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
Austrian history
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
Unhappy 75th: The Anschluss & The Vienna Philharmonic
Yesterday I posted about how the film "The Sound of Music" gave a distorted image of Austrian complicity in Nazi policies, suggesting the Austrians were victims rather than enthusiastic participants. Apparently show music isn't the only type of music that gives a distorted picture of Austria's role in the war. Today, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Anschluss, the full
Auf Wiedersehen, Pt. 1: Breaking the Silence
When I first began researching my mother's family, even before Freud's Butcher the blog was born, I heard about a film called "Auf Wiedersehen: 'Til We Meet Again." I knew little about it, but was intrigued by the synopsis on the site that I found for ordering it: In this compelling and often funny tale of recovery and renewal, author and activist Linda G. Mills is propelled
“Inheritance”: Revisiting the Victim vs. Villain Debate
A few weeks ago I posed the question of whether it's preferable to have villainous or victimized ancestors. I came down clearly on the side of the villains, based on my own family's fit into the victim category. Several people commented about dastardly relatives in their distant past, including my friend Clare, who had an Indian hunter on her family tree. My friend Lydia had
Butcher Power! The Vienna Meat Clique
I've been trying to imagine what the life of a butcher was like in Vienna in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when my mother's uncles, the Kornmehl brothers, were in the meat business. On the one hand, it seems that being a butcher was not a respectable enough profession to allow a Jewish member of the trade into the Vienna lodge of the B'nai B'rith. But here's another
Freud to Gestapo: Drop Dead!
Almost everything Sigmund Freud did has been analyzed endlessly -- and why wouldn't the Analyzer-in-Chief be subjected to such scrutiny? But the diverging opinions on Freud's behavior say as much about the analyzer as they do about analysand. I was particularly intrigued by the different responses to one incident: Freud's metaphorical finger to the Gestapo upon his departure
My Mother and the Governator
My mother couldn't stand Arnold Schwarzenegger. She wasn't a spitter but if she had been the type to expectorate over her shoulder, peasant style, she would have spat at Arnold. If she hadn't been Jewish she would have made the sign of the cross whenever she heard his voice or saw his image. She was appalled to see her fellow Austrian become an American hero, a movie
Did Freud Eat Kosher?
My mother didn't talk much about her early life in Vienna, but one of the things she told me was that Sigmund Freud's wife used to buy kosher meat from one of her uncles. I recently learned the identity of this uncle: It was Siegmund Kornmehl, who had a kosher butcher shop on the ground floor of 19 Berggasse,* where Freud's home and offices were located. (It's now the Sigmund