The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War

by Alexander Waugh

  Why she was held longer than the others and in more deplorable conditions has not been discovered; but by the time Gretl emerged she was in a shocking condition, having been treated very roughly indeed. She had repeatedly demanded to see her friend John Hayes Lord, a diplomat at the American Consulate. Lord and his aristocratic English tennis-playing wife Marjorie had been friends of the Stonboroughs since 1920, when he was posted to the American Consulate in Basel and had lent his weight to Gretl's condensed-milk operation. He and his wife were also friends of Ji's in Washington, which might go some way to explaining the letter that was sent at that time to the Washington Post praising the activities of the Vienna Consulate General:

  Sir:

  Having returned from a voyage abroad, may I ask for the hospitality of your pages to put on record my admiration for the work of our diplomatic and consular representatives in Germany.

  I am particularly referring to the Consulate General in Vienna ... It is my belief that the officials and their staff by their earnest endeavor, sympathy and tolerance, are demonstrating democratic ideals through action and are standard bearers of Americanism in a wilderness of lies and scientific sadism.

  J. J. Stonborough

  When John Lord arrived at the prison he put on a great show of indignation at the brutish conditions in which Gretl was being held and demanded that her personal doctor be called immediately. Eventually he succeeded in securing her release, but both her American and her fake Yugoslav passports were confiscated and she was ordered to remain in Vienna until her case could be tried. By the time that Hermine (aged sixty-three), Helene (fifty-nine) and Gretl (fifty-six) were finally released on bail they were nervous wrecks. Helene's agitation was unspeakable. She had refused to eat in prison and was now pale and gaunt; Gretl, still suffering from pneumonia, was slumped into a febrile depression, while Hermine could do nothing but fret about her fate from morning to night. Christmas that year was depressing for Gretl. It was her first since 1925 without Paul and Ludwig, Jerome was dead, both of her sons were in America and one of her adopted sons in Berlin. She had only her secretary and the other Zastrow boy to share her chocolate and gingerbread and distract her from the gloomy prospect of an imminent court summons. "These are serious times for the family," Hermine wrote to Ludwig, "a major reckoning and testing of all our relationships, to say nothing of the dangers from without. Sometimes I see everything clearly before me and think: no stone will remain standing."

  The good news was that when the summons finally arrived Helene's name was not upon it. She had not been party to the original fraud and it was just as well, for she could now look after her ailing husband in peace. The hearing was set for the beginning of April 1939. With special coaching from their lawyer, Dr. Kornisch, Hermine and Gretl learned their defense statements by heart, but just as proceedings were about to begin and the two ladies and their nephew-in-law were sitting wringing their hands in the dock a sudden announcement was made that due to a new anti-Jewish decree Dr. Kornisch was prohibited from representing them. Arvid, meanwhile, had procured the services of a tall, gray-haired, well-spoken and sinister lawyer of the upper class called Alfred Indra.

  The judge offered Gretl and Hermine a chance to postpone the hearing while they found themselves another Aryan lawyer, but they chose to go ahead with their own defense. This Hermine later recalled was a fortuitous turn, for "our appearance and manner of speech were our best defence, far better than all that a decidedly Jewish defence lawyer could have said in our favour." Each in turn took the stand and Gretl, once again, assumed complete responsibility for everything that had happened. Arvid and Hermine admitted their guilt too. Yes, they had bought false passports with intent to deceive government border police; yes, they planned to leave without paying the Reich'sflucbtsteuer, the emigration tax, and with intent to evade paying all their foreign currency into the Reichsbank; yes, they had forged the signatures of their siblings; and yes, they had told lies to the police when they were first questioned.

