“The Extraordinary Correspondence of Jewish-Austrian Classmates, 1938-1953”

Sometime between March and April of 1938, a small group of 15 and 16 year-old schoolboys of Jewish heritage stood on a bridge over the Danube Canal in central Vienna and said good-bye to each other “forever.” Because the persecution of Austrian Jews, which had begun immediately after the Anschluss in March 1938, was particularly virulent, the boys and their parents knew that they had to flee the new Nazi regime as quickly as possible. When these classmates from the prestigious Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium or Stubenbasteigymnasium met for the last time, they did not know what would become of them, but they promised one another that whatever happened they would do their best to maintain ties. The boys’ original promise resulted in an extraordinary group correspondence or Rundbrief that stretched over fifteen years and crisscrossed three continents.  The letters allowed them to stay connected and maintain contact despite the disruptions of exile and immigration. Some even remained in contact until their death.

 After Egon Schwarz, who facilitated the transfer of the letters from John (Hans) Kautsky to the Archiv für die Geschichte der Soziologie in Österreich, told me about the letters and introduced me to Kautsky, I set out to find out more about them.

Once I read them I was hooked. What follows is an overview of what has happened since then.  

Catherine Kautsky interviews her father and organizes a Holocaust Symposium

Articles on the Correspondence

• "'Das Land formt sich seine Menschen neu': A Youth's Epistolary Reflections on Immigration to Palestine, 1939-1940." In: Environments of Exile. Nature, Refugees, and Representations. Swen Sternberg and Helga Schreckenberger, eds. (Osnabrück: Universitätsverlag, 2025), 97-109.

• “‘Ich gehe in keine richtige englische Schule‘: A Young Jewish-Austrian Refugee’s Experiences at Stoatley Rough School.“ In: Survivors of Nazi Persecution. Beyond Camps and Forced Labour. Suzanne Bardett, Christine Schmidt, and Dan Stone, eds. (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave/McMillan: 2024), 247-267.

• "From Austrian Refugee to American Citizen: Wilhelm Mandl's Correspondence as Biographical Work." In: Von der Exilerfahrung zur Exilforschung. Zum Jahrhundertleben eines transatlantischen Brückenbauers. Festschrift zu Ehren von Guy Stern. Frederick A. Lubich/Marlen Eckl, eds. (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2022): 491-499.

• “‘French people here are very kind but too shallow to understand us’: A Young Exile’s View of France and the French, 1939-1940.” In: Feuchtwanger und die Erinnerungskultur in Frankreich / Feuchtwanger et la culture memoriélle en France. Daniel Azuélos, Andrea Chartier-Bunzel, and Frédéric Teinturier, eds. (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2020): 313-27. 

• “’Bitte vergeβt nicht, alle Briefe gut aufzuheben’: Shared Agency in einem Briefwechsel österreichisch-jüdischer Schüler in der Emigration.“ In: S.I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation 8 (2019) 1, 4-19.

• “Cohesive Epistolary Networks in Exile.” In: Networks of Refugees from Nazi Germany: Continuities, Reorientations, and Collaborations in Exile.  Helga Schreckenberger, ed.  (Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi, 2016): 247-261.

• “‘Damit nie der Kontakt verloren geht’: Rundbriefe Wiener Gymnasiasten jüdischer Herkunft 1938-1942.” In: Alltag im Exil. Daniel Azuélos, ed. (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011.) 137-151. Proceedings to conference in Amiens, France, November 2009.)

Edition of the letters and Collective Biography of Cohort

I am presently editing the letters which are housed in Graz, Austria and working on a collective biography of the correspondents.