Lucian Brunner: Language Struggle and Nationality Conflict 1900

European Diary, 15.4.2021: 107 years ago today, the former Viennese councillor Lucian Brunner died in Vienna. He was born in Hohenems on September 29, 1850, the son of Marco Brunner and Regina Brettauer. Lucian’s father, like most of his brothers and cousins, had left for Trieste in their youth to participate in the lively textile trade between St. Gallen and the Mediterranean, with which the Brunner family began its steep economic rise. Later Marco Brunner went to St. Gallen, where he represented the family’s business in Switzerland and soon also managed the “Bankhaus Jakob Brunner”, from which UBS was later to emerge.
In 1883, Lucian Brunner also joined his father’s private bank in St. Gallen as a partner. Soon after, in 1889, Lucian and his wife Malwine Mandel settled in Vienna, where he founded his own banking business but also became active as an industrialist and politician. He was active in a small liberal party, the “Vienna Democrats,” for which he was a member of the Vienna City Council from 1896 to 1901, as well as chairman of the “Democratic Central Association” and publisher of the associated newspaper “Volksstimme. In the Vienna Municipal Council he repeatedly opposed the anti-Semitic mayor Karl Lueger, where he contradicted the ever louder nationalist slogans. In the dispute over the Baden language ordinance, he took a moderating stance in the face of the surging hostility toward the Czechs. He took the view that the German lingua franca should be defended not with nationalist resentment but on the grounds of reason, without devaluing the language minorities in the Reich. “The representation of the city of Vienna (…) must keep in mind that it is not merely the center of a country inhabited by one nationality, but by many nationalities, and it should therefore be prevented that any other nationality of the Empire believes that this resolution contains a point, a hostility against it. (…) It has been customary in Austria for years that a policy of slogans is pursued, and one of the quickest of these slogans is the nationality dispute and the nationality quarrel. When a political party doesn’t know what to do, it starts to provoke nationality quarrels.” When representatives of the Czech minority in Vienna demanded a new school for themselves in October 1897, he also distanced himself from the national furor and called for pluralism to be allowed – referring to his own experiences as a member of the German minority in Trieste. Instead, he was insulted as a “Jew” in the local council. “It is precisely the coercion with which one wanted to force the peoples of Austria to become German that has damaged Germanism. (…) We want the right for our minorities, therefore we ourselves must nowhere suppress the right of a minority! Moreover, it does not befit the great German cultural nation to say that we are afraid of this Czech school in Favoriten. (…) I am a Jew, as you quite rightly say, and gentlemen, I am glad that I am one.”
He became a complete bogeyman of the Christian Socialists with his protest against a planned church building subsidy of the Christian Socialist majority. Lucian Brunner filed a lawsuit against this breach of the state’s religious neutrality, which was ultimately successful before the Supreme Court. He thus defended the constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state – and now became a popular target of ongoing anti-Semitic attacks, in Vienna as well as in Vorarlberg. Lucian Brunner’s first wife, Malwine, died during these campaigns, which also affected the Brunner family personally.
Brunner always remained in close contact with his home community of Hohenems. For example, he donated considerable sums for the construction of the hospital and the gymnasium. On several occasions he also tried, in cooperation with Hohenems liberals and the Rosenthal family of factory owners, to realize tramway projects in Hohenems that would connect Hohenems with the Swiss railroad on the other side of the Rhine or even with Lustenau. A final tramway project, which in 1911 was to connect the Hohenems train station with the Rosenthal factory in the south of the market town, also failed to materialize, as the economic situation had in the meantime taken a heavy toll on the Rosenthal company. In Hohenems, too, the Christian Socialists were meanwhile agitating against the “Jew” Brunner-and against the Rosenthals, who would “cram” the school with Italian children.

Brunner remained a liberal throughout his life, even though at the end of his life he supported the Zionist movement in Vienna, probably out of disappointment with the political developments in Austria. When he died in Vienna on April 15, 1914, he left a legacy for an interdenominational school in his home community. The Hohenems municipal council did not accept the bequest. An interdenominational school was not desired.

Flashback, April 15, 2020: U.S. President Trump declares that the peak of the Corona pandemic has passed. And announces that the USA will stop its payments to the World Health Organization (WHO). German Development Minister Müller, on the other hand, declares that he will increase payments to the WHO: “The WHO must now be strengthened, not weakened. Cutting funding in the midst of a pandemic is absolutely the wrong way to go.”