  Judge Standhartinger, taking all this into account, drew a deep breath and summed the case up to the jury. "A false signature upon a false passport," he said, "is the equivalent of someone attempting to murder an already stiff corpse. In what way, then, can any crime be said to have been committed?" Whereupon judge and jury retired to consider their verdict and after a long wait reappeared to announce the acquittal of all three. The family had always believed that its superior connections could be used to fish it out of any amount of trouble. "We are protected!" they would often say. All were acquitted of all charges on a technicality relating to just one of them. Hermine, Gretl and Arvid were overcome with emotions of relief and joy as it seemed too good to be true.

  And sadly for them it was too good to be true, for two days later Hermine, Gretl and Arvid received an "evil blow" that would affect them "more deeply than all that had preceded it." The Vienna public prosecutor, unimpressed by Judge Standhartinger's eccentric verdict, appealed against the decision and ordered that the case be reopened.

  A SECOND EMIGRATION

  Paul's sojourn in Switzerland was disagreeable to him. He had no concerts to play, no pupils to teach and no valet to help him in his daily routine. He was anxious for Hilde and his daughters still waiting at the Italian-Swiss border without visas, and worried, for the first time in his life, about money. In the mornings he went for strenuous walks along the banks of the Limmat or swam in the cold waters of the Zurichsee. In the afternoons he practiced at the piano showrooms of the Hug music company on the Fusslistrasse, read French and Latin classics and wrote letters in a fierce, scrawling hand--but none of these activities, either individually or collectively, could calm his agitated state.

  Above all he was desperate for news of his sisters in Austria and aware-far more aware than they--of the terrible dangers they were in. Before he left he had beseeched them to emigrate, but Max, Helene's husband, would never agree to leaving his homeland and Hermine was adamant that she would not be parted from her things. Paul had argued forcefully that as Jews in Vienna they were doomed. They should cut their losses, pay the Reichsfluchtsteuer and live abroad off the Swiss family fund. If they insisted on staying, he said, the Germans would demand their foreign fortune with threats and intimidation, and once the family had surrendered everything that it owned abroad, it would be effectively ruined. The siblings exchanged bitter, hysterical and often impolite words with one another. "You all behave like cattle who cannot be coaxed out of their stalls when they burn," Paul said. "And you are a crass egoist!" said Hermine.

  In his rooms at the luxurious Hotel Savoy Baur en Ville in Zurich Paul turned these matters over in his mind. He knew that if he returned to the Reich, where he was forbidden from performing or teaching and where the guardianship of his children had been taken away from him, he would be arrested and imprisoned. There was no point in trying to reclaim the fortune and property he had left behind. Instead he must concentrate on that part which was held outside the Reich, in Switzerland. But, as he well knew, his share of the Wistag Fund could not be disbursed without the consent of all the trust's beneficiaries and directors. These included his sisters, his brother in England, various nephews and nieces (most importantly Ji Stonborough in the U.S.), his brother-in-law Max Salzer and the family's financial factotum Anton Groller. A further and graver problem was that officials in Berlin knew about the fund and were demanding that it be paid into the Reichsbank.

  It would take time to secure the agreement of all parties and Paul, meanwhile, needed to find some way of paying his mounting hotel bills and providing for Hilde and the children in Italy. With the connivance of Dr. Heinz Fischer, a Swiss concert promoter, a German string quartet was invited to play in Zurich, bringing Paul's precious instruments from Vienna--two violins, one by Stradivari, one by Guadagnini, a viola by Amati and a Rugieri cello. Nobody would notice, as they crossed the border at Haslach, that the instruments in their cases were not theirs. Nor would they spot when the musicians returned to the Reic
h with cheaper models under their arms than those with which they had left. Dr. Fischer's and the musicians' payment for this risky undertaking is not known, nor is the fate of the two violins (perhaps the instruments were themselves the smugglers' reward), but in October 1938 Paul took the viola and cello to the Swiss violin-maker Stubinger, who valued them at 18,000 Swiss francs each. A quick sale brought him temporary financial relief.

