Eduard STEINDLER was born in the town of Bürmoos, a few miles north of Salzburg, on April 21, 1892. He was the younger of the two children of the Jewish couple Paula and Julius STEINDLER who were shopkeepers in Bürmoos.
Eduard’s older sister Josefine had been born in Bürmoos a year earlier.
Josefine’s and Eduard’s mother Paula STEINDLER was the daughter of Eduard HAHN and his wife Henriette whose maiden name was GLASER, and she was a niece of the sucessful Bürmoos glass manufacturer Ignaz GLASER.
Paula STEINDLER’s brothers Adolf and Max HAHN were executives of the Bürmoos glass factory that had been founded by Alois KUPFER and his son-in-law Ignaz GLASER (who was their uncle, the brother of Henriette HAHN). Henriette HAHN’s younger son Max ran the Emmyhütte factory in Hackenbuch bei Moosdorf which was named after its co-owner Emma GLASER, the wife of Ignaz GLASER.
Emma GLASER was a daughter of the glass manufacturing family KUPFER from Frankenreuth in Bavaria.
On August 18, 1889 Emma and Ignaz GLASER’s son Hermann was born in Bürmoos. In 1894 the GLASER family moved to Salzburg, the provincial capital, and was granted local citizenship rights under the old Austrian Heimatrecht laws.
Ignaz GLASER was active in the establishment of Salzburg’s Jewish cemetery and Synagogue, and he was a founding member of the Salzburg Jewish Community (the legally authorized organization of the city’s Jews) and was a member of its board of trustees.
The grave of Ignaz and Emma GLASER is in the Salzburg Jewish cemetery in Salzburg-Aigen and the main street in Bürmoos is the Ignaz Glaser Strasse.1
Their son Dr. Hermann GLASER was a lawyer and member of the cultural council of the Jewish Community in Salzburg. After the death of his father in 1916 he became the director and co-owner of the once flourishing glass factories in Bürmoos and Hackenbuch.
Unfortunately they were no longer technically up to date and then they lost most of their market when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up after WWI. In 1926 the business went bankrupt. When the business went under the extended Jewish family in the city of Salzburg and nearby towns saw no future for themselves there and moved away.
The family names of the factory dynasty from Bohemia, Bavaria and Salzburg are still remembered, but the lives of the descendants of Henriette GLASER Hahn and Eduard Hahn are not well known. The fates of the three couples, Klara and Adolf HAHN, Margarethe and Max HAHN, and Paula and Julius STEINDLER – along with their eight children born in Bürmoos and Hackenbuch who either went to school in Salzburg or who learned a trade there – are instructive.
Seven of the eight children didn’t survive the Holocaust, along with two of their parents – thus making ten Holocaust victims from this one extended family.
The family of Klara and Adolf HAHN, who lived in Bürmoos until the Glass factory went broke in 1926 left Austria for Czechoslovakia where the Kupfers still had a glass factory.
After the Nazis overran Czechoslovakia Klara and Adolf were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Adolf HAHN was murdered there at age 79.
His 65 year old wife Klara, née KUPFER, was transferred to the Treblinka death camp where she was murdered.
Two of their three children, Eduard who had been born in Bürmoos on November 22, 1901 and Heinrich who had been born in Bürmoos on November 11, 1912, were murdered in Auschwitz.
Their brother Alois, who had been born in Bürmoos on January 17, 1907, survived the terror according to the Yad Vashem data bank – he wrote the memorial pages for his parents and brothers from his new home in Canada.
The family of Margarethe and Max HAHN, the director of the Emmyhütte factory in Hackenbuch until it went bankrupt, moved to the city of Salzburg and then emigrated to Czechoslovakia in 1929.
Max HAHN died in the Nazi’s rump Czechoslovakia (called the »Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia«) before they began to deport its Jews to the camps.
His 49 year old widow Margarethe, née Weinmann was murdered in the Lublin-Majdanek death camp along with their three children – Fritz, born in Hackenbuch on September 30, 1911; Ernst, born in Hackenbuch on February 2, 1919; and Ilse, born in Hackenbuch on August 16, 1924.
In December 1928 Paula and Julius STEINDLER, whose children Josefine and Eduard were already grown and married, moved from Bürmoos to 24/8 Schlösselgasse in Vienna’s 8th District. Paula STEINDLER, the sister of Adolf and Max HAHN, died at age 64 on June 13, 1931 and her 71 year old husband died six months later, on December 21, 1931.
Their grave may be found in the Jewish section of the Vienna Central Cemetery.
Their daughter Josefine, who had been born in Bürmoos on February 16, 1891, lived in Vienna after she married the businessman Julius STAGEL.
Their son Paul was born there on December 15, 1912 and was registered with the Jewish Community of Vienna.
