Ernst Koenigsgarten

Ernst Königsgarten (before 1911)

Members of the Vienna Fencing Club (from right to left): Ernst Königsgarten, Georg Tafler, Maestro Luigi Della Santa, Béla Békéssy

Ernst Königsgarten , also Arnošt Königsgarten , (born July 14, 1880 in Brno , Austria-Hungary ; died January 15, 1942 in Theresienstadt ) was an Austrian businessman, privateer and fencer .

biography

Ernst Königsgarten came from a wealthy and extensive Jewish family from Brno; he had seven siblings: four sisters and three brothers. His eldest brother Friedrich "Fritz" Königsgarten worked in the family business for metal goods founded by their father Ignatz and was on the board of directors of the Altbrünner Lederwerke .

Ignatz Königsgarten (1836–1927) noted in a family chronicle that he wrote that his son Ernst trained as a merchant in Prague and then completed his one-year military service, where he made it to lieutenant . The son decided to work in the leather goods industry, did a practical training in Liptószentmiklós in Hungary and proved himself "brilliantly" there. He then acquired further theoretical knowledge in Freiberg in Saxony in order to go to London for the "finishing touch" . There he contracted a chronic eye disease and was treated at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. This illness made it impossible for him to continue to work. Despite his bad eyesight, his son managed to achieve “perfection” in fencing with a strong will, according to Ignatz Königsgarten.

Königsgarten fought left-handed with foil and sword , but right-handed with his best weapon, the saber . In 1906, at the age of 25, he started as the youngest member of the Austrian team at the Olympic Intermediate Games in Athens in four competitions and finished sixth with the saber. In 1907 he was one of the founders of the Vienna Fencing Club , which trained in the fencing academy of Luigi Della Santa on Schwarzenbergplatz , and was on the board of the Austrian Fencing Association and the Vienna Athletics Club . In the following years he played numerous tournaments across Europe, including 1905 in Marienbad , 1906 in Prague , Milan and Trieste , 1907 in Karlsbad and Ostend and 1909 in Baden-Baden . He sometimes appeared in registration lists as Ernesto Königsgarten. In 1908 the fencers from Vienna, including Königsgarten, demonstrated their skills in the Kursaal in Marienbad in front of the English King Edward VII , who had met there for talks with the French Foreign Minister Georges Clemenceau and his Russian colleague Alexander Iswolski . On this occasion the English king awarded the fencing teacher Della Santa, who had already taught him, a medal.

In the company news of the time, Ernst Königsgarten was referred to as a “ privateer ”, and from 1923 also as a “banker”. He was also an officer in the cavalry reserve in France and a member of the imperial military riding school in Vienna and was considered an “elegant, distinguished young man”. The brother-in-law of his brother Ludwig, the writer Oskar Jellinek , attested him "world blood that flowed through his veins".

In 1903 Ernst's brother Fritz married Elise "Lisi" Brück, who was twelve years his junior. The couple had a son, Hugo , in 1904 , who became a well-known librettist , author, and theater critic. In 1907 a second boy followed, Heinrich (later Henry ). When Heinrich was six months old, Fritz Königsgarten died after a serious illness. At an unknown later point in time, Heinrich learned that his biological father was not Fritz Königsgarten, but his uncle Ernst from a brief liaison with his sister-in-law Lisi. Ernst Königsgarten remained a bachelor all his life and officially had no offspring, but treated Heinrich "like a son" and showed a special interest in him.

New memorial plaque in Altaussee, installed in 2018

In 1911 Ernst Königsgarten, like Lisi Brück and their sons, moved from Brno to Vienna, around 140 kilometers away. There they lived at different addresses, but in July 1913 they spent their vacation together with the boys and a governess at the same time on Brioni . In 1915 Lisi Königsgarten married the Berlin stockbroker Max Bohne and went to the German capital with him and their two sons. How Ernst Königsgarten spent the war years is unknown.

The Villa Königsgarten, in Fischerndorf 59 in Altaussee.