Trump also decides that the “emergency checks” announced by the U.S. government to some 70 million needy people in the U.S. – to the tune of $1200 – should bear his name, in the midst of an election campaign that is about to begin. This has never happened before in American history.
Trump is threatening to send Parliament into forced recess on the grounds that he wants to fill vacancies without parliamentary participation. The possibility of ordering a parliamentary recess has also never been used by an American president. Trump plays on circulating conspiracy theories at a press conference, e.g. that the virus came from a Chinese lab.

EU Commission President van der Leyen, meanwhile, is calling for more commonality among EU members, saying, “A lack of coordination in lifting restrictions risks negative effects for all member states and would likely lead to an increase in tensions among member states. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to the crisis, but member states should at least keep each other informed,” the EU authority in Brussels warns. Van der Leyen announces a recovery plan for Europe that will include a common fund.

On the Greek islands, 40,000 refugees continue to be held in camps under inhumane conditions. Today, 12 (in words TWELVE) children from Syria and Afghanistan will be flown out of Athens to Luxembourg. Luxembourg is thus the first of eleven countries to show willingness to take in a few unaccompanied or sick minors from the camps. In addition to Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Croatia, Finland, Ireland, Portugal and Lithuania are participating in the rescue operation. On Saturday, 58 children are to follow to Germany. The Austrian government still refuses to help, although many mayors have now offered to take in new refugees.

On a Tower of Skulls: Gerald Reitlinger

European Diary, 2.3.2021: Gerald Reitlinger was born 121 years ago today. The youngest son of Albert Reitlinger and Emma Brunner – who came from the Hohenems family of the same name – he studied cultural studies at Oxford and art at two academies in London. From 1930 to 1931 he took part in excavations in Iraq, subsequently made several research trips to Iran, Turkey and China, and wrote books about his excursions – in 1932 A Tower of Skulls. A Journey Through Persia and Turkish Armenia. In addition, Reitlinger was an avid collector of both Syrian and Persian ceramics.
During World War II, he served in the British Army in air defense and as an instructor.

Portrait of Gerald Reitlinger by Christopher Wood, 1926 (Source: Wikipedia)

But after 1945 he devoted his life to researching the Holocaust. In 1953, he published his book The Final Solution in London, the first comprehensive account of the Shoah. Affected and skeptical, he questioned the national loss of memory that soon swept the former perpetrator countries. The Munich Institute of Contemporary History refused to publish Reitlinger’s book. It did not want to be disturbed by the “outside” in the process of coming to terms with National Socialism. Nevertheless, the book was published in German under the title Endlösung, as was Reitlinger’s 1956 study The SS. Alibi of a Nation 1922-1945, which was given a less sarcastic title by the publisher in order to make it more palatable to the German audience: The SS – Tragedy of a German Era. A third book on Nazi crimes followed: The House Built on Sand. The Conflicts of German Policy in Russia 1939-1945 was published in London in 1960, and under the title Ein Haus auf Sand gebaut. Hitler’s Violent Policy in Russia 1941-1944 in German.
Reitlinger then returned to art and cultural history. His three-volume work The Economics of Taste (1961-1970) is devoted to the history of the art market from 1760 to the present.
He bequeathed his collection, which was damaged by fire shortly before his death in 1978, to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where it now forms the Gerald Reitlinger Gallery.

Here some paragraphs from “Final Solution”:
“The inquest is over, but it is not the business of the coroner to find the culprits or to judge them. Nevertheless, the reader, who has had the patience to follow even a fraction of this somber narrative, will have asked himself a dozen questions, and some of these must be discussed even if they cannot be answered.

How much did the man in the street in Germany know and how much did he care? How was it possible that so many hundreds or even thousands of hard-working bureaucrats of all grades went daily to their offices to compose, copy, or pass on the obvious correspondence of race-murder? Why, seeing that every ministry was fighting with every other ministry and that Hitler never knew in the least what was happening, any more than Tolstoi’s generals at the battle of Borodino, did not one of the righteous men, who said their piece at Nuremberg, make a single active Protest? (…)
Is the discarding of selected victims endemic in the overgrown modern ‘democratic’ State? Can it happen again and can it happen here? It may be very long before we know the answers to these questions, which recur throughout this inquest on the Final Solution in the form of a sort of repeat design or chintz.

