Paul Frisch

Paul Frisch (part two)

Similarly there seemed to be a scant record of him getting married or having children. Geni, the genealogical website, indicated that he had married twice and had had two children. The limited information on Geni seemed to have come from GenTeam, an Austrian genealogy database, which is excellent but generally only gives you keys bits of data (who got married to whom, when, where etc.) and doesn’t show you the original documents which sometimes contain extra clues such as addresses etc. 

Genteam stated that a man called Paul Frisch married Ludovika Bogumila Cieslik on 19 Oct 1905 in the Stadttempel. However, without being able to see the original marriage certificate, which would show the parents names of the happy couple, there was no way of knowing if this was really our guy or not. We would have to trust that whoever had updated their records on the Geni website had seen some other evidence that proved that Paul Frisch (the son of Rudolf and Ernestine Frisch) had married Ludowika Cieslik, (daughter of Adam and Maria Cieslik). 

Geni also showed that he had married a second time, this time to Gisella Ruckendorfer, daughter of Karl and Wilhelmine Ruckendorfer. This raised further questions. What had happened to his first wife Ludovika? Did they get divorced? Did she die? When did all of this happen?

Although Geni said he got married to Gisella Ruckendorfer in 1919 it gave no other details. All my efforts to try and substantiate the claim came to nothing and the only indication I could find of their marriage was a skeleton record on Genteam, and even that spells her name wrong (Giseka)! Apart from that there was nothing. It was most odd. 

There was one other avenue left to explore. Geni suggested Paul and Gisella had two children. The eldest, according to Geni, was born in 1919 and called Liselotte Wilhelmine. The name of the other child was hidden by privacy settings. Who were they? And could their birth records provide any clues as to Paul and Gisela’s lives?

Once again a thorough search for their birth records turned up nothing. The best I could come up with was a displaced persons card from 1946 that showed that Lieselotte Frisch, living at IX Turkenstrasse 17, Vienna had been born on 2 August 1919. In Zurich. 

None of it made any sense. It was all very frustrating. 

I was getting nowhere and to be honest my focus was on figuring out what happened to Paul and Gisella during the Holocaust. I wasn’t expecting Paul’s life in itself to be particularly exciting. His father’s and his brother’s lives were run of the mill and not particularly interesting. My main goal at the time was to try and figure out whether Paul and Gisela survived or not. 

Again, even details of his death proved frustratingly elusive. Geni suggested he died in 1947 but provided no evidence. If he died in 1947 it meant that he survived the war but I had no idea where he had ended up!

Musgrave lived in the apartment building that Paul and Gisela once owned, and one day, after attending a lecture about the impact of Nazi rule on the local community, he had decided to investigate the history of the former residents of the building.  

In the Berlin Archives he discovered that the property had been purchased by a company called Orion GmbH in 1922 and was resold in 1966 by Gisela Frisch. From the documents he’d found he was able to surmise that Gisela was Paul’s wife. He realised that Paul was Jewish and that as ownership had been transferred to Gisela at some stage she may not have been. 

Musagrave dug deeper and found a thick file on Orion GmbH written up by the Office for Converting Wealth into Cash. This seemingly mundane sounding department was the bureaucratic organisation the Nazis had set up for stripping the Jewish community of their assets and the Nazi bureuacrats had, in a typically methodical way, kept records of all their correspondence with Paul and Gisela. The file contained letters from both parties giving a detailed, blow-by-blow, account of their demands and Paul and Gisela’s efforts to resist. Or at least that’s what Musgrave wrote. 

Amongst all of this tantalising information there were some facts that matched with what I was able to verify. Even if we couldn’t check out all the facts, at least I knew he hadn’t totally made it up. But the uncomfortable fact remained that this was classified as a fiction book and that there was no way of knowing what was fact and what was fiction. 

On the face of it there was no reason to suppose that he had made any of it up. From Musgrave’s perspective the details were interesting but not exactly salacious. He was writing about a bureaucratic battle with the authorities, hardly the subject matter of a dramatic blockbuster. If he had made it all up then his imagination was somewhat lacking. 