In 1919, Königsgarten acquired the villa (Fischerndorf 59) in Altaussee from a son of the painter Carl von Binzer , a traditional summer resort of the Austrian upper class, where many Jewish creative people lived, such as Jakob Wassermann . From then on he used the Villa Königsgarten as a summer house, which was open to the whole family.

Königsgarten invested money from his legacy in various companies, for example as a partner in Rudolf Klein Ges.mbH , which was dedicated to the trade in auto parts and accessories, and as a partner in Richard Hüpeden & Cie. , which sold bicycle, motorcycle and automobile parts. In 1923 he joined the management of the Bovis sausage factory . He was also a member of the board of directors of the theater in der Josefstadt until August 1938, alongside Max Reinhardt , Camillo Castiglioni , Erich Mostny and Eduard Nelken . Parallel to this economic and cultural commitment, he continued to be active as a fencer. During these years he lived in a manorial house at Schwindgasse 10 in Vienna's 4th  district of Wieden ; his neighbors included the entrepreneur Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and his wife Adele ( Adele Bloch-Bauer I ). The two families were connected through the marriage of loved ones. In 1934 he moved into an apartment on the first floor of Argentinierstrasse 2 in the same district, opposite the Karlskirche .

On March 13, 1938, Austria was officially annexed to the German Reich . In the following vote on the connection, only one woman out of the approximately 1,226 voters in Altaussee voted against. On November 20, 1938, Ernst Königsgarten left Vienna for the last time and moved back to his parents' house next to the company building at Dornichgasse 55 (now Dornych ) in the supposedly safe Czechoslovakian Brno. His widowed brother Ludwig, who had been running the family business since his brother Fritz's death in 1908, also lived there. According to the shipping documents, Ernst Königsgarten was carrying a number of works of art.

After the destruction of the rest of the Czech Republic , Ludwig Königsgarten was forced by the now National Socialist authorities in July 1941 to sell the family business to an “Aryan” competitor . On December 5, 1941, Ernst Königsgarten was deported on the second transport from Brno to Theresienstadt, where he died five weeks later, on January 15, 1942. On the same transport were his brother-in-law Leopold Schnürer, his sister Frieda and their two daughters, who were murdered in Auschwitz . On the official death certificate of Ernst Koenigsgarten, his occupation as a sports teacher is indicated, meningitis and cardiac paralysis as causes of death. His older brother Ludwig was murdered in Auschwitz in December 1943 . A total of around 11,000 Jewish people were deported from Brno, of which only a few hundred survived.

The villa in Altaussee was seized by the Gestapo , a total of 34 summer houses owned by Jews came into the hands of prominent National Socialists such as Ernst Kaltenbrunner , who housed his beloved Countess Gisela von Westarp, or Adolf Eichmann , whose family lived there. Königsgarten's "folklore collection" (presumably consisting of peasant cupboards and peasant antiques) from the villa was confiscated in 1938 and, like other collections from Jewish property, ended up in museums such as the local history museum in Altaussee or in the private property of the as part of the "wild Aryanization of the Salzkammergut" " Arizierers " Wilhelm Haenel .

In 1947, Henry Königsgarten sold the building to Hanna Schiff. From 1961 to 1974, the writer Friedrich Torberg sublet the house outside of the summer months. The Villa Königsgarten has been owned by the artist Horst K. Jandl since 1979 . On the outside of the cemetery wall in Altaussee is a small memorial plaque for Ernst Königsgarten, which his son Heinrich had put up. After this plaque had been stolen repeatedly, the grandson Michael Garton had a new one installed in May 2018.

family

Ernst Königsgarten's son Heinrich (Henry) (1907–1988) went to London in 1929 after completing his degree in law with a doctorate on the advice of his father / uncle, then to Paris for five years before settling in England for good. During World War II he served as a soldier in the British Army . In 1944 he married an Englishwoman and the couple had two children, a son (Michael) and a daughter.

