Gallia (family)
The wealthy and art-loving Jewish Gallia family from Vienna was brought to mind in 2011 with a book: the work Wohllebengasse published by Tim Bonyhady (* 1957), a descendant . The story of my Viennese family .
Adolf Gallia
Carl Auer von Welsbach , inventor of the Auer glow mantle and 1892 founder of the Österreichische Gasglühlicht- (later: and Elektrizitäts-) Actiengesellschaft , employed the lawyer Adolf Gallia (1852-1925) with his office and apartment in Vienna 1., Dorotheergasse 6, with it to have his invention patented in as many countries around the world as possible (in 1905 the Welsbach Light Company advertised in Sydney , Australia). He also accepted the lawyer into the board of directors of his AG. The AG had its seat in Vienna 4th, Schleifmühlgasse 4, where Auer was already doing business before.
Like his brother Moritz Gallia (until 1902 spelling: Moriz), Adolf came from Bisenz near Göding in southern Moravia , i.e. from the northern surroundings of Vienna, which was ideally accessible by the Kaiser Ferdinand's northern railway (the first steam railway built in Austria).
Adolf Gallia was very successful in Auer's service. In 1903 he was able to have Jakob Gartner build the corner house 1., Stubenring 24 / Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Platz 6 (today known for the Café Prückel ) and a second house nearby. He lived on the Stubenring with his wife Ida and also moved his law firm there. He remained in Auer's service even when his brother left Auer's company.
Moritz Gallia
Carl Auer von Welsbach also employed the brother of his lawyer, Moritz Gallia (1858–1918, spelling before the spelling reform 1902: Moriz), a businessman who was later honored by the emperor with the title of councilor. He soon became one of the two directors of Auers Gasglühlicht-AG.
Moritz Gallia was rewarded so well as a director and saw such increases in the value of his investments that he was able to acquire extensive stakes in companies. In 1901 he had himself portrayed by Ferdinand Andri , and subsequently the children too. Moritz and Hermine Gallia, b. Hamburger (1870–1936; the great-grandmother Tim Bonyhadys), converted to Christianity in 1910 after having their young children baptized Catholic earlier.
Relationship with Klimt
Moritz Gallia was able to afford to have his wife Hermine painted by Gustav Klimt in 1903 , although he had to pay around three today's salary for employees (converted). During this time, Klimt was very controversial because of his “faculty pictures”, which were created on behalf of the Imperial and Royal Ministry of Education for the University of Vienna , but nevertheless successful. He exhibited almost the entire work of his last six years, including the still unfinished portrait of Hermine Gallias, from November 14, 1903 to January 6, 1904 at the XVIII. Exhibition of the Vienna Secession , whereby Josef Hoffmann and Kolo Moser took care of the exhibition design and Moser designed the catalog. At the exhibition, the Gallia couple bought one of Klimt's new paintings, a forest scene.
Relationships with other artists
In addition to their close relationship with Klimt, Moritz and Hermine Gallia were also known as Josef Hoffmann's patrons and had Hoffmann set up a suite of rooms in their house in Wohllebengasse as a total work of art. They were very familiar with Alma Mahler-Werfel and her stepfather Carl Moll , and they were also friends with him; they bought about ten of his paintings. They owned a Mahler portrait of Emil Orlik , which Mahler and Orlik had signed (the picture is now owned by Tim Bonyhady); it had originally belonged to Theobald Pollak (1855-1912), councilor in the Imperial and Royal Ministry of Railways , with whom they were friends.
Wohllebengasse house 4
When Moritz Gallia started working for Auer, he was given a (service?) Apartment at the company's headquarters at Schleifmühlgasse 4. But when he gained great influence at Graetzin-Licht-Gesellschaft, a company competing with Auer's company, he ended in 1911 –1913 his involvement with and for Auer and in 1911 bought an old house in Wohllebengasse in Vienna's 4th district in order to establish his own residence there in a new building. Auer considered Moritz's departure, which contrasted with the loyalty of his brother Adolf, to be extremely disloyal.