  With or without money, he had no intention of staying long in Switzerland and it is unlikely (even if he had wished to remain there) that the Swiss authorities would have continued renewing his visas indefinitely. In Zurich, as elsewhere in the country, the people were edgy and xenophobic. Fear of German invasion and resentment against the growing influx of refugees from the Reich had inspired the authorities to tighten border security and to insist, by October 1938, that all Jews' passports be stamped with a red letter "J." Within a year SS soldiers, acting on orders to rid the Vaterland of all lingering Jews, were physically pushing them over the borders. Swiss officials, on the other side, would irritably push them back again.

  For Paul, who believed that he looked more Jewish than any of his siblings, the growing anti-Semitism in Switzerland proscribed the country as a safe haven and by early August he had set his sights on America. Getting there, he knew, would not be easy. Like every foreign administration (with the exception of Santo Domingo) the American government refused to increase its quota of immigrants from Germany despite the international crisis. Paul had to pull strings and admitted in a letter to Marga Deneke when his travel plans were finally confirmed: "Although I have obtained the ticket for the ship to New York, I wouldn't have got it without special patronage."

  The patronage to which he referred took the form of two professional invitations from America--the first from the Cleveland Orchestra to perform under its Principal Conductor, Artur Rodzinski, and the second to work as an unpaid faculty member at the Westchester Affiliation of the David Mannes Music School at New Rochelle. Both institutions were making strenuous efforts to help stranded Jewish musicians in Europe obtain visas to America, and the David Mannes School sent offers of unpaid employment to many others at that time including Helene's son, the musicologist Felix Salzer. For two years, ever since the storming success of their 1936 concert at the Salzburg Festival, Rodzinski had been promising Paul an invitation to Cleveland. In America the conductor was at the height of his fame and his invitation, which arrived in Zurich in mid-September, was instrumental in securing Paul his transatlantic passage.

  By November 1938 Hilde, Fraulein Rolly and the children finally made it into Switzerland on temporary visas. Paul greeted them in Zurich with the news that he would be leaving for America in a week's time. Hilde, twenty-two years old, half blind, a long way from her modest roots on the Stankagasse at Rannersdorf, was entrusted to the care of a Swiss lawyer who had been instructed to provide her with funds and set her up in a rented flat in the French-speaking town of Montreux on the eastern shores of Lake Geneva. It was here on November 28 that Paul said goodbye to her and the children, little realizing that he would not be setting eyes on any of them again for a year and a half.

  His ship sailed out of the port of Le Havre on December i, stopping at Southampton and Cobh in southern Ireland before reaching New York on the ninth. Marga had written to him in Zurich to ask if he could see her in England on his way through. "Unfortunately impossible!" he replied, but:

  I'll definitely be coming back, earlier perhaps than I might know! My plan is, with the aid of my own reputation and my friends in America, gradually--because it is not conceivable all at once--to get a longer residence and teaching permit. When I have got it and when my circumstances allow, I can come across every year, but that is still pie in the sky! In the meantime let's hope for the best... We'll definitely meet again.

  Your old friend, P.W.

  They did indeed meet again, just one week later, on December 3. Paul telegraphed to say that he would not be allowed to disembark at Southampton but summoned her to come on board ship and talk to him there before the boat sailed for Ireland. Marga left a scribbled note on a brown-paper bag in the kitchen for her sister:

  Dearest Lena,

  Paul Wittgenstein asked me to see him en route for the USA. He is on the S.S. Washington docked at Southampton. Perhaps you would like to come and see him too (He is a good man now). Do it if at all inclined,

  Love Marge

  Lena did not come as she still regarded Paul as an ill-mannered and bad-tempered man and would not forgive him his occasional outbursts against her friends, so Marga hurried alone to Southampton, where she found her old friend nervously pacing.

  I took a long walk with him on deck [she later wrote]. He explained to me about his emigration to the US and, with deep emotion, he showed me a photo of a blind pupil to whom he had become attached and for whom he planned to establish a house. I rejoiced at the prospect it opened up for him and told him that without reserves. He continued to give news quoting Alice or Goethe's Faust and assuring me how glad he was that I had come. From the end of the pier I watched the steamer slide away, till the handkerchief he was waving faded from sight.

