Remembering the Life of Denis John Fodor (1927 - 2020)

When I learned of the recent death of Denis Fodor, I immediately recalled my conversation with him in June 2012 that evoked a past I had previously explored only through old newspaper articles, biographies, and history books. I had been researching the life of Denis’s father, M. W. Fodor, a Vienna-based correspondent who had covered middle Europe and the Balkans during the inter-war period for the Manchester Guardian, and Denis knew more about his father’s life than anyone else alive. Plus, he had memories of living as a child in Vienna during the early 1930s, and many adventures after that. I spent more than two pleasurable hours listening to Denis tell about his life and that of his father, seeing the past through the eyes of a witness.

The conversation with Fodor has been arranged and was also attended by Fabienne Gouverneur, who at the time was a doctoral student at Andrássy University in Budapest doing research for a dissertation that centered on M.W. Fodor and his correspondence over the years with important people, especially Sen. J. W. Fulbright. She had interviewed Denis Fodor once before and would have subsequent meetings with him, becoming well acquainted with him and his family. Information gathered from her talks with Fodor helped inform her dissertation and related book, both titled Personal, Confidential: Mike W. Fodor als Netwerker und Kulturmittler. Both include a comprehensive biography of M.W. Fodor. 

We met with Denis Fodor at his apartment on a quiet street in Munich and our conversation was accompanied by a modest lunch that he served. He answered our many questions with eloquence, intelligence, and some sharp edges. He remembered some things that occurred more than seven decades ago with great clarity, but some memories were elusive and, frustratingly, some things, such as the circumstances of the deaths of his grandparents, he did not know. He later replied to many other questions in e-mail exchanges. 

Denis was still residing in Munich when the end came in late July 2020. He was 93 years old. His death was not (as far as I can tell) reported by any newspaper or memorialized in any obituary.  In his honor, I will tell here some of his life's narrative and a few of the memories that he shared with Fabienne and me. 

M. W. Fodor

The story of Denis Fodor’s life must begin by introducing his father and describing the circumstances of Denis’s early life in Vienna.  M. W. Fodor, Denis’s father, was named Marcel Vilmos Fodor at birth and was later known by his friends as “Mike.” He was born to a wealthy family in Budapest in 1890, and he trod an improbable path to a distinguished career in journalism; from that perch, he observed, commented on, interpreted, and swam in the tide of events in Europe that changed the world after World War I.  After earning a degree in 1911 from the University of Budapest in chemical engineering, M. W. went to Great Britain in 1912 to work for the Frodingham Iron and Steel Company in Scunthorpe.  When World War I began, he was initially interned as an “enemy alien,” but was released in March 1917 to live on the estate of Lord Mowbray at Allerton to do “important war work.” As the war ended, he -- implausibly -- got a job as a Manchester Guardian correspondent reporting from Vienna.[1] Although he lacked experience as a journalist, M.W. Fodor spoke several languages of countries in middle Europe and the Balkans, and he had traveled extensively in the areas he was to cover for his newspaper. He soon developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the leaders and politics of the European countries on this beat and he made good friends of other Anglo-American correspondents stationed in Vienna during the inter-war years, most of whom hung out at the Café Louvre, where M.W. was often at the center of conversations about current events.     

Photograph from Ken Cuthbertson,
Inside: The Biography of 
John Gunther. 

  

In 1925, M.W. Fodor married Martha Roob, whom he had met in Vienna. She had been born in Slovakia.  Her mother was Slovakian, and her father, from Vienna, was a professional soldier in the Austrian army. She lived for many years with her parents in Hungary after her father was posted there. 

Denis entered the world on June 27, 1927. He was M.W. and Martha Fodor’s first and only child. Their  celebration of his birth was interrupted a couple of weeks later when M. W. had to cover Vienna’s “Days of Horror” (July 15-17), during which Vienna’s police killed 85 demonstrators who were protesting a court’s acquittal of three right-wing militia members who had murdered a child and an invalid war veteran in January. They had shot into a crowd of Social Democrats who were parading in Schattendorf, a village near the Hungarian border. The July eruption of violence, during which demonstrators set the Ministry of Justice building on fire, propelled Austria toward the end of its democracy.[2] 

A year later, a more pleasant event occurred in the lives of the Fodors:  J.W. Fulbright of Fayetteville, Arkansas, came to Vienna. The future senator’s study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar had ended, and after a tour of Europe with his mother, he decided to hang out in Vienna. While there, he found the Café Louvre and M. W. Fodor, who became a mentor. Later, M. W. Fodor and Fulbright exchanged correspondence for more than two decades. 

As Denis was growing up, he met his father’s famous friends, sometimes with his parents at the Café Louvre and sometimes at their home on Börsegasse, near the Maria am Gestade Church. These friends included Dorothy Thompson, who arrived in Vienna as a young woman in 1921 with hopes of breaking into journalism; John Gunther who moved in 1930 to Vienna to cover events for the Chicago Daily News, and William Shirer, a journalist who stumbled into Vienna in 1929 as an insecure leftist reporter for the Chicago Tribune, a paper owned by reactionary capitalist. Thompson later became the second most famous woman in the U.S., eclipsed only Elinor Roosevelt, through the newspaper column she wrote from the later 1930s into the 1950s; Gunther’s fame came from his series of “Inside,” books, the first of which was Inside Europe, published in 1936; and Shirer – who was fired by his newspaper not long after he arrived in Vienna – became a household name when he made regular radio reports from Berlin in the latter part of the 1930s and his books Berlin Diary and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich became best sellers. 

Picture was taken in about 1932. Published in M.W. Fodor. 1939. South of Hitler.

