Читать книгу Three Tearless Histories - Erich Hackl - Страница 11

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THERE OUGHT TO BE MORE that could be found out about about Peter and Kurt’s years in Vienna than Grete Gabmeier’s sketchy memories of Kurt’s graduation celebration with his classmates in a beer-garden next to the Mautner mansion in Prager Strasse, to which her family was also invited. When Grete was born, Kurt was nine years old and, wondering what a new-born baby looked like, had accompanied his mother when she went to see the mother and child in hospital. He was, so the exceptionally pretty Grete was told, horrified at the sight of her. Such an ugly child, he is said to have cried out. She remembers the two of them—both Peter and Kurt—as rather quiet boys. But they will have had many friends, both in the district and at the University where, at an interval of five years, they studied medicine. That at least is what is suggested by letters from Kurt’s fellow student, Eva Rhoden, who also came from Floridsdorf. She managed to escape from Vienna, four months after the Klagsbrunn family left, with the help of the Gildemeester Organization, a fund to help non-religious Jews who wanted to emigrate that was controlled by the Gestapo and used to rob them of their assets.

Did Peter and Kurt have steady girlfriends in Vienna? We can probably assume that Peter did; in 1938 he was in his mid-twenties and sociable like his father. In the synagogue, so Victor was later told, by a family acquaintance in Berlin, he always stood right at the back and cracked jokes. Kurt is said to have enjoyed taking photographs even while he was still in Vienna. At that time there was as yet no suggestion that his hobby was to become both his vocation and his occupation.