins, with Käthe on the right and Lene on the left, are, typically, almost indistinguishable, wearing identical clothes and jewelry. (Illustration Credits ill.54)
Carl Moll, Beethoven House, Heiligenstadt, 1903. (Illustration Credits ill.55)
Ernst Stöhr, Moonlit Landscape, 1903. (Illustration Credits ill.56)
Carl Moll, In the Gardens of Schönbrunn, c. 1910/1911. (Illustration Credits ill.57)
Giovanni Segantini, The Evil Mothers, 1894. (Illustration Credits ill.58)
The sideboard designed by Adolf Loos for the Langer apartment, 1902. (Illustration Credits ill.59)
Moriz’s inkstand, designed c. 1911 by Josef Hoffmann. (Illustration Credits ill.60)
Michael Powolny’s ceramic version of Klimt’s The Kiss, 1908. (Illustration Credits ill.61)
Josef Hoffmann, Design for Boudoir, in the Untere Augartenstrasse, 1915, intended for Gretl when she was engaged to Norbert Stern. (Illustration Credits ill.62)
Josef Hoffmann, Design for Smoking Room, in the Untere Augartenstrasse, 1915, intended for Norbert Stern when he was engaged to Gretl. (Illustration Credits ill.63)
Josef Hoffmann, Two Vases and a Pair of Goblets, from about 1915 or 1916 when Hermine was steadily building her collection of Hoffmann glass. (Illustration Credits ill.64)
Carl Witzmann, Bowl, 1912. One of Hermine’s acquisitions as the family apartment in the Wohllebengasse was being built. (Illustration Credits ill.65)
Josef Hoffmann, Work Table and Two Chairs, 1913, designed for Hermine’s boudoir in the Wohllebengasse. (Illustration Credits ill.66)
The copy of Der Ewige Jude, or The Eternal Jew, bought by Annelore before she left Vienna in November 1938 so she would never be homesick for Austria. (Illustration Credits ill.67)
Notes
As explained in the Introduction, this book draws heavily on family documents that my brother and I inherited from Anne and Mizzi. The Vienna City Archives holds the wills and probate documents of Moriz, Adolf, and Ida Gallia, Ludwig Herschmann, and Theobald Pollak, along with records relating to the incarceration of Bernard Herschmann, but the will and probate documents for Hermine are, unfortunately, missing. The papers relating to Moriz’s designation as a Regierungsrat and the military service of Erni are in Austria’s National Archives, along with the documents lodged by the family under the Ordinance for the Registration of Jewish Property. The Bundesdenkmalamt holds its approvals for Gretl, Kathe, and Erni to take their collections with them. The Australian National Archives holds documents relating to the family’s arrival in Australia, their surveillance during World War II, and Erni’s attempt to get compensation from Italy for his Liftvans, while the files of the National Gallery of Victoria are a rich source for the Gallia collection. The following notes relate primarily to material I have quoted.
I HERMINE
1 Klimt
1. Those who attended were primarily women: Neue Freie Presse, November 14, 1903, afternoon edition and the cover of Die Moden-Zeit for December 15, 1903, reproduced in Gustav Klimt: Modernism in the Making (New York: Abrams, 2001), p. 204.
2. “All the tribes of Israel”: Alma Mahler-Werfel, Diaries 1898–1902 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 385.
3. “faithful to reality” and “past her prime”: Tobias G. Natter and Gerbert Frodl, Klimt’s Women (Cologne: DuMont, 2001), p. 92.
4. “old hag” and “He takes what he can get”: Mahler-Werfel, Diaries, p. 279.
5. “Just what I’d do”: Ibid., p. 235.
6. “an artist who would never be forgotten”: Hermann Bahr, Secession (Vienna: Wiener Verlag, 1900), pp. 120, 126.
7. While the writer Stefan Zweig recalled: Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (London: Cassell, 1953), p. 8.
8. “He paints a woman”: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, p. 30.
9. The English art historian: Frank Whitford, Klimt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990), p. 140.
10. “sensation”: Neue Freie Presse, November 14, 1903.
11. It was by Hermann Bahr: Hermann Bahr, Gegen Klimt (Vienna: Eisenstein, 1903).
12. “hunt them down”: Die Fackel, no. 147, November 21, 1903.
13. “as still and discreet”: Christoph Grunenberg, “Luxury and Degradation: Staging Klimt,” in Tobias G. Natter and Christoph Grunenberg (eds.), Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life (London: Tate, 2008), pp. 37, 41.