Another of Fodor’s friends was Robert Best, whom Denis also liked, a reporter for the United Press news service, who later became infamous when he stayed in Germany during World War II and made propaganda broadcasts back to the U.S.  After the war, Best was convicted of treason for his actions and died while still in prison.[3]  

Robert Best (left) with his
brother and sister as his treason trial ended.
AP press photograph

Surrounded by these and other talented journalists, Denis Fodor grew up in turbulent times. In February 1934, a few months before his seventh birthday, Vienna had a brief civil war instigated by Chancellor Englebert Dollfuss and the Christian Socialist Party, with its militia and the country’s army routing the supporters of the Social Democrats. The victors installed the one-party Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front), an Austro-fascist government, as the country’s regime. A few months later, at the end of July, Dollfus was murdered by Austrian Nazis as they attempted to take over the government. In March 1938, when Denis was ten years old, Hitler sent the German Army to annex Austria.[4]

During his early school years, Denis was enrolled in the Schottenschule (now Schottengymnasium), a private Catholic school located a short walk from his home. At the time, he attended a Catholic Church with his mother, a Catholic. His father did not go to church but embraced Quaker beliefs. Nevertheless, both M. W. and Denis Fodor would have been classified under Nazi racial laws as Jewish because M. W. Fodor’s mother, Berta von Auspitz, came from a Jewish family. (M. W.’s father, Janos Fodor, was not Jewish.) 

As Vienna’s Nazis became more brazen in their behavior and anti-Semitism grew in Vienna, Denis’ parents sent him to England in 1936 to study at Abinger Hill School, a progressive and prestigious private school in Surrey. He was studying there on March 12, 1938, when German troops marched into Vienna. His parents fled Austria a week later after selling their apartment at a fraction of its value, leaving behind furniture, books, and papers. 

Soon after the Anschluss, the Fodor family made a trip to the United States and began the process of obtaining U.S. citizenship. With their citizenship clock ticking and permission granted to be absent from the U.S., the Fodors departed for England in June 1938 so that M. W. could resume reporting from Europe for the Chicago Daily News and the New Republic and Denis could prepare to return to his school. 

Two years later, following Germany’s invasion of the Low Countries, Denis and his mother hurriedly left England to travel to the United States, arriving aboard the M.V. Britannic on June 21, 1940. They were joined there by M.W. Fodor on the following day. He had been in Belgium in May when the Germans attacked, had made his way to Portugal via Paris, and had flown to New York City on a Pan Am “Atlantic Clipper” flight. 

The Fodor family spent the summer of 1940 at Dorothy Thompson’s expansive farm in Vermont. There, Denis spent time with his good friend Michael Lewis (1930-1975), Dorothy’s son, whom he had met earlier while living in Vienna. When summer ended, the Fodors settled in Chicago, where M. W. taught for a while at the Illinois Institute of Technology and later became a columnist for the Chicago Sun.  In 1943, M. W. was granted citizenship and Denis received “derivative citizenship.” 

Initial Citizenship Application, 1938

Denis attended Chicago’s Francis W. Parker High School, a private school with a progressive college-prep curriculum, graduating in May 1944.  One episode in his life during his high school years was documented in the Chicago Sun:  Living with his family at the Sherwin-on-the-Lake Apartments, 1205 Sherwin Ave., a few hundred feet from Lake Michigan, Denis had tried to rescue occupants of an airplane that had crashed into Lake Michigan within view of his apartment. According to the Chicago Sun, “Dennis Fodor, 15, … saw the plane crash, ran downstairs from his apartment…and began swimming out to the plane. His mother said, ‘Dennis tried at first to launch his sailboat, but he couldn’t; the water was too choppy. He then kicked off his shoes and began swimming but the rescue boat had already reached the pilot.’”[5] 

Between Fall 1944 and March 1949, Denis earned an undergraduate degree in English from Harvard College, taking time out to serve in the U.S. Army, with a stint as an army translator in Vienna. At Harvard, he played club football and basketball, and he had several stories published in the college’s literary magazines. He lived with two roommates in the apartment inhabited by Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he studied at Harvard. After graduating, Denis moved to Germany – the front line of the Cold War -- where he took a job reporting for the United Press. His parents were living in Berlin at the time. His father edited the Berlin edition of Die Neue Zeitung, a daily newspaper published by the occupying U.S. forces.  

1947 Harvard Yearbook 

In about 1953, Denis Fodor began reporting for Time and Life magazines. He covered the 1956 uprising in Hungary and soon after that was sent to Beirut to write about events in the volatile Middle East. Not long after finishing that assignment, he switched from reporting to editing for Time and Life magazines. He spent the rest of his life working as an editor, first for Time/Life, then the Encyclopedia Britannica, and finally Reader’s Digest. He lived during much of the 1960s in New York; several years during the 1970s in Paris, where Reader’s Digest had its European office; and most of the rest of his life in Munich. In 1981, he co-wrote a book, The Neutrals, about the history of the European countries that remained neutral – or tried to – during World War II. Published by Time/Life, it was positively reviewed. 

Cover of The Neutrals by
Denis J. Fodor

When I had the chance to ask him questions in June 2012, most of my inquiries had to do with his memories of his early years in Vienna and of his father. Below are the summaries of some of the questions I asked and his responses to those questions, plus some of his other recollections that the illustrated the richness of his life. 

The Stammtisch for Anglo-American Journalists at the Café Louvre

As I read about the lives of Fodor, Thompson, Gunther, Shirer, and other English-speaking journalists stationed in Vienna during the 1920s and 1930s, I was struck by the Café Louvre's role in their lives.[6] It was a regular meeting place for them as they did their work, and it provided a comfortable locale for socializing. At the Café Louvre, the journalists had a Stammtisch – a table or tables at the café reserved for them because they were regular customers. The café’s first-district location was perfect: it was a few steps from the Central Telegraph office from which the journalists could send their stories by telegraph. Also, it was across the street from Radio Austria, which could transmit urgent stories to their newspapers by wireless communications. 

Cafe Louvre in about 1940
From Der Spiegel

I was eager to hear what Denis remembered about Café Louvre, where he spent time as a kid. In the interview and some email exchanges, I learned the following from him: 

The café, located at the corner of Wipplinger and Renngasse, was in a neo-baroque or gothic building that “had eyebrows." The building had a dog-leg design. It was about five stories tall. 