Ten months after the Nazis took over Austria he married Fritzi AUSTERLITZ in December 1938. The couple lived with Fritzi’s mother in the 1st District.
Paul’s parents, Josefine and Julius STAGEL, were forced by the Nazis to give up their residence in the 20th District and ended up in a »Jew house« (where Jews were collected preparatory to deportation) at 1 Josefinengasse in the 2nd District.
On August 20, 1942 Fritzi’s widowed mother Stella AUSTERLITZ was the first of her family to be deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. And on December 9, 1942 Transport No. 45/train 525 left the Vienna Aspang Railway Station for the Theresienstadt concentration camp with 1,324 Jews on board, including Josefine and Julius along with Fritzi and Paul STAGEL.
On March 4, 1944 the 53 year old Josefine STAGEL (Paul’s mother and Eduard STEINDLER’s sister) died there.
On April 16, 1944 Fritzi STAGEL’s 58 year old mother Stella AUSTERLITZ was deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz-Birkenau and was apparently gassed upon arrival.
On October 6, 1944 the 66 year old Julius STAGEL was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau along with his 28 year old daughter-in-law Fritzi.
As with Stella AUSTERLITZ and many other Jews who were murdered upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau their arrival and death was never registered there.
It is known however that Josefine and Julius STAGEL’s son Paul was the one member of the family who survived – his name appears as number 781 on Schindler’s Liste II. Paul STAGEL, grandson of Paula and Julius STEINDLER who died in Vienna in 1931, returned alone to Vienna and died there on Juli 26, 1987. He too was buried in the Jewish section of the Vienna Central Cemetery.
In 1923 Paula and Julius STEINDLER’s son Eduard married Else WEINSTEIN in the Salzburg synagogue. Else had been born in Salzburg on February 21, 1902 and was the daughter of Rosa, WASSERZUG2 WEINSTEIN and Rudolf WEINSTEIN who had local citizenship in Salzburg along with their children Else, Viktor and Walter.
The WEINSTEINs lived and had a spice shop in the Andrä Quarter, where many Jews lived near the synagogue. Rudolf WEINSTEIN was also a board member of the Salzburg Jewish Community.
Rosa and Rudolf WEINSTEIN’s daughter Else STEINDLER gave birth to a son named Ernst in Salzburg on April 17, 1924. Ernst and his parents lived in Bürmoos at first, but then moved to Salzburg where they remained until 1938 and where Ernst attended the modern (as opposed to classical) high school.
Else and Eduard STEINDLER separated for some unknown reason shortly before their expulsion from Salzburg.
Their last joint residence was a number 5 Franz-Josef-Straße in the Andrä Quarter. Else STEINDLER and her 14 year old son Ernst were able to flee to England with Else’s younger brother Viktor shortly after Viktor was released from the Dachau concentration camp (where he had been imprisoned from September 5 to September 23, 1938.
Her brother Walter and their parents Rosa and Rudolf WEINSTEIN survived in Palestine (Israel since 1948).3
Ernst’s father Eduard STEINDLER was a traveling salesman and lived in Vienna after he separated from his wife in June 1938. His last known address at 24/8 Schlösselgasse in Vienna’s 8th District was the residence of his deceased parents, Paula and Julius STEINDLER. Eduard was registered with the police as divorced until the police of Nazi Vienna removed him from their files on October 21, 1939 with the notation: »Poland.«
The 47 year old Eduard STEINDLER was one of the 912 Jews shipped out on the first Vienna transport to Nisko in occupied Poland on October 20, 1939 – Nisko had been designated by Adolf Eichmann to become an experimental »Jewish Reservation.«
Most of the deportees didn’t survive Eichmann’s experiment and the Salzburg born Jews Ludwig BONYHADI and Eduard STEINDLER were among its victims (both victims are misidentified in the Austrian Shoah-Datenbank so they are not immediately locatable there).
On October 30, 1950 Eduard STEINDLER’s surviving son Ernst who lived in London named his own son Edward after his murdered grandfather.
Finally we can reconstruct the lives of the second and third generations of the Bürmoos industrialist family GLASER: on the 10th of June 1917 Dr. Hermann GLASER married the daughter of a Moravian leather manufacturer in the Salzburger Synagogue, Lilly Sinaiberger who had been born in Eibenschitz [now Ivancice in the Czech Republic] on February 23, 1894.
The couple had three children: Johanna Gertrude (Gerta)who was born in Salzburg on August 28, 1918, Felicitas who was born in Bohemian Brüx [now Most in the Czech Republic] on February 6, 1920, and Paul, who was born in Bohemian Teplitz [now Teplice in the Czech Republic] on May 3, 1924. According to Austrian law the GLASER family had citizenship rights first in Salzburg and then in Brüx.
