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1.

HERMANN TO ARMAND

SPINNFABRIK “TEESDORF”

Telephone 64-2-96

Austrian Postal Savings Bank Acct No. 10235

Telegraph address: SPINTEES WIEN

Factory: Teesdorf, Lower Austria,

Mail: Tattendorf, Lower Austria.

Telephone: Leobersdorf 13

Vienna, 17 January 1925

1., Gonzagagasse 7 1. Letter (after school vacation)

Hello, old boy,

Your first letter finally arrived today. If Leroux hadn’t already written me five days earlier, I should have been worried about you. Your rather spare birthday greeting to Grandfather also got here only today. You could at least have thanked your grandparents for your stay here at their house. Please take care of this in your next letter to Grandmother.

I am only sorry that this visit did not turn out to be an untroubled one. I won’t give you any long lectures about it, I am convinced that they would just bore you. Nonetheless, I do think that now, from a distance, you will see things more clearly, and that much of your own behavior will seem inexplicable to you from that remove. When you are here, you can’t see the forest for all the trees of your wishes, and most of all, you don’t see that here you are surrounded with a kind of love that you will find nowhere else on earth. At the moment it probably seems more like a burden to you; but someday you will feel that here is your natural home, and this feeling will become stronger and stronger the older you get. The family, after all, is the only human community that is not based on coincidence.

In the present case and for the moment, then, it’s a pity, but I cannot risk asking you to come here for the Easter vacation, because I can’t allow any more of these scenes to be inflicted on your grandparents.

After your last trip I have a good deal more confidence in your ability to travel on your own. You gave us few details; were you alone in your coupé? etc. All in all you certainly have a good, practical head, and my criticisms (which really weren’t criticism) and which apparently offended you, I would redefine to this extent: in practical matters you are no longer a dumb little rogue, but, alas, you still are, with regard to your wishes, your actions, and your ability to get along with others. But I still cautiously hold the view that this, too, will soon change.

Here, as you can well imagine, there is no real news to report. I am as always overwhelmed with problems and work, but am nonetheless not dissatisfied with life, having the firm belief that all this has a deeper purpose and meaning, and that life, as short as it is, alas, is worth living and worth working at.

The things you asked for will be mailed on Tuesday. I will write to M. Dedet about your taking Spanish, but I fear it will be hard to get you in at the middle of the school year.

Write me again soon. Warm regards,

Your P.!

[KW13/1, 59–60]

SPINNFABRIK TEESDORF: Broch’s father, Josef Broch, had acquired the Teesdorf Weaving Factory in Teesdorf outside of Vienna in 1906, with the idea that his two sons, Hermann and Friedrich, would run the business and derive an income from it. Hermann was the chief business executive, Friedrich was the chief engineer. The Brochs lived in the Herrenhaus (masters’ house) on the factory property. The business was sold in 1927.

GONZAGAGASSE 7: Besides the house in Teesdorf, the Brochs also had a city residence in Vienna’s First District. Broch used this residence until his emigration to Britain and then the United States in 1938.

HELLO, OLD BOY: Hermann Friedrich Broch (1910–1994) was the only child from the marriage of Hermann Broch and Franziska Broch, née von Rothermann. After leaving the Collège de Normandie, he did not attend university or take up a profession. He tried to find a career in many different areas, in particular the tourism industry. In the thirties he spent a great deal of time in Italy and Greece. In 1941 he was able to flee Europe for the United States, and during the Second World War he served in the U.S. Army. After the war he worked mostly as a tour leader and translator. Later in life he made a name for himself as literary translator of the works of Elias Canetti, Gregor von Rezzori, and his father.

AFTER SCHOOL VACATION: In the fall of 1924 the fourteen-year-old Hermann Friedrich Broch was sent off to school at the Collège de Normandie. There was probably some correspondence between father and son earlier in the semester, but it has been lost. Since he went to study in France, Broch’s son began calling himself Armand instead of Hermann. At home his nickname was Pitz. He had attended the local school in Vienna’s Schottenhof from 1916 to 1918, and after that the elementary school in Teesdorf from 1918 to 1919. Between 1920 and 1924 he was a pupil at a federally run school (Bundeserziehungsanstalt) in Traiskirchen, near Teesdorf. This was essentially a pre-university boarding school. It had been a training school for artillery cadets from 1903 to 1918.

LEROUX: Eugène Leroux was Armand’s mathematics teacher at the Collège de Normandie. He was also the head of one of the Collège’s houses, known as Les Tilleuls (The Lindens), in which Armand was placed. The other two were Les Pommiers (The Apple Trees) and Le Château. Teachers were housed in two separate buildings, Les Lierres (The Ivies) and La Tourelle (The Little Tower).

COUPÉ: Fr.: compartment on the train, often having only a bench

GRANDPARENTS: Armand’s paternal grandfather, Josef Broch (1852–1933), was born in Prossnitz (Moravia), came to Vienna at the age of twelve, and during Vienna’s economic boom time (known as the Gründerjahre) worked his way up from messenger boy to be a successful textile merchant and mill owner. Josef Broch had celebrated his seventy-third birthday on January 12, 1925. Armand had spent the Christmas holidays at his grandparents’ in Vienna (Gonzagagasse 7). Armand’s grandmother was Johanna Broch, née Schnabel (1863–1942), who was the daughter of a Viennese Jewish furrier and leather manufacturer. She refused to leave Austria in 1938, although both her sons tried to convince her to do so. On August 13, 1942, she was sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp, where she died of exhaustion on December 22 of that year.

EASTER: April 12–13, 1925

DEDET: Louis Dedet (1875–1937) was a famous French rugby player who was awarded the title Champion de France six times between 1893 and 1901. During the First World War he had been an officer in the French Army and a celebrated war hero. He had studied teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris, to become a school head. He took over as head of the Collège de Normandie in 1907 at the age of 32. At that point the school had been in existence for five years. Dedet was an Anglophile and partial to America. He founded the sports club at the Collège known as Le Club des Léopards, a name he chose from the Norman coat of arms, which shows two leopards. He led the school until 1934. Broch wrote to Dedet about Armand’s wish to take Spanish as his second elective language.