In the middle of the L-shaped room of the cafe were marble top tables with cane chairs. On the sides were booths, upholstered in cloth. The waiters carried silver trays. The head waiter wore tails. The others wore smoking jackets with butterfly ties. Patrons called the head waiter by his last name. They called the other waiters by their first names. The usual order was one of several types of coffee -- melange, kleiner braune. You could also get a simple meal such as goulash or soup such as leberknödel. The dessert trays had cake and strudel of various kinds.” 

Robert Best at the Café Louvre 

One journalist used the Café Louvre as his office, even receiving telephone calls and his mail there. That man was Robert Best, who had, over time, made the café the central meeting point for most English-speaking foreign journalists in Vienna. He had done so by running a side business at the café that helped other journalists stay informed about breaking stories, covered for them when they were absent from the city, and provided other small services that made their jobs easier. The many journalists who worked with Best during his time in Vienna, most of whom considered him a friend, were shocked when he stayed in Europe after the start of World War II and made anti-Semitic propaganda broadcasts back to the U.S.[7] 

Best was a well-liked, but strange character. Elements of his life and personality were captured in two books written by journalists who knew him well. The first book, The Lost City, was written by John Gunther in the last half of the 1930s, but the publication of this roman a clef was delayed for nearly thirty years because of fears that some of its characters, who were clearly based on journalists and others living in Vienna in the early 1930s, would sue the publisher for libel. Foremost among those who might have claimed defamation was Robert Best, whose character in the novel was James N. Drew. According to the novel, Drew was “at once bashful, boyish, and portentous… a stout man in his middle thirties, with a heavy long face and an extraordinarily sweet – that was the only word for it – smile…. He was a mess, but, God damn it, he did have that sweetness.” In the novel, Drew – as apparently in real life --did some sleazy and even dishonest things.[8] 

Best was also the inspiration for the main character of William Shirer’s novel, The Traitor, which was set in Berlin. The character, Oliver Knight, according to the cover blurb, had “to choose…between returning to the land of his birth or staying in wartime Germany to satisfy his hunger for lust and power.” He made the wrong choice.[9] 

I asked Denis of his memory of Robert Best, and he gave a surprising answer. According to my notes, he observed that Robert Best was among his father’s best friends. Denis remembered Best as a "very nice man" and a "poor slob" who was deeply Southern, not too bright, and a bit uncouth. Illustrating the last point, Denis noted that Best spooned goulash sauce onto his Sachertorte. He also mentioned the Romanian "Princess" that Best supported (the “princess” was also an unsavory character in the novels written by Gunther and Shirer), saying that she was on drugs and he had to scramble to pay her costs. 

Denis recalled that Best often would loan his father money at the end of the month to help him make ends meet. He stated his opinion that his father would have testified in favor of Best as his trial for treason. He said that neither he nor his father blamed Best for what happened. According to Denis, Best was forced into his actions by specific circumstances, and we do not know what we would do if we were in those circumstances. 

The Fodors in John Gunther’s Novel, The Lost City

Among the sympathetic characters in Gunther’s The Lost City are three who were clearly based on the Fodors, whom Gunther obviously liked.  Laszlo Sandor was the name given to M. W. Fodor, Martha Fodor was Erji Sandor, and Denis was Albrecht, nicknamed “Putzi,” which was Denis’s nickname when he was a boy. Here are some short descriptions from the book: 

Like Balkan kings, [Laszlo] Sandor spoke no language perfectly, not even his own. His English had a Hungarian accent, his Hungarian a French accent, his French a German accent, his German an Italian accent, his Italian an English accent and so on around. His voice carried a friendly chuckle, and his eyes, beyond heavy owl-like spectacles, held a friendly gleam. He loved to elucidate, to share his wisdom; he would say, “Now, it is something inter-est-ing that will happen. Let me tell you about. He seldom conceded the necessity of using pronouns at the end of sentences. 

Erji was a Slovak and probably had gypsy blood. Her father, of the most respectable class, had been an officer….She asked nothing better of life than that she should run the household while he worked, sit quietly with him when he wrote his dispatches, and then go to a coffeehouse by his side in the evening. Laszlo asked for nothing more than what he had. She must always be close by [and] she could sing the old gypsy songs when they had a party.  

Albrecht, nicknamed Putzi, their six-year old son, came in with Fräulein. He paid little attention to his parents, but casually sat on the floor of the room where Sandor worked and pulled a pile of toys from a bottom shelf. Laszlo beamed and Erji dropped on her knees beside him, worshiping him with her eyes, adoring him. The child yanked at a tin locomotive. 

“For my name day I want a new locomotive. This locomotive has only one smokestack. I want a locomotive with two, three, six smokestacks! 

         “Locomotives do not come with six smokestacks.”

         “Oh, yes, they do. My locomotives do.” 

When I went to talk Denis Fodor in 2012, I took along a paperback edition of The Lost City to give to him in case he did not have a copy, had not read it recently, and might want to reread it.  A few days after the meeting, I received an e-mail from Denis in which he mentioned that he had re-read the book and concluded that “the characters in it are either more or less composites. My mother, for instance, is more composite than mother. I am Gunther’s Putzi and was called that, but don’t remember myself as acting Gunther-like.” 

