Category Archives: Uncategorized

The effects of World War I were felt most keenly in Skotschau after the hostilities ended on November 11, 1918. At that time, grandfather Emanuel Spitzer was 54 years old and had been managing the tannery since his father’s death … Continue reading →

When Lieutenant Bruno Guttmann was sent to serve on the Isonzo River frontier between Austria and Italy in January, 1915, it was not yet a war zone. The Italians were still maintaining a neutral stance in accord with an 1882 … Continue reading →

Refugee Tales resumes again in the New Year. In the last post, dated August 2011, I concluded with what little information I could muster about the fourth of my quartet of great-grandfathers. The patriarch of the Mayer clan in Jemnice, … Continue reading →

The fourth member of my quartet of great-grandfathers is the one I know least about. The family name was Mayer and they hailed from Jemnice, an old walled town in southern Moravia. There was a Jewish quarter nestled just inside … Continue reading →

From the pictures taken after it was enlarged at the turn of the century, the Skotschau synagogue in Austrian Silesia looks like a modest structure. The only decorative element is the small columned porch that projects at the front. Arched … Continue reading →

With this entry, “Refugee Tales” moves east from Vienna and its environs to outposts of the Austrian Empire in Moravia and Silesia. (Located today in the Czech Republic and Poland.) This was the region my father’s family, the Spitzers, came … Continue reading →

In the years immediately before World War I, Leopold Guttman’s business continued to expand. He added the installation of gas, water, sanitary, and electrical installations to services the company offered. In addition to the factory and warehouse in Vienna, there … Continue reading →

Topped by a fanciful, multi-tiered turret, the five-story “Casa Piccola,” where Leopold Guttmann’s flourishing business was located after 1902,  was not “piccola” at all. Erected in 1896, the building retained the name of the structure that preceded it—the long-standing Café … Continue reading →

Energy, ambition and the cultivation of useful contacts had made a successful businessman of great-grandfather Leopold Guttmann in the 1890’s. But a decade before, crafty politicians had already begun to draw on old anti-Semitic attitudes to fan resentment of Jewish … Continue reading →

About a month ago, two friends from Vienna—the architectural historian Ursula Prokop and her husband Peter, a first-rate archivist—came to visit me in New York.  They have been a help with my research in Austria for many years.  I was … Continue reading →