Many of the people persuaded to hate Jews didn’t actually know any, particularly the provincial German nationalists who derided cosmopolitanism as “asphalt culture,” the culture of the streets or the gutter, of capitalism and free markets. Their antidote to Jewish urbanism was “Germanic” völkisch folk culture, represented by their lederhosen and dirndls.
With or Without You
Fritz Altmann kept his word. He made no attempt to contact Maria that summer. After Maria left for the countryside, Fritz and his family were shaken by the death in Leopoldstadt of Fritz’s father, severing a tie to the Altmann family roots. Maria had no idea of this when she walked into the family apartment in September and dialed Fritz’s number, before even removing her straw country hat. A woman answered and said Fritz could not come to the phone because he was with a professor from the history museum. He was going over his collection of ex libris, the elaborate bookplates made for wealthy Viennese by artists. Maria’s father had an ex libris of a blindfolded woman holding the scales of justice over a harp encircled by musical notes. Fritz’s collection included a woodblock of Rumpelstiltskin, the Middle European trickster, by the artist Oskar Leuschner; an Art Deco bookplate of a jazz piano created for a Vienna musician; and an ex libris of a castle perched on a mountain of books made for Vienna writer Wilhelm Swoboda, who once reviewed Mark Twain’s Tramps Abroad. Adele’s ex libris, of the princess and the frog, was in all the books at Ferdinand’s house.
To Maria, this sounded absurd. She had no interest in bookplates. My brothers are right, she thought. He’s nuts. But Fritz called back. His voice was languid and inviting. His artist had made him a new ex libris, of an open window framing a starry night, with a pointed inscription: “You are always standing in the way of your luck and happiness.” Maria was disconcerted. “I still haven’t seen your ex libris,” she stammered. “We haven’t done that, or a lot of other things,” Fritz said softly.
A few days later, Fritz arranged their first date. Maria panicked.
Her siblings had told her that Fritz’s affair—if it was even over, they said skeptically—was very passionate. The married woman was older, fascinating, experienced. Surely Fritz would find Maria naïve and unschooled.
Then there was the matter of her unfashionably ample bust. The eve of their date was a hot September night, and Maria’s fox terrier, Jahen, watched drowsily from the floor as Maria threw dresses around her bedroom, trying to find one that concealed her generous décolletage. As her lamp burned, she sewed a brassiere into a tight double corset to minimize her breasts. “How come you’re still awake?” her brother Karl called down from his bedroom. “It’s so hot, I can’t sleep,” Maria lied, as she tried on her flattening bra.
The next night, Fritz pulled up to the Luegerplatz, where Maria sat waiting on a bench in front of the red roses ringing the statue of Karl Lueger. As Fritz drove her to the Kahlenberg, an elegant restaurant on a peak with a panoramic view of the Vienna Woods, it wasn’t just infatuation that left her short of breath. Her brassiere was so tight! At the restaurant, Fritz poured her red wine as the waiter served tafelspitz, seasoned beef boiled with root vegetables. Fritz told her of his dream of singing opera professionally, touching her hand from time to time with thrilling familiarity. Maria was a bit tipsy when, on the way home, Fritz parked at a popular lookout over Vienna. They chatted about the latest Shakespeare play staged at the Burgtheater. Finally Fritz leaned over and pulled Maria toward him. His skilled kisses and caresses were overwhelming. Having heard so much about Fritz’s affair, Maria made a fumbling attempt to appear more experienced than she actually was. Fritz wasn’t fooled. He discouraged her pretensions.
Fritz was finally ready for an old-fashioned courtship.
A few weeks later Maria’s father turned seventy-five, and Fritz formally asked Gustav for her hand. Maria’s wedding was set for December, barely two months away.
Maria’s older brother, Leopold, rolled his eyes. “If you marry him, you’re crazy,” he said breezily. But Maria would have married Fritz the next day.
She ran into Gustav Rinesch at a restaurant in the Vienna Woods, and breathlessly told him the news. Rinesch’s face fell. He opened his wallet to reveal a photograph of Maria in her white gown at the Opera Ball. He kissed her hand with dignity and wished her luck.