Dorothy Thompson’s and Sinclair Lewis’s 1933 Christmas Celebration at Semmering

Denis was present as a child at a famous Christmas party hosted in 1932 by Dorothy Thompson and her husband Sinclair Lewis. The ten-day party was held at Semmering, a small Alpine ski resort town in Lower Austria about fifty miles from Vienna, and was attended by about forty of Dorothy’s friends, both journalists and others.[10] 

Accounts of this party can be found in the biographies of Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis and in a book titled Dorothy and Red by her friend Vincent Sheehan. Opinions about the party varied. M. W. Fodor is quoted in one of Thompson’s biographies as describing it as “a week of unadulterated pleasure enlivened by witty companions and his lovely Martha’s gypsy songs performed nightly to her own guitar accompaniment.”[10]  Other accounts, such as that given by Lilian Mowrer, had less generous assessments of the party.[11]  Amid ten days of fun, boredom, and drinking, two things happened to change the life of Dorothy Thompson: her deepening estrangement from her husband Sinclair Lewis and the feelings that she developed for one of her guests, Baroness Christa Hatvay (also known as Christa Winsloe), author of a book titled Mädchen in Uniform, which developed into a love affair.[12] 

Photos from this holiday party can be found in Sheean’s book and in Dorothy Thompson’s papers housed at Syracuse University. Included among them are those of the five young children at the party, including Denis. On December 24, 2012, the day before the eightieth anniversary of the party, I sent an email to Denis to ask him if he had any recollections of it. He replied that he had some, but they were vague: “The Fodors put up at our accustomed hostelry, the burgherly Hotel St. Johann. The others stayed at the Panhans, a modern (for the times) luxury hotel. One or others may even have stayed at the very conservative and luxurious Südbahn Grand Hotel. For skiers there was one slope that had a rope-lift, a novelty at the time, and another slope that had none. I used the slope that had none (neither my father nor mother skied). Meetings were over meals and cocktails. Buses, belonging to the postal service, had skis attached to their front wheels and chains at the rear, took care of the to-ing and fro-ing.” He later added, “I seem to remember a large Christmas tree, very silvery, and boxes etc…..people… and Red Lewis sitting there smiling benignly…It was in a house, not a hotel or hotel room. No Dorothy, no Michael.”

Children at Semmering, 1932
Denis Fodor is standing. Sitting by him is Michael Lewis.

Later I sent him two photos of the five young children at the event and asked him to point himself out in the photos. He confirmed that he is the only kid standing in the first picture, and the young boy near him was Michael Lewis. In the second picture, he is sitting, and Michael Lewis is standing. Denis commented, “I used to dress well back then.”

Children at Semmering, 1932
Denis Fodor is sitting. Michael Lewis is standing.

Fodor and Fulbright

Denis was only one year old when J. W. Fulbright showed up in Vienna, so he had no memories of him. However, he heard his father talk about Fulbright. I asked him what he recalled his father saying, and he replied that M. W. Fodor had liked Fulbright from the start. He was impressed and amused by him. Then he repeated a story about Fulbright that he heard from his father: 

In Vienna, it was custom before Christmas for different charities to collect donations from people for "Winterhilfe" -- literally winter help. One day, he and Fodor were together at a place selling dairy products and were chatting when a person soliciting contributions for the Nazi Winterhilfe campaign came into the room and walked up to Fulbright to ask for a donation. Fulbright looked at the guy then turned to Fodor for help figuring out who was soliciting the donation, asking, "What domination is this?"

Denis Fodor and Kim Philby

Denis lived in Beirut for more than a year in 1958 and 1959, and he recalled that his residence was an apartment had an angled view of the campus of the American University of Beirut and another angled view of Beirut`s main lighthouse. Among Denis’s acquaintances in Beirut was Kim Philby, who was a journalist working for the Economist. According to Denis, Philby used to hang out at the Hotel Normandie, just off the Corniche, and “after stealing the wife of Sam Pope Brewer, the Beirut bureau chief of the New York Times,” he took an apartment not far from there. Denis saw him daily and went to his house many times. In fact, according to Denis, Philby was good friends with all the Americans there. Philby stayed in Lebanon until January 1963, when he flew to Moscow as evidence was mounting that he had been an important spy for the Soviet Union. Before then, according to Denis, he and Philby’s other past and present colleagues did not know that he was a spy.[13]

Denis recalled that his father had known Philby when, as a young man, he “pitched up in Vienna in female company.” Philby connected with the Anglo-American press corps in Vienna because of his connections with a member of the British press corps there.[14] During his time in Vienna, according to Denis, “He seems to have been an overt far-leftist… and only turned surreptitious later.” Denis also noted that “ingenues of the Liberal flavor” who were visiting Vienna, as well as other visitors with suitable recommendations, often ended up “being hand-held by my father.” 

M.W. Fodor From His Son’s Perspective

When you read about someone’s life, it is important not only to find out about what they did but also get a sense of what they were like and what motivated them. We know that many of Fodor’s friends thought highly of him, but it is also valuable to see him through his son's eyes. Here are some of Denis’s observations about his father:

         My father was gregarious. Before and during World War I, he had the money to circulate among the haute monde. 

My father was never a writer as such. He was a Central European intellectual of a liberal orientation and had the kind of gregarious personality that could land him all kinds of interesting jobs. He was a wonderful moderate man and a pacifist. 

[My father] deserved to be rated an intellectual…He had a higher education not only in engineering but also in the humanities. 

The significance of John Hamilton [whom M.W. Fodor said was his mentor] to my father was as a teacher of the craft, not of the flow of history. My father was anything but a journalist by education (though my grandfather (part-) owned two newspapers, one in Budapest the other in Vienna). It was Hamilton, something of an intellectual, but mainly just a Manchester Guardian hand, who showed my father how to make his special kind of savvy of use to the editorial desks in Manchester. My father was grateful to him for this, but he also respected him for the acuity of his judgment of the situation as it developed in Berlin in the twenties.”  

As the only correspondent on the Guardian’s staff who was not Anglophone, the copy-desk editing that my father required was done in Manchester….My father filed daily by dictation over the telephone and did so from our apartment’s library, not from a separate office. His daily beat consisted of meeting a circle of local personalities – officeholders, diplomats, scientists, musicians, artists, and so on. 

   My father:

*never wore a wedding ring.    

*never raised his voice, even when he was angry; in fact, he was seldom angry.  

*was not docile but was quiet, even-tempered.

*had a strong sense of history.

*understood and wrote about leaders as people.

*was not a monarchist but thought the breakup of the empire was a mistake. 