It is difficult to believe that there existed any fully conscious beings in Germany or German-occupied Europe in the last two years of the war who did not know that most of the Jews had disappeared and who had not heard some story that they had been shot or gassed. Nor do I suppose that there was anybody who did not have a friend who knew somebody else who had seen a massacre. More than a hundred million people must have known such things and whispered about them, and yet they could not make the climate unpleasant for the few thousands who carried them out. (…)

And the higher the Germans rose, the more frightened they became till we reach the case of Heinrich Himmler, who was made head of the Police State almost by chance and whom Hitler retained just because he was a frightened man who could be informed on and intimidated. (…)

But before the July 1944 plot to murder Hitler, not even the obscurest of wartime officials was ever taken away and shot. (…) Were these the me to stand up for the rights of humanity? They were, it is probable, mostly no more cruel and callous than the Germans or, indeed, the human race as a whole. (…)

The German of 1933 was a sort of caricature of European civilization which had grown more frivolous, greedier, and less critical, as material progress undermined some of the older disciplines. (…)

Hiob on his dunghill wished ‘that mine adversary had written a book’ and his prayer has been answered, for indeed there is nothing that this adversary did not commit on paper. I have spent close to four years among these documents and I have found their company neither gloomy nor depressing. For on many pages darts and gleams that thing which prevents all government becoming a living hell – human fallibility. (…) It is possible that murderous racialism is something ineradicable in the nature of ants and men, but the Robot State which will give it full effect cannot exist and never will.”

A Family Reunion

Photo: Dietmar Walser

The Brunner Family. An Estate

Photo: Dietmar Walser

Four years ago, the Jewish Museum received an extensive permanent loan: the estate of Carlo Alberto Brunner. Paintings, letters and documents, photographs, memorabilia and everyday objects of this Hohenems family enable a critical look at a European century. And they open a panoramic view on a family that in the first half of the 19^th century set out from Hohenems to Trieste to contribute to the development of the Habsburg Monarchy’s Mediterranean metropolis. From here, members of the Brunner family went on to Vienna and Switzerland, to England, Germany, and the USA. Their steep social and cultural ascent ended in Europe’s catastrophe, in the ravages of a continent filled with mutual hatred, and in the devastations of two world wars, which dispersed parts of the family around the world.

: Photo: Dietmar Walser

: Photo: Dietmar Walser

: Photo: Dietmar Walser

A Collection

The estate of Carlo Alberto Brunner includes his study library with approx. 1,500 books, his own correspondence and that of his parents Leone and Tea Brunner, business letters and other correspondence of the family, documents, certificates, medals, photographs, numerous memorabilia, hunting and smoking utensils, walking sticks, the family silverware of several generations, porcelain with the noble coat of arms of Segré-Sartorio, as well as oil paintings from Hohenems and Trieste, some by well-known Trieste painters such as Arturo Rietti and Alfredo Tominz.

Heinrich and Helene Brunner

Portrait of Heinrich Brunner, about 1830, Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate Portrait of Helene Brunner, about 1830, Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate

Heinrich Brunner (1784 – 1867) was born as Henle Wolf in Hohenems. When Jews became obliged to adopt a surname, he took, as did his brother Arnold, the name of Brunner. He became a butcher and cattle dealer like his father and married Helene Marx (1785-1855) of Reckendorf in Bavaria. In accordance with marital divisions of labor common in the early 19^th century, Heinrich managed all matters of business outside the home, while Helene was in charge of overseeing the household and the children’s education in line with the religious commandments, but also of representing her husband during his probably frequent extended periods of absence. Heinrich and Helene Brunner had nine children; in the early 1830s, four of them moved to Trieste for good where they founded the Brunners’ Triestine business empire. He probably gave up his occupation as butcher and opened himself a colonial goods store in Trieste in 1836, yet continued living in Hohenems. Here, he was active as council member of the Jewish Community, as chairman of the commission for the poor, and as board director of the burial society of the Hohenems Jewish Community. Being the first “Brunner,” he assumes the role of patriarch on the genealogical tree, which was likely commissioned by his grandson Lucian.

Genealogical tree of the Brunner family. From the estate of Lucian Brunner, loan of Francesca Brunner-Kennedy, Virginia

Jacob, Marco and Wilhelm Brunner

Within a brief time span, four sons of Heinrich and Helene Brunner, née Marx, have left Hohenems to seek their fortunes in Trieste. Jacob, Marco, and Wilhelm

—the latter two not yet twenty—establish a trade business in Trieste around 1832, which offers textiles purchased in St. Gallen, so-called “Swiss goods.” In 1835, Carlo (Hirsch) will follow them as well. In their joint letter to them of November 20, 1833, Heinrich tells his sons that the butcher’s shop was going well and that he, however, does not know where his sons might get hold of red calfskin, presumably for selling in Trieste. On the back page, mother Helene and sister Henriette report news from daily life. Helene urges her son Wilhelm to learn something and not to drowse. The Brunner brothers in Trieste frequently travel to St. Gallen. Thus, personal contact within the family is maintained as well. In 1835, Marco returns to devote himself entirely to purchase activities in St. Gallen and eventually establish a bank, from which UBS would ultimately emerge.