The Gallia family lived from 1914 to 1938 in the modern-style house next to the Schwarzenberg Palace, which was built by Franz von Krauss on behalf of Moritz and Hermine Gallia ; the apartment took up about 700 square meters. The upper floors of the house consisted of rental apartments. On Prinz-Eugen-Strasse, from which Wohllebengasse branches off, there were two Rothschild family palaces around the corner ( Palais Albert Rothschild , Palais Rothschild ; the latter still exists today).
The house in Wohllebengasse was returned to the family after 1945 and sold by them. Until 1955 it was in the Soviet sector of Vienna occupied by the four Allies , which reduced the value of the property.
Moritz's death
Moritz Gallia died on August 17, 1918 in Wohllebengasse after a long illness, which the best doctors in the city could not diagnose with certainty and for which they had found no remedy. Obituary notices were placed by the Hamburger company (a company of his wife's family), the Graetzin-Licht-Gesellschaft, the spirits production Johann Timmel's widow, the Trient - Malè railway and the Wiener Werkstätte, where he was last chairman of the supervisory board, all companies in which he was at least involved.
His widow Hermione bought on graveyard duration a triple grave site on the Hietzinger cemetery , Group 12, No. 101-103. there is the family tomb of the Gallias.
Gretl Gallia
Fortunately, Moritz and Hermine Gallia's daughter Margarete ( Gretl ) Gallia (briefly married Herschmann, 1896–1975), their daughter Annelore Herschmann (or Anne Gallia), married Bonyhady (1922–2003), and Gretl's sister Käthe Gallia (1899–1976) were able to have the Klimt painting and the furnishings of the family seat designed by Josef Hoffmann in autumn 1938 when they were forced to leave Australia by the anti-Semitic terror of the Nazi regime. Several other members of the extended family perished in the Holocaust .
The Klimt portrait of Hermine Gallia was later sold by the heirs to the National Gallery in London after an Australian museum refused to accept it as a gift in the 1960s.
Tim Bonyhady
Gretl's grandson and Anne's son Tim Bonyhady was honored for his book in 2012 in his home country Australia with one of the prizes of the Premier's Literary Awards , the Community Relations for a Multicultural NSW Award , given by the state of New South Wales . This award is given for works that deal with immigration to Australia and the settlement of immigrants. In 2001, Bonyhady received the Australian History Prize , awarded at the New South Wales Premier's History Awards , for his book The Colonial Earth .
literature
- Helmut Brenner; Reinhold Kubik: Mahler's people. Friends and companions , Residenz-Verlag, St. Pölten 2014, ISBN 978-3-7017-3322-4 , p. 81 f.
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Tim Bonyhady : Good Living Street. The Fortunes of My Viennese Family , Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2011
- Tim Bonyhady: Wohllebengasse. The story of my Viennese family , translated by Brigitte Hilzensauer, Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-552-05648-0
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lehmann's general Wiener Wohnungs-Anzeiger , edition 1894, volume 1, section logged companies , p. 309 (= p. 366 of the digital representation)
- ↑ Michael Freund: Nobelball at the Edge of the Abyss on the website of the daily newspaper Der Standard , Vienna, September 29, 2013.
- ↑ exhibition report in the daily newspaper Neue Freie Presse , Vienna, no. 14087, November 14, 1903 p.7.
- ↑ First mention in Lehmann's general Wiener Wohnungs-Anzeiger , edition 1915, volume 2, list of names, p. 340 (= p. 399 of the digital representation)
- ↑ Tim Bonyhady: Wohllebengasse. The story of my Viennese family , translated from English by Brigitte Hilzensauer, Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-552-05648-0 , p. 204
- ↑ Friedemann Hoflehner: Photo of the Gallia family grave on flickr, photo 2012.
- ↑ Marianne Enigl: How a large collection of Viennese fin de siècle came to Australia on the website of the news magazine profil , Vienna, August 16, 2013.
- ↑ List of the 2012 winners ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the State Library of New South Wales