14. “magical delicacy”: Ludwig Hevesi, Acht Jahre Secession (Vienna: Konegen, 1906), p. 443.
15. “a product of the most perverted”: Tobias G. Natter and Max Hollein (eds.), The Naked Truth: Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and Other Scandals (Munich: Prestel, 2005), p. 110.
16. “The people rolled about”: Alfred Weidinger (ed.), Gustav Klimt (Munich: Prestel, 2007), p. 255.
17. “They should be in an exhibition”: Gustav Klimt: Modernism in the Making (New York: Abrams, 2001), p. 103.
2 God
1. “We in Vienna”: Richard S. Geehr, Karl Lueger: Mayor of Fin de Siècle Vienna (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), p. 200.
2. Pollak’s religion: Henry-Louis de La Grange, Gustav Mahler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), vol. 2, p. 425, vol. 3, p. 699; Neue Freie Presse, March 23, 1912.
3. “The defamatory tactics”: Mahler-Werfel, Diaries, p. 355.
4. “You Jewish sneak”: Ibid., p. 381.
5. “For heaven’s sake don’t marry Z”: Ibid., p. 404.
6. “Oh, to bear his child!”: Ibid., p. 466.
7. “Evening at Gallias”: Alma Mahler-Werfel, Tagebuch-Suiten (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2002), p. 641.
8. “the setting of a non-German”: Sandra McColl, Music Criticism in Vienna: Critically Moving Forms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 104.
9. “a poem in a foreign language”: Stephen McClatchie (ed.), The Mahler Family Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 5–6.
3 Gaslights
1. He discovered and isolated two of the rare earths: Franz Sedlacek, “Auer von Welsbach,” Blätter für Geschichte der Technik, vol. 2, 1934; Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), chap. 5.
2. “I soon saw”: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth, 1953), vol. 5, p. 652.
3. “You all do know this mantle”: Bulletin (Sydney), April 13, 1905.
4. In the most influential account: Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), pp. xxxvi–xxxvii, 5–6.
5. “Baron Auer von Welsbach and Dr. Gallia”: Die Fackel, no. 144, October 17, 1903.
6. the German firm Julius Pintsch: John W. White Jr., “ ‘A Perfect Light Is a Luxury’: Pintsch Gas Car Lighting,” Technology and Culture, vol. 18 (1977), pp. 64–69.
7. Watt, an electric lightbulb manufacturer: Joost Mertens, “The Development of the Dry Battery: Prelude to a Mass Consumption Article (1882–1908),” Centaurus, vol. 42 (2000), pp. 109–34.
4 Family
1. “based on mutual respect”: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, p. 116.
2. The most famous example is Martha Arendt: Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 12–15.
3. her most ambitious piece of writing: Elisabeth Luzzatto, Entwicklung und Wesen des Sozialismus (Vienna: Brand, 1910).
4. “dedicated her life-work”: Richard Luzzatto, Unknown War in Italy (London: New Europe Publishing, 1946), n.p.
5 Galas
1. In 1903 Gustav Mahler and Theobald Pollak: Henry-Louis de La Grange and Günther Weiss, Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife (London: Faber and Faber, 2004), p. 128.
2. Pollak gave Mahler Die chinesische Flöte: Richard Specht, “Das Lied von
der Erde,” Neue Freie Presse, December 4, 1914.
3. “the one who persuaded Mahler”: Juliane Brand, Christopher Hailey, and Donald Harris (eds.), The Berg-Schönberg Correspondence: Selected Letters (London: Macmillan, 1987), p. 46.
4. “intended to ridicule the Jews”: Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), p. 143.
5. “greatest musical drama ever composed”: Henry Louis de La Grange, Mahler (New York: Doubleday, 1973), vol. 1, p. 607.
6. Moriz found the third act “charming”: Mahler-Werfel, Tagebuch-Suiten, p. 648.
7. “Ah, you should see it at Bayreuth”: George Bernard Shaw, “Wagner in Bayreuth,” English Illustrated Magazine, vol. 7 (1890), p. 49.
8. lauded in Germanic and anti-Semitic terms: Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 131.
9. Isadora Duncan brought modern dance to Vienna: Frederika Blair, Isadora: Portrait of the Artist as a Woman (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), p. 52; Hevesi, Acht Jahre Secession, pp. 368–70.