Helene and Henriette Brunner to Jacob, Marco and Wilhelm Brunner in Trieste, 20.11.1833. Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate

Heinrich Brunner to Jacob, Marco and Wilhelm Brunner in Trieste, 20.11.1833

Helene and Henriette Brunner to Jacob, Marco and Wilhelm Brunner in Triest, 20.11.1833

Lucian Brunner

Lucian Brunner (1850 – 1914) spent his childhood and early adulthood in Hohenems and St. Gallen, but was also often in Trieste and traveling. The son of Marco Brunner and Regina Brunner, née Brettauer, worked at the “Jacob Brunner Bank” in St. Gallen until 1888, but eventually settled in Vienna together with his wife Malwine Mandel and their three boys; here he was active as industrialist and politician. He became involved in a small liberal-oriented party, the “Viennese Democrats,” assuming functions as Viennese municipal council member, as chairman of the “Demokratischer Zentralverein” (Democratic central association), and as publisher of the associated newspaper Volkstimme. In the Viennese municipal council, he repeatedly confronted the anti-Semitic mayor Karl Lueger, for instance, when preventing subsidies from tax money for a church construction or when contradicting nationalistic positions. Lucian Brunner always kept in touch with his home community in Hohenems and donated significant sums for the construction of the hospital and the gymnasium. When he passed away on April 15, 1914, he left behind a bequest for a non-denominational school in his hometown of Hohenems. The Hohenems municipal council refused to accept the bequest. The sketch shows the Brunner family as typical representatives of Vienna’s upper bourgeoisie whose evenings were used for self-representation in their own parlor.

Lucian Brunner, speech in the Vienna City Council on the German-Czech Language conflict – after a Language decree by Minister of Interior Badeni made Czech a second mandatory official language in Bohemia and Moravia. Vienna, April 27, 1897.

Lucian Brunner, speech in the Vienna City Council about minority rights in Vienna and Trieste – on the occasion of the planned extension of the Czech Komensky-School in Vienna-Favoriten. Vienna, October 22, 1897.

Tea Brunner

In 1916, Rodolfo Brunner had acquired the large compound of Forcoli in Pontedera, Tuscany, which almost three decades later would become a refuge for some family members while other members of the Brunner family escaped to Switzerland or left for England in time. After the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in September 1943, Rodolfo and his wife, Gina, his daughter-in-law Maria Teresa (“Tea”) Brunner, née Clerici (1908-1947), and her four children fled to Forcoli; here they did not raise the German invaders’ suspicions and survived war and persecution while Leone Brunner, Tea’s husband, was involved in the resistance against the National Socialists. In honor of the American liberators, Tea Brunner gave a dinner party for “Combat Command B” on August 18, 1944. Tea Brunner died at a young age, leaving behind five children. Her eldest son was Carlo Alberto Brunner.

Rodolfo Brunner

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 Estate

Carlo Alberto Brunner, “Il Fondo del Ghetto“ (The Bottom of the Ghetto): About Rodolfo Brunner and the adventure of industrialization

Carlo Alberto Brunner, “Il Fondo del Ghetto“ (The Bottom of the Ghetto): About Rodolfo Brunner and World War I

Carlo Alberto Brunner

The Jewish Museum Hohenems owes its collections of Carlo Alberto Brunner (1933-2014) to his children who, after his passing, have decided to permanently loan the museum part of his estate. Carlo Alberto Brunner grew up in Trieste as the first son of Leone Brunner and Maria Teresa Brunner (née Clerici). He survived the Nazi period with his family on their compound in Forcoli, Tuscany. From the German invasion onward until the late 1960s, the family had to face substantial economic losses. After the sale of the property in Forcoli, Carlo Alberto moved to Israel and converted back to Judaism. He first lived on a religious and then on a socialist kibbutz. In 1974, he married Nurit Feuer and went on living with his family in an apartment in Giv’atayim, a suburb of Tel Aviv, surrounded by memorabilia from his Hohenems and Triestine family, oil paintings from the early 19^th century and from Trieste, heirlooms and memories. Carlo Alberto Brunner also left behind a book manuscript, Il Fondo del Ghetto, in which he contemplates the stations of his life and his family history as mirrored in the great political ideas, historic events, and nationalistic catastrophes of the 20^th century.