After the annexation of Austria, his brother Hugo Königsgarten (1904–1977) was not only in danger as a Jew, but also as a critical journalist and member of the “most politically sharp cabaret in Vienna” ABC . He left Austria on March 13, 1938, the day of the “Anschluss”, with one of the last scheduled trains to Switzerland; thanks to his Czech passport, he was able to cross the border unmolested. Two days later the Gestapo stood in vain at his door in Vienna to arrest him. Since his brother Henry was already living in England and vouching for him, he was able to enter there. He later received British citizenship as Hugo Frederick Garten , like the other family members.

Because of the political developments in Germany, Lisi and Max Bohne (born 1883) returned to Vienna in 1934, where they lived separately. Lisi Bohne followed her sons to London in September 1938. Her husband Max was deported to Theresienstadt on August 20, 1942 from a “ Jewish house ” at Negerlegasse 8, where Jewish people were crammed into collective apartments, where he died a year later. In front of the house today a “stone of remembrance” has been laid for all residents of that time without any individual names being given. Lisi Königsgarten only found out about the fate of her brother-in-law Ernst and her husband Max Bohne after the war. She died in 1956.

Ernst Königsgarten's grandson Michael Garton (* 1947) learned very little about the background of his family, as neither his grandmother Lisi nor his parents spoke much about the past. After the death of his mother in 2010, he found relevant papers as well as notes by Lisi Bohne-Königsgarten - diary and a short story entitled Last Days in Vienna - in her estate and began to investigate. In 2015 he published the book In Search of Ernst about the history of the Königsgarten.

literature

• Michael Garton: In Search of Ernst. Discovering the Unspoken Fate of the Königsgarten . Horsgate, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-9927152-4-3 .

Web links

Commons : Ernst Koenigsgarten  - Collection of Images

• Arnošt Royal Garden. In: holocaust.cz. Retrieved August 11, 2018 . 

