Villa Felicitas

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The Villa Felicitas 2013

The Villa Felicitas is a country house in Bad Ischl, built in 1855, with the address Steinbruch 43. The villa is under monument protection with the name Villa Felicitas / Schratt-Villa .

history

The building was opened in 1855 by Dr. Mayer was built as a guest house in an alpine country house style on a large park plot on the road to Lake Wolfgang and called " Villa Felicitas " (= "Landhaus Glück") . The Koch family, who ran the Hotel Post in Bad Ischl, later became the owners.

Prominent residents

Emperor Franz-Joseph and Katharina Schratt at the Ischl-Steg in 1895

From 1889 to the First World War, the then 36-year-old castle actress Katharina Schratt , who had spent her summers from 1886 to 1888 in the Villa Frauenstein on Lake Wolfgang, lived in the Villa Felicitas again and again in July and August. Her friend Emperor Franz Joseph I enjoyed the "advantage of being close by" and visited her regularly from his nearby imperial villa . For this purpose, he had a wooden walkway built over the Ischl. According to his own statement, he spent “the happiest hours” in the property now called “Villa Schratt”. Other guests of the house at the time were the actor Alexander Girardi and the composer Johann Strauss (son) .

In the 1920s, Bad Ischl, where Franz Lehár had owned a large villa since 1912 , continued to develop into a popular health resort for artists, composers and writers. The wealthy actress Mimi Kött bought Villa Felicitas to spend the summer months there. She turned the house into a center of social life and kept it after her stage career ended until her untimely death in 1931.

Forced sale in 1938

In 1932 the writer Fritz Löhner-Beda bought the villa and gave it to his wife Helene. He lived there with her and their two young daughters Eva and Lieselotte in the summer and worked with composers such as Franz Lehár and Hugo Wiener on new operetta projects. After Austria's annexation and Löhner's arrest in March 1938, Helene Löhner was threatened by the local group leadership of the NSDAP Bad Ischl to sell the Villa Felicitas, which is officially valued at 53,000 Reichsmarks , to the Upper Danube region. In the sales contract signed in Vienna in November 1938, the purchase price was only RM 8,000. The money came into a blocked account and was never paid out. In May 1939, the state of Upper Danube sold the villa including its inventory for 52,300 Reichsmarks to the lawyer Ludwig P. from Linz. Helene Löhner and her daughters were deported to the Maly Trostinec extermination site near Minsk on August 31, 1942 , and murdered there immediately upon arrival. Fritz Löhner-Beda was slain on December 4, 1942 in Auschwitz-Monowitz .

After 1945

In 1948 the Villa Felicitas was transferred back to Helene Löhner's sister who had emigrated to the USA. She sold the villa to the actor and cabaret artist Maxi Böhm . For 15 years he ran a “ good mood guesthouse ”, which also offered breakfast.

In 1964 the opera singer Linda Plech bought the villa. With her husband Claus-Peter Corzilius, she modernized the house as a guest house with holiday apartments and a restaurant, set up a seminar and concert room on the top floor and thus continued the tradition of the house as a meeting place for artists.

Sources and literature

  • "Aryanizations" files in the judicial district of Bad Ischl , archive of the Bad Ischl municipal office
  • Barbara Denscher, Helmut Peschina : No land of smiles. Fritz Löhner-Beda 1883–1942. Residence, Salzburg 2002, ISBN 3-7017-1302-2 .
  • Florian Freund, Hans Safrian: expulsion and murder. On the fate of the Austrian Jews 1938–1945. The project “Name registration of the Austrian Holocaust victims”, published by DÖW Vienna 1993
  • Brigitte Hamann (Ed.): My dear, good friend! Emperor Franz Joseph's letters to Katharina Schratt. From the possession of the Austrian National Library. Ueberreuter, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-8000-3371-2 .
  • Jutta Hangler: "The Aryanization of Bad Ischl is making progress ...". The “de-Jewification” of properties using the example of an Upper Austrian tourist destination . Diploma thesis, Salzburg 1997 (typescript)
  • Karl Kraus : What's going on in Ischl? , in: Die Fackel , October 1929
  • Wolfgang Pohrt : Sale. From the final solution to its alternative . Pamphlets and essays, Berlin 1980

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Upper Austria - immovable and archaeological monuments under monument protection. ( Memento of June 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) . Federal Monuments Office , as of June 26, 2015 (PDF).
  2. ↑ Georg Markus: Where once the emperor with the Schratt , Kurier.at, May 24, 2015
  3. ↑ Karl Kraus 1929
  4. ↑ Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: The "Deportations of Jews" from the German Reich 1941–1945 - A commented chronology. Marix, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-059-5 , p. 246.

Coordinates: 47 ° 43 ′ 6 "  N , 13 ° 36 ′ 16.2"  E