10. Tickets for the “sensationspremiere”: Neue Freie Presse, May 26, 1907.
11. Her first performance in Vienna: Henry-Louis de La Grange, Gustav Mahler: Triumph and Disillusion (1904–1907) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), vol. 3, p. 618.
12. Elise de Vere: Charles Blake Cochran, The Secrets of a Showman (London: Heinemann, 1929), p. 100.
13. La Belle Chavita: Jane F. Fulcher, Debussy and His World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 128.
14. “Because life uses up his strength”: David P. Frisby and Mike Featherstone (eds.), Simmel on Culture—Selected Writings (London: Sage, 1997), p. 260.
6 Pictures
1. how Viennese couples went about such collecting: Sophie Lillie, “The Golden Age of Klimt: The Artist’s Great Patrons: Lederer, Zuckerkandl and Bloch-Bauer,” in Renée Price (ed.), Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections (Munich: Prestel, 2007), pp. 55–89.
2. A who’s who of Viennese art collectors: Theodor von Frimmel, Lexicon der Wiener Gemälde Sammlungen, Buchstabe A bis L (Munich: Müller, 1914), vol. 2, p. 9.
3. “the impresario of the Vienna Moderne”: Ludwig Hevesi, “Modern Painting in Austria,” in Charles Holmes (ed.), The Art Revival in Austria (London: Studio, 1906), p. viii; Tobias G. Natter and Gerbert Frodl (eds.), Carl Moll (1861–1945) (Vienna: Österreichische Galerie, 1998); Tobias G. Natter, Die Galerie Miethke: eine Kunsthandlung im Zentrum der Moderne (Vienna: Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 2003).
4. “art agent”: Die Fackel, no. 59 (mid-November 1900), p. 19, quoted in Mahler-Werfel, Diaries, p. 348.
5. “nine-tenths of what the world celebrated”: Zweig, World of Yesterday, pp. 22–23.
6. “proto-Secessionist”: Hevesi, Acht Jahre Secession, p. 58.
7. “Incredible misery is expressed”: Beat Stutzer and Roland Wäspe (eds.), Giovanni Segantini (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 1999), p. 53.
8. the first extended psychoanalytical study of an artist: Karl Abraham, Giovanni Segantini: ein psychoanalytischer Versuch (Leipzig: Deuticke, 1911).
9. When the Moderne Galerie opened in 1903: Kunst und Kunsthandwerk Monatsschrift, 1903, p. 162.
10. “prodigious loss of money on his side”: Mahler-Werfel, Tagebuch-Suiten, p. 629.
11. “innumerable people immediately began harassing”: Ibid.
12. “private means”: Neue Freie Presse, February 28, 1901; Ver Sacrum, February 1904, p. 13.
13. She went to the family’s apartment: Mahler-Werfel, Tagebuch-Suiten, pp. 641, 647, 648, 728, 732.
7 Rooms
1. one of Vienna’s most successful architects, Jakob Gartner: “Villa des Herrn Eduard Hamburger in Olmütz,” Neubauten und Concurrenzen in Österreich und Ungarn, vol. 2 (1896), p. 55.
2. The Langer family’s architect was Adolf Loos: Burkhard Rukschcio and Roland Schachel, Adolf Loos: Leben und Werk (Salzburg: Residenz, 1982), pp. 83, 187, 425, 430, 432, 437–38.
3. “an artist with an exuberant imagination”: Ronald Franz, “Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos: The Ornament Controversy in Vienna,” in Peter Noever (ed.), Josef Hoffmann Designs (Munich: Prestel, 1992), pp. 11–12.
4. Krauss’s most successful designs: A. S. Levitus, “The Architectural and Decorative Work of Franz von Krauss,” Studio, May 1907, pp. 296–303.
5. The opulence of Hoffmann’s work: Terence Lane, Vienna 1913: Josef Hoffmann’s Gallia Apartment (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1984).
6. “why, with moderate foresight on the part of the Dynasty”: Henry Wickham Steed, The Hapsburg Monarchy (London: Constable, 1914), p. xiii.
7. “new money people”: Pieter Noever (ed.), Yearning for Beauty: The Wiener Werkstätte and the Stoclet House (Vienna: MAK, 2006), p. 110.
II GRETL
1 Diaries
1. “In a word: a vast amount. Spoilt”: Mahler-Werfel, Diaries, p. 83.