References and comments

1. ↑ Békéssy was a participant in the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912 and competed in fencing for Hungary. He died in 1916 as a soldier in World War I and is revered as a war hero in Hungary: [1]
2. ^ Garton, In Search of Ernst S. xi.
3. ↑ Ignatz Königsgarten. In: encyklopedie.brna.cz. Retrieved August 14, 2018 (Czech). 
4. ^ Garton, In Search of Ernst, p. 1.
5. ^ Garton, In Search of Ernst, pp. 80/81.
6. ↑ Michael Wenusch: History of the Viennese fencing sport in the 19th and 20th centuries (=  dissertations of the University of Vienna . Volume 3 ). WUV Universitätsverlag, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-85114-191-1 , p. 92 f., 151 f .
7. ↑ Alexander Juraske: The Vienna Athletic Sports Club and its Jewish members. In: davidkultur.at. Retrieved August 17, 2018 . 
8. ↑ Then Luigi Della Santa was born in Modena in 1866, in 1887 he made his fencing master's diploma. Then he was fencing master at the Accademia Militare di Modena , from 1885 to 1900 teacher at the Bulgarian Military Academy in Sofia . From 1900 he ran a fencing school in Brno. In 1905 he settled in Vienna, and patrons made it possible for him to rent the spacious premises at Schwarzenbergplatz 7. He had to leave Austria during the First World War.
9. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Koenigsgarten Bio, Stats, and Results. In: sports-reference.com. Retrieved August 20, 2016 . 
10. ↑ Neues Wiener Abendblatt , April 8, 1908, p. 44.
11. ^ The Interesting Sheet , September 10, 1908, p. 19.
12. ↑ Curlisten Bad Ischl , August 9, 1904, p. 5.
13. ^ Wiener Zeitung , September 14, 1923, p. 11.
14. ^ Sport and Salon , May 8, 1909, p. 15.
15. ^ Richard Thieberger: Oskar Jellinek (Brno 1886 – Los Angeles 1949). With a previously unpublished emigration report . In: Fritz Martini / Walter Müller-Seidel / Bernhard Zeller, on behalf of the Board of Management (ed.): Yearbook of the German Schiller Society . 17th year. Alfred Kröner, Stuttgart 1973, p. 96 .
16. ^ Garton, In Search of Ernst , pp. 56/57.
17. ↑ Kurliste Insel Brioni of the guests present on Brioni from July 18, 1913 up to and including July 24, 1913. In: Brioni Insel-Zeitung , No. 25, July 27, 1913, p. 7 ( digitized version at the Austrian National Library ).
18. ^ Garton, In Search of Ernst , p. 58.
19. ↑ Ernst Königsgarten - Encyklopedie dějin města Brna - profile osobnosti. In: encyklopedie.brna.cz. January 15, 1942, Retrieved November 20, 2017 (Czech). 
20. ^ The address of the family in Berlin was Brandenburgische Str. 46 in Wilmersdorf.
21. ↑ Binzer, Carl von. In: austria-forum.org. Retrieved August 11, 2018 . 
22. ↑ List of houses in the Aussee judicial district, Aussee 1900, p. 13.
23. ^ Matthias Marschik : "The Mr. Kommerzialrat". Theodor Schmidt and Rudolf Klein. Sports rooms as places of Jewish self-assurance in the First Republic . In: Viennese history sheets . tape 71 , no. 4 , 2016, p. 310 .
24. ↑ (Wiener) Sporttagblatt , January 12, 1924, p. 12.
25. ^ Wiener Zeitung , September 14, 1923, p. 11.
26. ^ Angela Eder: Artists and merchants at the theater in the Josefstadt . In: Hilde Haider-Pregler (Ed.): Time of Liberation. Vienna theater after 1945 . Picus, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85452-413-7 , p. 150 .
27. ↑ Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung , March 27, 1923, p. 7.
28. ↑ Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's nephew and personal assistant Robert Bloch-Bauer (later Bentley ) was married to Thea (née Stern), who was a third cousin of Ernst Königsgarten. Robert Bloch-Bauer's sister Maria Altmann gained fame because of the legal dispute over a picture of her aunt by Gustav Klimt .
29. ↑ Adolph Lehmann's general housing indicator [684]. In: digital.wienbibliothek.at. 1934, Retrieved August 13, 2018 . 
30. ^ Editor: Ausseerland: The "no vote" from Altaussee. In: kleinezeitung.at. March 15, 2017. Retrieved August 15, 2018 . 
31. ^ Garton, In Search of Ernst , p. 93.
32. ^ Garton, In Search of Ernst , p. 94.
33. ↑ Königsgarten Arnošt: Obituary report, Ghetto Theresienstadt. In: holocaust.cz. Retrieved November 19, 2017 (Czech). 
34. ^ Brno (Moravia). In: From the history of the Jewish communities in the German-speaking area. Retrieved August 11, 2018 . 
35. ↑ Garton, In Search for Ernst , pp. 106f.
36. ↑ "Eichmann is my passion". In: diepresse.com. September 3, 2010, accessed August 13, 2018 . 
37. ^ The cause of wages. Deprivation of assets ("Aryanizations") on Jewish properties in Bad Ischl ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
38. ^ Aryanization of art. The elimination of Jewish artists and aryanization of art in the forum OoeGeschichte.at
39. ^ Birgit Schwarz: Hitler's special order Ostmark. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018, ISBN 978-3-205-20355-1 , p. 132 ( limited preview in Google book search).
40. ↑ diepresse.com of January 6, 2019: Torberg's secretary: With the angel in a cabriolet ; accessed on February 4, 2019
41. ↑ Binzer, Carl von. In: Austria Forum. Retrieved November 19, 2017 . 
42. ↑ Altaussee: The Myth of the Lederhosen Metropolis. In: kurier.at. June 10, 2017. Retrieved August 11, 2018 . 
43. ^ Garton, In Search of Ernst , SV
44. ↑ Alpenpost , July 21, 2018, p. 10.
45. ↑ Garton, In Search of Ernst , pp. 33f.
46. ↑ On the history of the Austrian cabaret. In: kabarettarchiv.at. Retrieved August 11, 2018 . 
47. ↑ Garton, In Search of Ernst , pp. 68f.
48. ↑ 2nd District – Path of Remembrance. In: Stones of Memory. Retrieved August 12, 2018 . 
49. ^ Garton, In Search of Ernst , p. 2.