Bust of Rodolfo Brunner, by Oscar Brunner. Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate
The second generation of the Hohenems immigrants in Trieste catapulted the Brunner family to their social and economic zenith. On the one hand, Rodolfo Brunner (1859-1956), eldest son of Carlo Brunner and Caroline, née Rosenthal, owned substantial shares of the family’s industrial enterprises (including chemicals, pharmaceuticals, mines, and shipping companies) and held management functions in companies such as Generali insurance, of which the Brunners were also shareholders. On the other hand, he specialized in the modernization and optimization of agriculture in Veneto and Friuli, not least in the Isonzo river delta. Politically, he was sympathetic to the Liberal-National Party of Trieste, which demanded a stronger orientation toward Italy, while he kept striving for reconciliation with Habsburg-Austrian interests. Like the majority of Trieste’s elite, but also many of the city’s Jews, he aligned himself with the Italian Fascists already early on. As business tycoon, he probably had frequent contact with the city’s top-ranking politicians. However, the reason for the meeting with Mussolini in this photograph is unknown; perhaps it is in connection with the award of the “Blue Star for Agricultural Merits,” which was bestowed on Rodolfo in 1937. His grandnephew Oscar Brunner (1900 – 1982) was an architect and sculptor, but only few of his works can be found in public collections.
Rodolfo Brunner and Benito Mussolini, probably in 1937. Photoalbum of the family with scenes from their activities own their farms in the Isonzo delta. Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner EstateCarlo Alberto Brunner, “Il Fondo del Ghetto“ (The Bottom of the Ghetto): About Rodolfo Brunner and the adventure of industrializationCarlo Alberto Brunner, “Il Fondo del Ghetto“ (The Bottom of the Ghetto): About Rodolfo Brunner and World War I
Installation Lay Down Your Arms! Photo: Dietmar Walser
Since 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to individuals who have “done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses” and thus, “during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” In 1911, the prize was awarded to two men who came from Jewish families: to the Dutch lawyer Tobias Asser (1838–1913) for the establishment of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) and the Austrian bookseller and publisher Alfred Hermann Fried (1864–1921) who had founded—together with Bertha von Suttner—the periodical “Die Waffen nieder! Monatsschrift zur Förderung der Friedensbewegung” (Lay Down Your Arms! Monthly for the promotion of the peace movement). The ardent pacifist Fried believed in the possibility of overcoming war. He viewed war as a structural “symptom of international anarchy” that must be met with “international organization,” that is, with the establishment of the League of Nations. The latter was intended to safeguard peace in cases of conflict.
After two world wars, the pacifist movement gained broad momentum. Time and again, appeals were made for complete disarmament. However, the arms industry is an important economic sector all over the world. The Hirtenberger munitions factory was, besides the Steyr-Werke, among Austria’s best-known arms factories. For an extended period, Hirtenberger was managed by Fritz Mandl (1900–1977). Already early on, he found also unauthorized ways to export weapons via Switzerland. Ideologically, he was close to fascist systems of the time. In 1933, he made an attempt at supplying weapons, captured in World War I and modernized by his company, to Italy, Hungary, and to the Heimwehr, which elicited an international scandal. Yet, following the Anschluss, his friendship with Nazis could not protect him from being defined as Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws; he immigrated to Argentina and became an adviser to the dictator Perón. Following his return in 1955, Mandl managed to secure for his restituted company major contracts with the Austrian Armed Forces. In 1999, Hirtenberger Defense Systems started its mortar program. Arms exports to warring states and to those that use weapons in ways that violate human rights are legally banned. Nevertheless, Austrian munition, also from Hirtenberger, keeps surfacing in warring countries such as, for instance, Afghanistan.
Michael Miller (Vienna) about the Pacifism of the Paneuropean-Union:
Moritz Julius Bonn: The Crisis of European Democracy. New Haven 1925 / Die Auflösung des modernen Staates (The Desintegration of the Modern State). Berlin 1921. Jewish Museum Hohenems
Moritz Julius Bonn was born on June 16, 1873 in Frankfurt am Main as son of the banker Julius Philipp Bonn and Elise Brunner of Hohenems. Following studies in Heidelberg, Munich, Vienna, Freiburg, and London as well as research visits in Ireland and South Africa, he started his successful career as a political economist. In Italy, he met Theresa Cubitt, a native of England and married her in London in 1905. That same year, he completed his habilitation on English colonial rule in Ireland. From 1914 to 1917, he taught at various universities in the USA. As a political consultant, he took part in numerous postwar conferences, wrote on the topics of free trade and economic reconstruction, and drafted critical studies on colonialism as well as European democracy, which he considered viable only if based on pluralism and ethnic diversity. As rector of the Berlin College of Commerce and head of the Institute of Finance, founded by him, he eventually became one of the leading economic experts of the Weimar Republic. In the wake of the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, Bonn was forced to emigrate, initially to Salzburg, then London, and finally to the USA where he began his autobiography Wandering Scholar (German: So macht man Geschichte). After the war, he permanently settled in London where he passed away in 1965. Moritz Julius Bonn had spent his childhood summers at his grandparents’ in Hohenems and also
Moritz Julius Bonn, So macht man Geschichte, 1953: Education of a liberal and synagogue service in Hohenems
Moritz Julius Bonn, So macht man Geschichte, 1953: Multicultural diversity in “Felix Austria”
Moritz Julius Bonn, So macht man Geschichte, 1953: Memory and Return from Exile?