2. the educational opportunities for girls in Vienna: Marsha L. Rozenblit, The Jews of Vienna 1867–1914: Assimilation and Identity (New York: State University of New York Press, 1983), chap. 5.
2 Tango
1. “pornographic spectacle”: Marta E. Savigliano, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), p. 139.
4 War
1. “Only the physically handicapped”: Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918 (New York: Arnold, 1987), p. 129.
2. “went up and got it fixed, of course”: Karl Kraus, The Last Days of Mankind: A Tragedy in Five Acts (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1974), pp. 29–30.
5 Hoffmann
1. “if you should happen to be in the mood antiquarian”: James Huneker, New Cosmopolis: A Book of Images (London: Werner Laurie, 1915), pp. 210–11.
6 Death
1. Das Werk von Gustav Klimt: Neue Freie Presse, February 10, 1918.
2. When Schiele compiled a three-page address book: Christian M. Nebehay, Egon Schiele 1890–1918: Leben, Briefe, Gedichte (Salzburg: Residenz, 1979), p. 493.
7 Sex
1. The relationship between an acclaimed musician and his female pupils: Bruce Thompson, “Ein Furchtbarer Schmarrn? Schnitzler’s Reaction to Hermann Bahr’s Das Konzert,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 31 (1995), pp. 154–64.
III ANNELORE
1 Memory
1. Vienna’s leading celebrity photographer between the wars, Trude Fleischmann: Übersee: Flucht und Emigration Österreichischer Fotografen 1920–1940 (Vienna: Kunsthalle Wien, 1998), pp. 37–39, 106–13.
2. While the Germans in Dahn’s book: George Mosse, Germans and Jews (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970), chap. 3.
2 Austro-fascism
1. “There isn’t a single filthy Jew”: Thomas Mann, Diaries 1918–1939 (New York: Abrams, 1982), pp. 134, 150, 364.
2. Furtwängler later maintained: Sam H. Shirakawa, The Devil’s Music Master: The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 145–337.
3. When Schuschnigg entered his box: Bruno Walter, Theme and Variations: An Autobiography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1947), p. 355.
4. “white knee-socks, a black raincoat and Tyrolean hat”: George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna: The Destruction of a Family 1842–1942 (London: Macmillan, 1981), p. 173.
3 Anschluss
1. Austrian citizens into German Jews: Brian McGuinness and G. H. von Wright (eds.), Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge Letters (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p. 293.
2. Jews “naïve enough” to take the notices seriously: G. E. R. Gedye, Fallen Bastions (London: Gollancz, 1939), p. 304.
3. As Sereny recalled in an autobiographical essay: Gitta Sereny, The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections 1938–2000 (London: Allen Lane, 2000), p. 7.
4 Visas
1. “not a country of immigration”: A. J. Sherman, Island Refuge: Britain and Refugees from the
Third Reich 1933–1939 (London: Paul Elk, 1973), p. 91.
2. While some senior British diplomats: Louise London, “British Immigration Control Procedures and Jewish Refugees 1933–1939,” in Werner E. Mosse (ed.), Second Chance: Two Centuries of German-Speaking Jews in the United Kingdom (Tübingen: Mohr, 1991), esp. p. 504.
3. never to describe its restrictions as a “quota”: Paul R. Bartrop, Australia and the Holocaust 1933–1945 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1994), p. 86.
4. “undue privileges … to one particular class of non-British subjects”: Michael Blakeney, Australia and the Jewish Refugees 1933–1948 (Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 130.
5. “to beg for a copy of a diploma or testimonial”: Yvonne Kapp and Margaret Mynatt, British Policy and the Refugees 1933–1941 (London: Frank Cass, 1997), p. 15.
6. This operation, which made Gildemeester a fortune: Peter Berger, “The Gildemeester Organisation for Assistance to Emigrants and the Expulsion of Jews from Vienna 1938–1942,” in Terry Gourvish (ed.), Business and Politics in Europe 1900–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 215–45.
5 Subterfuge
1. The most extensive account of the art looted in Vienna: Sophie Lillie, Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens (Vienna: Czernin, 2003).
2. The merchant Fritz Wolff-Knize and his wife, Anna: Peter A. Knize, “Growing Up with Art: Kokoschka in My Life,” in Tobias G. Natter (ed.), Oskar Kokoschka: Early Portraits from Vienna and Berlin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), esp. pp. 68–69.