*did not like Dollfuss very much. (Contrary to my impression based on his book, South of Hitler)

 

In one email, Denis told me, “I always enjoy opportunities to talk about my father, who remains to me dearly memorable.”  I am glad that I had the opportunity to meet Denis Fodor, not only to learn more about his father and but also to learn more about his remarkable life.   

--------------------------

Footnotes:

[1] Fran Baker. 2016. South of Hitler: Marcel W. Fodor and the Manchester Guardian, August 12, The John Rylands Library Special Collections Blog, accessed at https://rylandscollections.com/2016/08/12/south-of-hitler-marcel-w-fodor-and-the-manchester-guardian/

Fabienne Gouverneur. 2019. Personal, Confidential: Mike W. Fodor als Netzwerker und Kulturmittler. New Academic Press, Vienna.   The dissertation on which the book is based can be accessed at this web site: https://www.andrassyuni.eu/pubfile/de-213-dissertationfabiennegouverneur2016-doi.pdf

Dan Durning. 2011. Marcel W. Fodor, Foreign Correspondent  

https://www.scribd.com/document/65502558/Marcel-W-Fodor-Foreign-Correspondent 

[2] See July 15-17, 1927: Days of Horror in Vienna, Austria (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2012/01/july-15-17-1927-days-of-horror-in.html 

[3] Finding M. W. Fodor: Fulbright, Vienna, and Me (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/09/finding-m-w-fodor-fulbright-vienna-and.html 

[4] See Austria’s Fatherland Front, 1933-1938 (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/08/austrias-fatherland-front-1933-1938.html 

The Assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss, July 25, 1934 (blog entry).  https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/08/assassination-of-engelbert-dollfuss.html 

[5] “Lake Crash Kills Flier in Snow Storm.” 1943. Chicago Sun, April 14, p. 1.

[6] A Great Night at the Café Louvre in Vienna (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2012/02/great-night-at-cafe-louvre-in-vienna.html 

[7] Edwards, John Carver. 1982. “Bob Best Considered: An Expatriate's Long Road to Treason.” North Dakota Quarterly, Winter, 50 (1): 73-90 and “Worst Best.” 1943. Time, February 15. [About journalist Robert Best]  

[8] John Gunther. 1964. The Lost City. Harper & Row. 

[9] William L. Shirer. 1950. The Traitor. Farrar, Straus, & Co. 

[10] Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis Celebrate Christman in Semmering (Austria), 1932 (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2012/12/dorothy-thompson-and-sinclair-lewis.html 

[11] Marion Sander. 1973. Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time. Houghton Mifflin Co. p. 179. 

[11] Vincent Sheean. 1963. Dorothy and Red. Houghton Mifflin Co., p. 213. 

[12] See Peter Kurth. 1990. American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson. Little, Brown and Company. 

[13] Robert Littell. 2012. Young Philby. Thomas Dunn Books. (Philby’s time in Vienna is included in the roman a clef.)

[14] The reporter was G.E.R. Geyde. His powerful account of the 1934 civil war is in chapter 9 of his book (p. 104), Betrayal in Central Europe in which he mentions, but not by name, a young Englishman who was helping some threatened social democrats escape capture. The young man was Philby, who had recently signed on with Moscow as a spy. G.E.R. Geyde. 1939. Betrayal in Central Europe, Harper & Brothers Publishers. Also, see Littell 2012, p. 53.

 

Vienna in 1873 as Seen by a Visitor from Little Rock, Arkansas

The November 2, 1873 edition of the Daily Arkansas Gazette contained the following letter describing what a visitor from Little Rock saw while visiting Vienna a few weeks earlier:

Vienna: The German Capital as Seen by a Citizen of Little Rock

We are permitted to make public the following extracts from a private letter to Capt. H. H. Rottaken from his half-brother Mr. E Thuemmler, who left a few weeks since for a European tour:

Vienna October 8, 1873

For some days past I have been doing this peculiarly “mixed” city. I say “mixed” because you have here a little from all parts of the world, human and brute –animate and inanimate. I imagine Babel could not have been a much more confounding place than Vienna is to an American. This is supposed to be a German city, but enter a given crowd of people on any of the main streets and ask a question in German, it as likely to be answered in Portuguese, Spanish, or English as is German. It is utterly impossible by appearance to judge with the least certainty a man’s nationality – faces, dress and manners are as varied as languages, and I very much doubt that the real Viennese is at all times quite certain he is in his own “Kaiserstadt.”

It is impossible to impart, in any degree, an idea of the universal splendor found in the richer parts of Vienna. It is true [that] magnificence is cheap where labor costs next to nothing, and where the commonest laborer who is at all permitted to engage in the production of articles of elegance, must be himself a “master” in his art – but the true secret of the wonderful impression that both the exterior and interior beauties of Vienna produce, is to be found in the correct taste and the constant longing for the beautiful, characteristic, in an eminent degree, of the inhabitants of this place.

The prevalent building is a four-story, broad, white house, in a style of architecture curiously compounded of the modern and antique. Every building, of any consequence, has it porticos (also supported by splendid caryatides) and elaborate ornamentation at every available point – the whole white as snow. The interior of the better houses is all gilt and glitter, and even the lower middle classes are seldom content without a few real oil paintings, and an attempt at sculptural display in the “best room.”

There are more soldiers in the street every day than in St. Louis during the liveliest times of the war. Music, street cars, policemen, fruit and flower-vendors and brilliant cafes are “thick.” At night the brilliancy of the streets is marvelous. Everything possible is done for the comfort of the population. Parks, shaded walks with frequent benches, are found in all parts of Vienna, and really, from the number of people constantly in the streets, one would suppose that the outdoor beauties were adequately appreciated.

 

Buildings of the 1873 World's Fair are in the foreground;
St. Stephens Church and the walled city are in the middle;
the Vienna woods are in the distance
Picture from Wikicommons

The world’s fair is certainly grand.[1]  I have been there five times, and am only beginning to obtain a clear impression of its extent, its wonders, and its excellencies. I have, of course, a great many notes, and will, in time, make use of them.