  CHANGING SIDES

  Paul was powerless to help his sisters at the time of their prosecution for passport fraud in April 1939 and Hermine was fueled with indignation that he was not around when she most needed him. "Our family lacks the leading man," she complained to Ludwig. "Max is old and unfortunately very sick; Paul's a failure ... What use is it that Gretl is big-hearted and tries to look after everyone; the problems are insoluble."

  On arrival in New York Paul was detained for twenty-four hours by immigration officials, classing him bluntly as "German Hebrew" and voicing suspicions about irregularities in his passport. When they finally agreed to let him go he booked himself a suite at the Hotel Webster on West 45th Street, where he sat for long hours tapping his fingers on his desk and reading Tacitus and Cicero letters to himself in Latin. The David Mannes School was not big enough to offer him his own teaching rooms and for a while he gave lessons on the bar piano at the hotel. Metropolitan life dazed him and he was irritated by a constant bombardment of directives concerning his immigration status. "One comes up against obstacles everywhere and can only hope that they will be successfully overcome," he wrote to Ludwig's old friend Dr. Hansel in Vienna.

  His twenty-six-year-old nephew Ji Stonborough invited him to lunch at his Washington club, the Metropolitan, in order to introduce him to Gerald D. Reilly, the man in charge of visas, and to James Houghteling, Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization. After lunch these two influential men made some calls and Paul's visitors' visa was temporarily extended. Then and forever afterward Ji was furious that his uncle had not seemed especially grateful.

  Back in New York Paul, too impractical to survive on his own, advertised for a bilingual secretary and personal assistant. When Marianne Jarosy Blumen came to be interviewed for the job she found him in his pajamas wrapped in a white sheet looking despondent. He had put his suits and shirts outside the door expecting them to be washed, ironed and returned by the hotel staff next morning. Instead the whole lot had been stolen. Frau Blumen recommended buying some new clothes in the city--an idea that had not occurred to him--and when she returned from her shopping spree with a new wardrobe Paul was delighted and gave her the job. Frau Blumen was a Jewish refugee from Vienna, having arrived in New York in September 1938 with her husband Erwin. She was forty-six years old at the time, and although born in Prague and of Hungarian descent she could speak and type both English and German perfectly. Shortly after her arrival in America her husband ran off to Pittsburgh, leaving her in severe financial difficulties. As soon as he was able, Paul took two adjacent apartments on the nineteenth floor of the Masters Building on Riverside Drive--one for himself and one for her--and both he and she remained there, each dependent upon the other, for the next sixteen years, until her death. Paul was devastated. "How shall I manage without her?" he asked a friend. "Well, y
ou could always get another assistant." "Yes, yes, but what about tomorrow?"

  Back in Vienna in April 1939, Gretl and Hermine were worrying over the renewed threat of prosecution for passport fraud. Gretl still had a few friends in high places, but within the Nazi hierarchy her position was growing more equivocal by the day. She had been arrested for passport fraud, and now, on a routine search of her house on the Kundmanngasse, it was discovered that she had failed to declare certain treasures on her list of assets. A hoard of handwritten musical manuscripts by Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Wagner and Bruckner was confiscated by the authorities. In July she had given her word to Arthur Seyss-Inquart that her brother would return to Vienna after his brief visit to England, but when Paul fled to Switzerland her position with the Reichsstatthalter was severely compromised.

  Gretl strongly condemned Paul's actions in leaving the country, accusing him of dishonorable conduct. Nothing could be guaranteed to rile her brother more than an assault upon his honor. Anxious lest details of this spat might, at a later time, reach the ears of his children, Paul commissioned an independent report on the breakdown of his relationship with Gretl, instructing a lawyer to ensure that his heirs each received a copy after his death. This report, based on letters and documents in the archives of the solicitors Wachtell, Manheim and Grouf, states at the outset: