Earlier this week, I returned to the story of Ezriel Kornmehl, introducing his parents and siblings -- and throwing in a little celebrity glitter. Today I take him from his birth in Tarnow, Poland, to the start and completion of his education in Vienna. From high school to med school Ezriel was born in 1891 and attended gymnasium (high school) in Tarnow. Upon the completion
Of Ancestors, Blogging & Taking My Own Advice
You know the cobbler whose children go unshod? I'm the blogger who dispenses advice but forgets to take it. My friend and colleague Vera Marie Badertscher created a Web magazine, which debuted yesterday, called Ancestors in Aprons: All About Food and Family. As you might guess from the title alone, it has strong links to two topics that are central to Freud's Butcher -- the
Is Julianna Margulies My Cousin?
I'm not going to lie. After being away for a while, it's been a little tough getting back into my family history. For one thing, all roads seem to lead to antisemitism, if not death. Then there's the learning curve. It feels like a lifetime ago that I took February's Family History Writing Challenge -- at least long enough that it's taken me a while to reacquaint myself
19 Berggasse: A Twice-Famed Address
I've mentioned many times that this blog is a cousin magnet. I don't even have to try to attract relatives; they just gravitate towards the Kornmehl name. This is a wonderful thing, especially when I've been too busy to blog and I can entice one of the cousins to write a guest post. A brief note. You'll be hearing more soon about Lary Ecker, my third cousin once removed
Foie Gras, Schmaltz & Grammel: The Food of My People
Foie gras has always been a guilty pleasure. It's ridiculously expensive, it's fattening... and then there's the whole animal cruelty question (which I've discussed a bit here). So I'm not sure whether my discovery that it is a traditional Jewish food makes me feel more or less guilty about it. My journey of goose liver discovery started with Jane Ziegelman's excellent 97
Is Personality Static? My Mother, the Uncles & the Eyeballs
One of the things that most interests me about my family history is the "before" and "after" of my mother's life. I wonder what effect being forced to leave Vienna -- especially without her parents -- had on Rita Rosenbaum Jarolim's personality. I've always imagined the impact must have been profound. But I may be wrong. Two pictures and a tale of teasing by the Kornmehl
Apologies — and a Challenge for German Speakers or Those Willing to Fake It
Perhaps you noticed. At least I'd like to think you did. Freud's Butcher has been out of commission for the past week. The first problem was caused by a WordPress hack that affected some 90,000 sites. It began with my site loading very sloooowly and ended in my being unable to post anything because, for security reasons, my host prevented everyone, including me, from
Art vs. History: The Butcher Shop in Vienna’s Freud Museum
I have a fantasy, which is not insanely far outside the realm of reality, so maybe I should call it a very ambitious goal: When Freud's Butcher the book is finished and published, I would like to have my book party in Siegmund Kornmehl's former butcher shop. That's not the very ambitious part. The shop has been part of Vienna's Sigmund Freud Museum since 2001, when it was
Freud Friday: The Shrink Font
I haven't devoted a Friday to Freud in a long time, but two different friends called an intriguing bit of Freudiana to my attention. The Project After looking through Freud's letters, German typographer Harald Geisler was inspired to create an electronic version of the father of psychoanalysis's handwriting, a font that he envisions you might use to "write a letter to your
Rudolph Kornmehl: 3 Butcher Shops & the End of a Jewish Era in Vienna
I named my blog for Siegmund Kornmehl because he had the luck to open one of his three butcher shops in the same building where Sigmund Freud lived and practiced, but I actually know a bit more about Siegmund's brother Rudolph. Like Siegmund, he owned and operated three butcher shops in Vienna. There were other butchers in the family, but I'll leave them for later. One of My
Vienna’s Famous Foreskins
Last week I visited Manhattan's Leo Baeck Institute, known for its excellent collections of materials relating to Europe's German-speaking Jewish communities. I was hoping to shed some light on the everyday lives of the Kornmehl family in Vienna. I had a limited amount of time and, unsure where to start looking, I browsed the listings of microfiche documents that weren't
Coming Soon: My Month of (Mostly) Meats
In my last post, I mentioned my corned beef bliss at the Second Avenue Deli, my visit to the Leo Baeck Institute, and my planned excursion to the Tenement Museum. In different ways, all three experiences reminded me that I've been neglecting the meat portion of this blog -- the contemplation of what life might have been like for Viennese butchers and their customers, essential
My (More Than Usually) Jewish New York Visit
Thanks to the general awareness of my Jewish heritage that blogging here has brought me -- along with specific research for Freud's Butcher the book -- a good part of my visit to New York City this past week has been spent getting in touch with my roots: Seeing old friends, eating at old favorite restaurants, and... Doing Jewish Stuff I went to the Roman Vishniac
Freud’s Butcher: Reuniting Old Friends Since 2012
Some of the topics I cover on this blog are difficult; my last few posts have been about the Holocaust, Austrian antisemitism, and my mother's sad past. Today, however, I move on to a far happier subject: Renewed friendships. I've mentioned the many relatives who were located through this blog. But as wonderful as it is to unearth family ties and potential relationships,
Auf Wiedersehen, Pt. 3: A Lost — and Found — Holocaust Archive
I was planning to write a simple, one-post response to the film Auf Wiedersehen: 'Til We Meet Again, the story of a visit to Austria of three generations of a family with Viennese roots. But the more I wrote, the more I had to say. Since I viewed the film three times, I suppose there's a certain symmetry to a three-post response. In Part 1, I detailed my initial emotional