Carlo Alberto Brunner: Il Fondo del Ghetto (The Bottom of the Ghetto), Manuscript. Jewish Museum Hohenems

Carlo Alberto Brunner, Il Fondo del Ghetto (The Bottom of the Ghetto). Childhood under German occupation

Carlo Alberto Brunner, Il Fondo del Ghetto (The Bottom of the Ghetto). Israel and ethnic nation states

Leone Brunner

Leone Brunner (1908 – 1969) was the youngest child of Rodolfo and Gina Brunner in Trieste. He studied agriculture and converted to Catholicism in 1930. In 1932, he married Maria Teresa (Tea) Clerici; the couple had five children. On his family’s estates, Leone led the life of the landed gentry, characterized by a passion for hunting and other hobbies befitting his rank. As heir of his parents‘ considerable possessions, he also became board member of Banca Triestina as well as president of the stockbreeders’ association. After the German Wehrmacht’s invasion of Trieste in 1943, he joined the resistance against the National Socialists and assumed in this context the false identity of “Leopold Berti.” Part of his resistance activities consisted in drafting reports to the American armed forces on locations and types of the German invaders’ military installations and vehicles. In the meantime, his family remained fairly protected on the Brunners’ Forcoli country estate. Following liberation, the family returned to Trieste. After his wife’s death in 1947, Leone Brunner would never remarry.

Location description of German military installation in Rome, February 26, 1944. Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate

Guido Brunner

The crumbling of the multicultural city of Trieste into ethnic and political camps had a deep impact on families: Guido Brunner (1893 – 1916), older son of Rodolfo and Gina Brunner and, like his mother, an adherent of irredentism, the movement directed against Austria and in favor of annexation to Italy. This also brought him into conflict with his father who was loyal to the Habsburg Monarchy. As Austrian citizen, Guido Brunner was drafted to the army. However, he deserted and joined the Italian troops. His cousins, too, fought on different sides in World War I, for the Austrian Monarchy and in the British army.
On the Austrian side, Guido was sentenced to death as renegade, but pardoned by Emperor Franz Joseph. Nevertheless, he went to war for Italy in 1915 and was killed on June 8, 1916 in the battle of Monte Fior in the Alps. His remains were never found. Guido Brunner’s horse “Trieste” survived the battle and spent the rest of its life at the Brunners’ Tuscan estate in Forcoli. In line with an equestrian tradition, a hoof was prepared after the horse’s death and used as an object of decoration or utility. The metal cap displays the inscription: “Trieste Segui in guerra il suo padrone Guido Brunner mori e fu sepolta a Forcoli li 8. XII.1918” (“Trieste — He followed his master, Guido Brunner, into war, he died, and was buried in Forcoli on December 8, 1918.”)

Carlo Alberto Brunner, Il Fondo del Ghetto (The Bottom of the Ghetto). On Guido Brunner’s “heroic death”

Alfred Otto Munk

On the day of the pseudo-democratic referendum on Austria’s “Anschluss” to the German Reich on April 10, 1938, Alfred Otto Munk (1925 – 2002) and his 23-year-old sister managed to escape near Lustenau to Switzerland. Their mother, Rega Brunner, daughter of Lucian Brunner, had organized a smuggler and forged papers and had the children picked up by car in Vienna. She herself had already fled Austria around the days of the “Anschluss” and was staying in Zurich. With two additional helpers, her children reached Swiss soil. The family left Zurich in October and immigrated to the USA where Alfred Otto Munk initially joined the US army. After war end, he studied at Stanford and worked for decades in American oil companies. Alfred Otto Munk’s letter about his escape from Austria was addressed to his father, Hans Munk, who—divorced from Rega Brunner since 1926—had already moved to the USA in 1937 and was residing in California. In his agitation, Alfred Otto Munk apparently forgot to mention that the day of his escape from Austria had also been his 13^th birthday.

Alfred Otto Munk, letter to his father, April 1938

Angiola Sartorio

Angiola Elise Sartorio (1903-1995) was the daughter of Julie Bonn and the Italian painter Giulio Aristide Sartorio. Her grandmother Elise Bonn, née Brunner, a sister of the “Triestine brothers” of the first generation, had married into the Frankfurt banking family Bonn. Following her parents’ separation and years spent in England and Sweden, Angiola Sartorio moved back to Germany where she became acquainted with the ideas of modern dance and entered the company of Kurt Jooss, a student of the influential dance theoretician Rudolf von Laban, to eventually embark on a remarkable career as choreographer and dancer. In 1933, she created a choreography for Max Reinhardt’s Italian stage production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Florence. She rejected, however, Reinhardt’s invitation to accompany him to the USA. She had just opened a dance school of her own in Florence where numerous dancers fleeing from Germany and Austria had found work starting in 1933. In 1939, Angiola Sartorio decided to flee to the USA herself, first to New York, then to Santa Barbara where she continued teaching dance and choreography. She remained professionally active until the end of her life and took a stand for minorities and civil rights.