 

This was the entrance to the 1873 World's Fiar
From Wikicommons

Leaving New York on the 6^th of September, I arrived at Bremen on the 20^th – then on to Leipzig and after two days there, to Selka.[2]  Remaining but a few days, I proceeded to “Miesitz.” I then came to Vienna.

 **********************

Background of the Letter’s Author and Recipient

The young man who wrote this letter, Eugene Thuemmler (1848 – 1891), had moved from St. Louis to Little Rock in about 1869. Thuemmler was not a German immigrant, but both of his parents were. His father Traugott Edward Thuemmler  (1815 – 1867) was born in Saxony, and his mother Sophia (1812 – 1890) was from Prussia. Edward was born in St. Louis on March 13, 1848 and grew up there.

An 1863 graduate of St. Louis High School, Thuemmler – according to his passport application – was 5’ 10” tall,  with gray eyes, brown hair, oval face, and a “Teutonic” nose.  

The letter was written to Thuemmler’s half-brother, Herbert Herman Rottaken, who had been born in either Elderfeld (a city now part of Wuppertal) or Aachen, Germany, on July 25, 1839.[3]  In about 1844, while he was still a young child, he had been brought to the United States by his parents. His mother was Sophia Rottaken, later Thuemmler. The first name of his father is lost to history. According to family lore, the Rottaken family, which included father, mother, Herbert, and his younger sister Augusta (born in 1843), lived briefly in Little Rock in 1846.[4]

If they were in Little Rock in 1846, it was a brief stay. Sophia and the two children were in St. Louis in 1847 when she re-married on March 27th. (It is not known if her first husband died or if the couple had divorced.) A year later, she and Traugott, her new husband, were the parents of Edward, their first child together. The 1850 census showed Traugott and Sophia living in St. Louis with Herbert, Augusta, Edward, and a newly born daughter named Emily. Traugott managed the boarding house in which they were living. Later he got a job as the executive secretary of an insurance company

H. H. Rottaken (who opted to keep his father’s last name) moved to St. Charles, Missouri, late in the 1850s, and soon after the Civil War started, he joined the Seventh Regiment of the Missouri Cavalry Volunteers.  He initially held the rank of Sergeant, but in 1862 was commissioned as an officer, rising to the rank of Captain. He had a distinguished war service record.[5]

After the war, Rottaken returned to St. Louis, but in 1868 he and Susan, his wife, moved to Little Rock to open a wholesale liquor store. He quickly established a reputation as a sportsman and hunter, but his business struggled in a highly competitive market filled with well-established merchants.[6]  He was joined in his retail store in 1870 by his step-brother Edward Thuemller, who became a partner. However, the step-brothers ended their partnership in early 1871.

After the split, Thuemller ran the business with a partner (“Thuemmler & Eliot”) for about nine months, then on his own (“Thuemmler & Co,”). He closed the store in December 1872.

After leaving the retail liquor business, Rottaken took a job as a deputy sheriff, appointed by W. S. Oliver, the elected Sheriff, a Republican. In August 1872, he received a political appointment from the Republican governor: he was named head the Pulaski County board of registrars. However, after he figured out that the job entailed registering voters likely to vote for the Republican Party and finding ways to refuse to register other voters, he resigned this post.[7]  Soon after that, he affiliated himself with the Democratic-Conservative Party.

In October 1873, the Citizen’s Party – a stand-in for the Democratic-Conservative Party – nominated him as its candidate for mayor. His Republican-nominated opponent was Frederick Kramer, a German immigrant, prosperous merchant, and well-known citizen of the city.[8]  The election was scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 5, just four days after the publication of the letter.

The letter was, of course, not political, but its publication so near the election might have been. The newspaper that published it, the Daily Arkansas Gazette, was the Democratic-Conservative Party organ and it strongly supported and promoted Rottaken’s candidacy for mayor. Perhaps the letter was intended, at least in part, to give a boost to this reputation.

Whether the letter’s publication had anything to do with politics, it was likely read with pleasure by immigrants from Europe who knew Vienna as one of the great capitals of the world and by others with an interest in foreign cities they knew they would never visit.

And after the letter was published

After this European trip, Thuemller returned to Little Rock and resumed his life in the city. Like his step-brother Rottaken, Thuemuller was a sportsman and he was president of the local sharp shooter’s club. He also had a strong cultural bent and was a fine singer with the Little Rock Maennerchor. Periodically he wrote a column for the Arkansas Gazette on the Little Rock economy. In 1880, he received patent 226,570 for a thermo-dynamic engine he had designed.

In 1881 Thuemmler, with his wife Harriet (he married her in Washington D.C. on June 21, 1874) and two small daughters, moved back to St Louis and he worked there as a grocer. In about 1886, he and his family moved to Chicago, and he operated a wholesale “notions” business until his death on March 11, 1891.

Rottaken decisively lost the 1873 elected. However, his fortunes changed a few months later when in April, 1884, he joined the Baxter forces in the Brooks-Baxter War. Rottaken was made a captain in the Baxter forces and was first appointed the chief ordinance officer and later the inspector general. 

When the war ended with Baxter’s victory, Rottaken was rewarded for his service with an appointment as the Pulaski County Sheriff.  After the appointive term ended, he was elected for a two-year term in 1876. During his terms in office, he hired his step-brother Thuemmler as a deputy sheriff.

Rottaken’s wife died in 1876. Two years later, in 1878, he married Fredericka Reichardt Miller, the widow of Charles Miller who had been the business partner of Frederick Kramer when in 1863 the two had started a grocery store that grew into one of the most successful in the city. His new wife was the sister of Adelina, Kramer’s wife.

 

Fredericka Miller Rottaken on the day of
her wedding to H. H. Rottaken, 1878
(Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 10, 1938, p. 63)

Rottaken continued to be active in local public service. In 1881, he was the chief of Little Rock’s volunteer fire department and nearly lost his life in an accident that knocked him off the top of a tall ladder while fighting a fire. From 1892 to 1894, he held the office of Pulaski County Assessor, enraging the city’s largest businesses with a dramatic upward reassessment of their property values. He was elected city alderman in 1901 and served two two-year terms. 