Maria’s mother made the best of it. At dinner, Bernhard lit a cigar, and Therese hopefully asked if his family was Russian. “No. We are Galician,” Bernhard said firmly, voluntarily placing himself in Vienna’s lowest social caste.
When Maria’s father pulled Bernhard aside to discuss Maria’s dowry, Bernhard turned his proud, bold gaze on Gustav. “We don’t believe in dowries,” he said curtly.
Gustav was impressed.
Maria and Fritz wed on December 9, 1937. Maria was twenty-one.
Luise cried when she saw Maria walk into the synagogue on Turnergasse in her simple white satin gown, radiant with hope. Luise’s own marriage was in trouble. Viktor had always enjoyed women, and marriage hadn’t changed him. He flippantly told his wife he was “polygamous.” Luise, still so young and admired, often found herself alone, and humiliated, because of course people knew. It was painful to see Maria so convinced of her love.
At the reception, Maria took Fritz’s hand and stood with the guests to listen to her wedding poem by Julius Bauer, the lifelong friend of her parents who had once welcomed Mark Twain to Vienna. The poet, now eighty-four, put on his spectacles and peered at his papers. His hands were shaky and wrinkled.
“Back in the day, before my head turned gray, I wrote a poem for the grandparents of this bride,” Julius began.
“After a long pause, Thedy gave birth to a fifth child,” he read. “Maria saw the light of this world, an unwelcome belated addition to the house.”
Maria was stung. Therese’s chagrin was an open secret, but why dredge it up on her wedding day? “But when the latecomer opened her shining eyes, the whole family was dazzled,” Julius said, winking. “As you can see, she grew into a vision of beauty.”
The old wit careened on heedlessly. He called one of Fritz’s philandering brothers a “seducer of women” and described Bernhard as an object of spiteful envy. Julius spared deep-pocketed Ferdinand, calling him a “great industrialist” and a “friend of art and man on whom the golden sun shines.” Mercifully, the poem sputtered to an end.
Maria sat down with Fritz for a lunch of filet de sole Metternich. Luise sat silently at her end of the table, strangely sullen, though she looked beautiful in her chic Emilie Flöge gown. She put down her napkin and rose from the table. Like many family milestones, this one was bittersweet. She wandered into her father’s dark study. There, sunk in a leather club chair, was Gustav. Her father had been ill lately, perhaps suffering from indigestion. Or maybe it was nerves.
Tonight his eyes were filled with tears. Luise reached for her father’s hand. “My sun has set,” Gustav said.
Maria was leaving home.
Not long after the last waltz, Maria got her own taste of the complexity of the human heart. She and Fritz drove to an elegant hotel near the Danube, on the outskirts of Vienna. Her wedding night had come at last.
Maria’s inexperienced imagination was fueled by Goethe’s arousing vision of The Wedding Night.
The silence of the bridal bed,
His torch’s pale flame serves to gild
The scene with mystic sacred glow;
The room with incense clouds is filled,
That ye may perfect rapture know.
………………….….
How heaves her bosom, and how burns,
Her face at every fervent kiss!
Her coldness now to trembling turns;
Thy daring now a duty is,
Love helps thee to undress her fast,
But thou art twice as fast as he.
Maria was terribly disappointed. Her long-awaited first embrace was awkward and embarrassing. Maria cursed herself as a “stupid iron virgin,” a fumblin
g child, a pitiful disappointment.
Maria on her wedding day, December 1937. Vienna portrait photographers were famous for radiantly lit photographs that were as theatrically staged as movie stills. (Illustration Credit 26.1)
Maria on her honeymoon on the Paris Métro, 1938. (Illustration Credit 26.2)
Then, in a moment of passion, Fritz cried out: “Lene!”
Lene? Maria paused to digest this. Fritz froze with embarrassment.
But Maria was flooded with a strange relief. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know about his married girlfriend, though she prayed it was finally over. Now it was out in the open. Fritz’s glaring faux-pas finally gave her the upper hand, at least for a moment. Maria began to shake with irrepressible amusement. Fritz stared at her with astonishment. “Well, at least now I know her name,” Maria managed to say, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
Maria’s first real love affair had finally begun.
Newlyweds Maria and Fritz Altmann honeymoon at St. Moritz, early 1938. (Illustration Credit 26.3)
The Return of the Native
Maria was oblivious to the tension building in Vienna on the February day she and Fritz returned from their European honeymoon and glimpsed the Gothic spires of St. Stephen’s. Fresh snow framed the cobblestones of old Vienna as they walked to the Café Central.
Their honeymoon was transformed by the magic wand of Bernhard. Bernhard had filled his Paris apartment with early-blooming lilacs from southern Europe, so the newlyweds were overwhelmed by the heavy, sweetly musky scent when they opened the door. Servants had put champagne and caviar on ice and filled the pantry with French cheeses, fresh bread, and Swiss chocolates. In St. Moritz, Bernhard booked them into a romantic little hotel where the staff had been so well briefed on the honeymoon they exchanged winks as they waited on Fritz and Maria.
When they returned, Bernhard handed them the keys to an apartment at the Altmann compound on Siedenbrungasse. Maria gasped with delight when Bernhard opened the door. Shimmering gray-green silk drapes lined the windows of the sun-filled sitting room. The kitchen was spacious, with iridescent green ceramic tiles and modern features unusual in old-fashioned Vienna. The master bathroom was a vision compared to the cramped family bathroom at Stubenbastei. There were plump Turkish towels and French lavender soaps. The apartment was fully furnished, with a lovely Art Deco walnut bedroom set and simple stylish silverware. Bernhard took them down to the garage to show them a new Steyr sedan with red roses on the front seat. He waved away Maria’s insistence that this was really too much. Maria had cracked the tough exterior of this tough Galician, and inspired his love of extravagance. Bernhard openly adored his new sister-in-law, and like her father, Maria admired scrappy, generous Bernhard.
Maria’s German-born mother was harder to win over. At one large family lunch, Bernhard put his arm around Therese’s shoulder, and said, “Well, we Eastern Jews—” Therese shook his hand from her shoulder. “The Bloch-Bauers are not Ostjuden,” she said coldly. “We are German.” Maria was mortified. Bernhard turned away abruptly. Maria went to apologize. But Bernhard was shaking with laughter.
Not long after, Therese tripped and fractured her arm at the State Opera. The cast was awkward, and it was difficult to find a coat whose sleeve could be pulled over it. Therese threatened not to go out at all until her arm healed. A few days later, a messenger arrived at the door with a gift-wrapped box carrying a note of condolence from Bernhard. Nestled in the rustling tissue paper was a pale lavender cashmere sweater, with only one full sleeve, and a cunning little shawl cape on the other side to cover the cast. It was beautiful, and fit Therese perfectly. Bernhard also sent an orchid, in a pale purple that matched the sweater. Even Therese admitted the sweater was in very good taste.
To Maria’s father, the Altmanns were a great gift. His opera-singing son-in-law, with his bohemian musician friends, fit in perfectly at the Stubenbastei. Gustav was ebullient as he played his cello in the twilight one unseasonably mild Friday evening in March. Hans Mühlbacher, a childhood friend of Maria, fiddled away on his violin.
Maria stood under an open window that let in the first soft breezes of spring. Gustav watched his “Duckling,” still a girl really, trying to act the part of the poised married lady she would become. At seventy-five, all seemed right in the world, as Gustav caught Maria’s eye and smiled, playing his “fourth son,” the Rothschild Stradivarius.
Outside, shouts rose from the esplanade. A loud speech echoed from the apartments of their neighbors. What a racket! Gustav gestured to Maria to close the window. Instead, someone turned on the radio. Their chancellor was speaking. Gustav and Hans resignedly put down their bows. Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg was saying Austria would allow Hitler’s forces to enter Austria. He said he would capitulate, to avoid shedding “German blood.” “God protect Austria,” he said soberly. Gustav looked around the room. His guests were alarmed. What did this mean? Would Hitler really rule Austria? Guests pulled on their coats, called home. What was happening?
Maria and Fritz sat down with Gustav and Therese. Austria had weathered many storms over the years, with riots, shooting in the streets. The telephone rang. Some of their friends talked of leaving Austria immediately.