They lived alternately in Brüx, Vienna and Salzburg – often separately according to the police registers, and at last together in Salzburg at 11 Markus-Sittikus-Straße which had long belonged to Hermann und Lilly GLASER and had been the residence of Hermann’s widowed mother Emma GLASER until her death on May 16, 1934.
Dr. Hermann GLASER stayed in in Salzburg after the death of his mother until his expulsion, but the family was divided forever. His wife Lilly lived in Vienna with the children so that they could go to school there, and were registered as Czechoslovakian citizens at 37/6 Formanekgasse in the 19th District.
They fled to Czechoslovakia early in August 1938 and then to England in 1939 and the US in the fall of 1940. Neither the mother nor the children ever returned to Vienna or Salzburg.
After the so-called Reichskristallnacht pogrom on November 9-10, 1938 26 Salzburg Jews were arrested and deported to the Dachau concentration camp, including the officially stateless Dr. Hermann GLASER from 30 Faberstraße.
They were allowed to leave the camp only after agreeing to leave the German Reich immediately.
In March 1939 five of the freed Jews who had briefly returned to Salzburg (Dr. Hermann GLASER, attorney Dr. Richard WEINBERGER, Artur KOHN and the brothers Hugo and Karl KLEIN) shipped out on the Italian liner Conte Biancamano from Genoa to Shanghai in China.
After repeated requests from their German allies, the Japanese interned the officially stateless Jews from Germany and Austria in a closed ghetto from February 1943 to August 1945.
Karl KLEIN died in Shanghai, his brother Hugo KLEIN emigrated to Israel. Dr. Richard WEINBERGER, Artur KOHN (along with his wife and three children who traveled overland to Shanghai in 1940 to join their Jewish husband/father) were able to return to Salzburg in early 1947.
Then Artur KOHN learned that his mother, a former housekeeper for the GLASER family in Bürmoos, was no longer alive. The 64 year old Berta KOHN was (along with another couple expelled from Salzburg, Irma and Arthur BONDY) among the 1,000 Jews who were deported from the Vienna Aspang railroad station on November 28, 1941 and shipped off to Minsk in the occupied Soviet Union where they were murdered.
Dr. Hermann GLASER, the son of the industrial dynasty who had been driven from Salzburg in November 1938, returned from his Shanghai exile in early 1947 and lived alone in Vienna until his death on January 10, 1956. He was buried alongside his parents in Salzburg’s Jewish cemetery. His grandchildren Julie and James were born in the US after he had died.
1 The graves of Marie Kupfer Glaser and her husband Sigmund Glaser, a brother of Ignaz Glaser who died in 1926 are also in the Jewish cemetery in Salzburg-Aigen. Ignaz and Sigmund had five other siblings: Henriette Hahn, who died in Pilsen in 1904; Franziska Kupfer, who died in Weiden in 1924; Pauline Kohn, who died in Znaim in 1929; Adolf Glaser, who died in Teplitz in 1918; and Dr. Julius Glaser, who died in Vienna in 1922.
Ignaz Glaser’s wife Emma Kupfer Glaser, who died in Salzburg in 1934, had two full siblings: Julius Kupfer, who died in Vienna in 1886; and Paula Nachmias, who died in Vienna in 1926 – and four half siblings: Ernst Kupfer, who died in Vienna in 1883; Hermann Kupfer, who died in Vienna in 1934; Max Kupfer, who was murdered on July 4, 1942; and Anna Löwy, who was murdered in Theresienstadt on September 22, 1942.
2 Rosa Weinstein’s younger brother, Karl Wasserzug, was a merchant and member of the cultural council of the Salzburg Jewish Community. He and his second wife Eva were deported from Vienna to Riga on February 6, 1942 and were murdered. His daughter Friederike, who had been born in Salzburg on September 13, 1916 and who last lived in Prague, was deported to Lodz on October 21, 1941 and murdered. The grave of her mother Hermine, Karl Wasserzug’s first wife who had died in Salzburg in 1928, can be found in the Jewish cemetery in Salzburg-Aigen.
3 Rosa and Rudolf Weinstein’s son Walter, who had been born in Salzburg on April 25, 1903, was a Zionist who had emigrated to Palestine in August 1935 to escape the virulent Antisemitism of Salzburg and eventually he became a citizen of Israel. In 1975 he requested an official confirmation of his emigration that was denied by the Salzburg State government on the grounds that: »… in addition, interviewed older Salzburg born residents do not remember that anti-Jewish pressures – which you claim led to your departure – already existed in 1935. Therefore the requested emigration certificate cannot be issued.«
Sources
- Salzburg and Vienna State and City Archives, Jewish Communities of Salzburg and Vienna.
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 18.04.2013 at Salzburg, Franz-Josef-Straße 5
Registration form of Eduard Steindler