Aside from his public sector work, Herbert and Fredericka were active investors in real estate and various mining ventures.  Over time, their investments made them quite wealthy. Rottaken died on September 17, 1908 following a hunting accident in which he accidently shot himself, nearly severing his left arm.[9]

*********************

[1] The 1873 World’s Fair was held in Vienna. In preparation, the city’s infrastructure was improved through extensive public investments. The fair opened on May 1^st and closed on October 31th. It featured impressive pavilions constructed in the city’s Prater area. In all, it offered 26,000 exhibitions that were visited by over 7 million visitors. Unfortunately for Austria, this number was far less than expected. The attendance was held down by news of a cholera outbreak in the city and a stock market panic that marked the beginning of a world-wide recession. Because of the relatively small attendance, the fair’s revenues paid only about a third of the cost of staging the event. See http://www.wienmuseum.at/en/exhibitions/detail/the-metropolis-experimentvienna-and-the-1873-world-exhibition.html  and http://jdpecon.com/expo/wfvienna1873.html

[2] Selka is a village about 50 miles due South of Leipzig. It is now part of the Thuringia Province. At the time, it was in the Saxony-Altenberg Province of the newly unified German state. Miesitz in a small town about 40 miles southeast of Selka, also now in the Thuringia Province. (Both Selka and Miesitz were in East Germany after the end of World War II.)  It is likely Thuemller’s father lived in Selka before he emigrated and that Thuemller had relatives in Miesitz. Neither were or are tourist destinations.

[3] The Elderfeld birthplace was mentioned in an undated and unattributed obituary published in a German language newspaper, likely the Arkansas Staatszeitung. This clipping of the obituary is in a scrapbook that is part of the Miller-Rottaken Family Papers in the archives of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The Aachen birthplace is stated in a short biography written in the 1970s by a granddaughter of Rottaken. This typewritten biography is also in the Miller-Rottaken Family Papers. In the 1870 census, Rottaken told the census takers that he was from Prussia. See the Miller-Rottaken Family Collection, BC.MSS.10.28, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Arkansas Studies Institute.

[4] The German-language obituary mentioned in footnote 3 says he and his family were in LR in 1848. The typewritten bio says he and family were in LR in the 1850s. See the Miller-Rottaken Family Collection, BC.MSS.10.28 Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Arkansas Studies Institute.

[5] His army service is documented in the biographical sketch mentioned above. See the Miller-Rottaken Family Collection, BC.MSS.10.28 Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Arkansas Studies Institute.

[6] The October 7, 1868 issue of the Daily Arkansas Gazette (p. 3} noted “H. H. Rottaken & Co. have opened a wholesale wine, liquor, and cigar store one door from the Gazette office.”  Soon after he arrived, Rottaken convinced the managers of the State Fair to hold a pigeon shooting contest as part of the fair activities. He won the competitions in 1868, 1869, and 1870, and ran a small business supplying pigeons for such competitions. The publisher of the Gazette was impressed by Rottaken and wrote two stories about him, touting his sportsman skills and his pack of dogs. See Our Neighbor Rottaken. Daily Arkansas Gazette, August 11, 1869, p. 4. And Rottaken, Daily Arkansas Gazette, July 8, 1870, p. 4.

[7] Rottaken testified on his experiences as a registrar at a one of the hearings that followed the Brooks-Baxter War. The Investigation Committee, Daily Arkansas Gazette, July 29, 1874, p. 4.

[8]  For more information on Kramer, see this entry in the Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture:   http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=12300

[9] Herbert Rottaken Dies from Shot. Daily Arkansas Gazette, September 18, 1908, p. 1.

Come Hither Keats to Praise the Beauty of European Hotel Breakfasts

If I were a poet, I would write an ode to the European breakfast. Well, more specifically, to the complementary breakfasts served by moderately priced European hotels (CBSBMPH), at least in the western and northern parts of the continent. In the ode, I would praise the bountiful nature of the offerings and the richness of the choices. Also, I would rhapsodize how the breakfasts satiate those who partake of them. I might also contrast those breakfasts with those “served” in similar hostelries in the U.S., where the selection is meager, little is palatable, and nothing is memorable. Those sugar-based breakfasts are piled onto flimsy paper plates and eaten, amid debris left by earlier patrons, with flexible plastic utensils.  

 

Entrance to breakfast room in Aalborg, Denmark

I honed my appreciation of CBSBMPH during my recent Eurail Pass trip during which I typically stayed at a moderately price hotel near a train station. The hotels in Germany, Denmark, Norway, France, and Austria almost always provided breakfast in the price of the room. In Spain and Switzerland, breakfasts had to be purchased separately. As in the United States, more expensive hotels rarely had complementary breakfasts, instead demanding up to 20 Euros for their breakfast feasts. 

The complementary breakfasts I had during the trip were usually self service, though the one in Büsum (Germany) was not. There, the waitress described the options and quickly brought the preferred breakfast to the table with a kännchen of coffee. Elsewhere, breakfast items were spread across tables and each person piled what he or she wanted to eat on a plate or two. With few exceptions, drinks were also available for the taking. A few places served hot drinks Dennys-style, putting a thermos filled with the drink of your choice on the table. However, most often coffee was drawn from a huge machine with many choices (espresso, cappuccino, etc.), each selected by the push of a button. These automated machines make good coffee if they are fed fresh coffee beans. Every breakfast offered a choice of juices, including orange juice.^** (In the old days, finding fresh-tasting orange juice in Europe was a challenge. Now, squeezed orange juice is widely available.)