To Therese, this sounded extreme. She couldn’t just pack overnight bags and get on a train. Gustav was not in the best of health. Fritz said the thing to do was remain calm. What Fritz really wanted was to talk to Bernhard. But no one had seen Bernhard since he went to work that morning. Maria’s old suitor, Gustav Rinesch, was going to take Leopold’s wife, Antoinette, to the Czech border at once, with their son, Peter, and he would try to take others. But Robert wouldn’t hear of leaving. Robert’s wife, Thea, was about to have a baby. Leopold needed to stay and look after the family businesses.
No one agreed on the right thing to do.
Hans bid the disconcerted guests farewell and picked up his violin case. A convoy of trucks came down the Ringstrasse, filled with pink-cheeked adolescents in the brown-shirted uniform of Nazi enthusiasts. They raised their arms at Hans, crying, “Heil Hitler!” and “Jews, kick the bucket!” A group of men in lederhosen marched up the Ringstrasse in formation, smiling exuberantly, singing about breaking Jewish bones in “the coming big war.” Men with torches mingled in the crowd, chanting, “Down with the Jews!”
Idiots, Hans mused. It’s like carnival for the Nazi Party. At his student hostel, Hans sat down and wrote a letter to the chancellor, assuring him that most Austrians supported him, and “Austria will live again.” Hans walked through the jubilant crowds to the chancellery and slipped the letter under the door.
Hans prayed this would blow over. Some of his old high school friends, even a few Catholic cousins, had joined the illegal Nazi Party in his hometown of St. Wolfgang. They weren’t bad people. They called themselves “idealists,” and were openly enthusiastic about Hitler and his promises in Mein Kampf. They dismissed anti-Semitic violence as “excesses” committed by fringe “underminers,” whom the Führer couldn’t control. When Hans returned to his hostel, a friend of his ran out, gleeful. Hitler was coming! He laughed off the violent Nazi chants. Don’t worry about the songs of the “trembling of the broken bones”! he told Hans. “It’s just nonsense. Hansl, we will be united to Germany, and Austria will be great once again, like before World War I,” his friend said euphorically, as he and a group of students spilled into the street to join the celebration in the Stephensplatz.
A few mornings later, Maria awoke to loud noises in the garage. She dressed and went down the stairs. There were strange men there. They seemed to have pried open the garage door, and they were trying to roll her new car into the street. The men had swastikas on their sleeves. The officer in charge of the men smiled when he saw Maria and introduced himself as Gestapo agent Felix Landau. They were “confiscating” the car, Landau explained. He was polite, obsequious, almost apologetic, as he asked Maria to show him into the apartment. Landau was not particularly intimidating. He was badly dressed a
nd spoke uncultivated German. He seemed a little sheepish about barging in.
Was she alone? Landau asked, standing close to Maria, and smiling in a manner she found overly familiar. Maria felt a stab of fear. No, she said, my husband is with me, and suddenly the word “husband” seemed like an amulet of protection.
In the foyer of the Altmanns’ apartment, Landau introduced himself to Fritz in the cordial tone of a social call. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he asked Maria to show him her valuables. Fritz held Maria’s gaze for a moment, as if to say: just do what he says.
Fritz offered Landau a cigarette. They made small talk while Maria fetched her jewels. When she returned, Fritz was chatting nonchalantly with Landau at the kitchen table. Maria spread her earrings, brooches, and even her engagement ring on the table. Landau sorted through them. They were fine pieces, antique jewelry of Adele’s from the Wiener Werkstatte. But Landau seemed unimpressed.
Then Maria recalled Adele’s diamond necklace. Ferdinand had given it to her as a wedding present. If she didn’t report it, they might be arrested. So she told Landau. His face lit up. She told Landau she would call her jeweler. As she went to the phone, she heard Fritz and Landau talking about what a rainy spring it had been.
“Are you sure?” Maria’s jeweler, an older, decent Catholic man, asked Maria with disconcerting concern in his voice. Maria had no choice! The jeweler sent the necklace over in a blue velvet box.
The Lady in Gold Page 13