From left to right: scrambled eggs and small wurst, sliced meats, sliced cheese, veggies and fruits, fruit compote, butter/margerine, jams, cereals, bottle water

The breakfast options always included fresh bread (brötchen in Germany, semmeln in Austria, sliced baguettes in France, and loaves of many varieties of heavy bread in Denmark and Norway), different varieties of cheese (soft cheeses predominate in Denmark and Norway, hard cheeses elsewhere), sliced meats (ham is the most popular), butter (also butter substitutes for the calorie conscious), different vegetables (sliced peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.), and many different types of jam. For me, an ideal breakfast consists of a couple of semmeln or brötchen smeared with butter, one eaten with Swiss cheese and ham, the other with a fresh jam.

 

To the right is a automatic coffee-tea machine and fresh fruit (not pictured are a selection of juices and containers of yoghurt)

Other options for breakfast usually included cereals (granola) with milk; fruits and nuts to be eaten with yogurt; fruits; and a fruit compote. Probably more than half of the hotels where I ate breakfast also offered scrambled or boiled eggs, and many of those also provided bacon or wurst alongside the eggs (a sign of the Americanization of the breakfasts). At some hotels there were surprises such as crepes or pastries, and one hotel had a grill where patrons could fry their own eggs. 

 

Bread selection. Slice bread is popular in Denmark, but it also has rolls 

After about 25 hotel-provided breakfasts over 35 days in October and November, I remain an enthusiastic fan of them. Not one of these breakfasts was bad or a disappointment. Some were inspiring. In fact, I wish Keats were around to write a proper ode to the beauty of the CBSBMPH, I am sure it would bring tears to my eyes. Of course, the tears would not be as voluminous as those shed the next time I eat a waffle at a Day’s Inn. 

Some more pictures of breakfasts:

Breakfast at a hotel in St. Anton located in the Austrian Alps. At this breakfast, coffee or tea was brought to the table. Bread jams, and juices are straight ahead ; to the right are sliced meats, cheese, yogurt, fruits and veggies; to the left is a warmer containing scrambled eggs 

 

Breakfast in Vienna: Table with sliced meats and cheese, fruits and vegges; to the left is a griddle on 
which diners can fry eggs; behind the table are cereals, yogurt, and jams

At same breakfast in Vienna, a table with breads, pastry, and fresh fruit (also a toaster for sliced bread)

Three Changes in Vienna, Two of them Good

During my Vienna visit in late November, I noticed three changes that might interest past and future visitors.  Two of the changes were positive and one is annoying.

Front Entrance to the Vienna Main Train Station

The first change is that most rail traffic is now routed through the recently opened Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station). This change has been expected since December 2009 when the South Train Station (Suedbahnhof) was abolished and construction of the new one began. 

Modernistic Design of the Main Train Station

The Hauptbahnhof was mostly complete when I was in Vienna in November 2015, and trains were being routed through it. Now, it is a busy station.  Also, it is a spacious, attractive, and luxurious station with its own large shopping center. It offers many good places to eat, plus plenty of stores for shopping. Remember, one of the business advantages of locating in a train station is that a shop there does not have to follow the country’s restrictive hours of operation. Thus, unlike other stores in Vienna, the stores at the Hauptbahnhof (and other train stations in the city) can open on Sunday. 

Top Floor of the Main Train Station

Information Board on the Top Floor of the Main Train Station

The station is built on three levels. On the lowest level, a traveler can access much of the public transportation to and from the station, including the U-bahn (Vienna's subway) and the street cars. The second floor consists of most of the 90 stores that are part of the Hauptbahnhof shopping center. The third floor has provides access to the trains, plus ticket offices and several restaurants.  In truth, when I arrived at the first time by bus (which unloads to the second level of the station), the layout was a bit confusing. Also, when I arrived on another day on a train from another city, I got turned around and had difficulty finding the bus stop. Fortunately, the station has many signs and it does not take too long to figure out where you need to go. 

Burger Brothers Restaurant on the Top Floor of the Main Train Station

Of course, train stations are a magnet for shady looking people who stand around in groups and watch passing people through the corners of their eyes. Also, they attract people with all kinds of personal problems. Nevertheless, the Hauptbahnhof seems to be a secure place with plenty to do while waiting for your train to arrive.

Great Bakery on the Second Floor of the Main Train Station

Related to the opening of the Hauptbahnhof, another positive change is that travelers can now take a train from there to the Vienna Airport. In fact, for many trains, the Hauptbahnhof is not the end station in Vienna, but the next-to-the-last station with the train continuing to the airport. Because of the new Hauptbahnhof-Airport link, travelers arriving at the Vienna Airport, they now board a train there that will take them not only to the Hauptbahnhof but also to other locations throughout Austria and Europe. 

With the opening of the train station, Vienna is helping travelers avoid the need to travel between stations for their trips. For example, when I was living in Vienna in 1972-73, travelers who arrived from Budapest and wanted to continue to Italy would have to get out at the West Train Station and travel by tram or taxi to the South Train Station. No longer.

Vienna’s second change is that Herrengasse is now a pedestrian zone from Schottengasse to the Hofburg entrance, though taxis and fiaker can still drive on it. The road has been filled in to eliminate the curb. For people who do not drive, this change makes walking along the narrow road much safer and faster. It should be noted that the rest of Herrengasse from the Hofburg to the Albertina Museum is open to automobiles and buses.

Herrengasse near Palais Kinsky

Famous Cafe Central along Herrengasse

The third change in Vienna is mostly an irritation. Two multi-story buildings are being constructed in the open space between the front to the main Hofburg building at Heldenplatz and the entrance to the Volkspark. These new, temporary buildings, behind the back of the statue of Archduke Charles, block views from the Hofburg toward the Parliament building and the Rathaus.

Statue of Archduke Charles on Heldenplatz, with Parliament (left) and the City Hall (right) in the distance; this
view will be blocked by the temporary Parliament buildings being constructed behind the statute

Construction on Heldenplatz near the end of November, 2016

Signs on a fence surrounding the construction site explain that the buildings are temporary structures that will be used in the next few years by the Austrian Parliament. They are needed because the interior of the Parliament building will be reconstructed. 

 As an old city, Vienna is constantly being rebuilt and spruced up. Fortunately the painful disruption usually results in improves to the city.