The truth is that it was too good to ignore. However, the painful fact was that I could not prove the veracity of anything Musgrave had written was brought into focus when I made contact with Annette, Paul and Gisela’s granddaughter. 

I shared with her a draft version of the chapter I had written with her and was a little taken aback when she told me that it was all news to her. She knew nothing about her grandparents owning any property in Berlin and was keen to find out more. Musgrave had also included some bombshells, such as Paul and Gisela’s divorce, which I had unwittingly passed on without considering the emotional impact that they could have. 

We both were keen to verify the stories and over the course of a few months worked together to try and track down Musgrave. Frustratingly we were never able to verify Musgrave’s stories but Annette was able to help me fill in some of the blanks in her family’s history. Amongst other things she mentioned that Paul had had a son by his first wife and that he had emigrated to Chile, possibly under dubious circumstances, which explained why Paul fled to Santiago in 1939, but she wasn’t able to give me any more details.

In contrast to my initial impressions, Paul had turned out to be an extremely interesting character. Not only did he and Gisela own an apartment building in Berlin and resist the Nazis efforts to take possession of it but, as I later discovered, he also owned Portois & Fix, one of the great art nouveau furniture companies. By means of some very unorthodox research I had uncovered much more than I had ever hoped for and the chapter of The Frischs turned out to be one of the most interesting.   

But I still had a niggling sense that I hadn’t quite gotten to the bottom of their story. After publishing Die Familien Extrablatt I revisited my notes and discovered that the deluge of fascinating details I had found in Musgrave’s book had dazzled and distracted me. Perhaps now, armed with more facts, I could unlock their story?

As luck would have it, trawling through the newspaper archives I came across an article that provided the key to unlocking more of their story. The article involved a woman called Ludovika who accused her ex-husband, the mortgage broker Paul Frisch, of attempted murder! Ludovika and Paul Frisch! Here was clear evidence that of the two Paul Frisch listed in the address books, it was the mortgage broker who was our guy. Once that was established many other things fell into place.

However, before we turn to that story, we should go back to 1901 when Paul was starting out in life. 

Arrested for impersonating a police officer

In 1901 Paul turned twenty-two and was working as an agent for Germania, a New York based insurance company. He was being paid a monthly salary of 50 guilders and receiving commission but he was young and ambitious and felt he was destined for great things.

That winter a Romanian insurance agent called Heinrich Birnbach placed an advert offering loans against insurance companies. It turned out that he was both an agent of moneylenders, who made loans secured by life insurance policies, and of insurance companies with whom he had the policies written, meaning that he was earning money from both sides. 

Paul wanted to find out more about Birnbach and had the idea to register as someone in need of money. He replied to the advertisement calling himself as Herr Wadt and was invited to meet with Birnbach in person. After patiently reading the detailed conditions of the loan he finally said to Birnbach “Why should we play around any longer? I am a police officer”. Paul had detected Birnbach’s accent and realised that he was dealing with a foreigner.

"Such transactions are not permitted in Austria. This is a hoax! The Chief of Police is dealing with the matter himself and I have to search the house and report back on you!” 

Birnbach was scared to death. He had only recently arrived in Vienna having fled Romania, where the Jewish population was increasingly being persecuted. He had got used to seeing the Romanian police abuse their authority and he wasn’t sure what was, or wasn’t, legal in Austria.

"Please, Herr Police Officer," he said, "I didn't know that that wasn't allowed. Please don’t report me. I didn't know any better!”. 

Paul replied that they were very strict about such matters in Vienna, and that a police officer would appear at Birnbach's house in the next few days. He asked to see the books and papers. Birnbach complied, but as a precaution destroyed a bundle of correspondence. Upset by this Paul was willing to turn a blind eye if he received money. 

Some newspapers were keen to point out that Frisch was Jewish and quoted him as saying to Birmbach “You’re a Jew, I’m a Jew. I won’t do anything to you but you must give me money!”

After his experiences with the police in Romania, Birnbach was not surprised at the shakedown, but declared that he had no money at that time. Instead he promised to send him some as soon as possible. The exact amount was not discussed and in the end he was persuaded by a friend not to pay it but he remained terrified by the experience.  

A few months later Birnbach turned up at a local insurance bank to speak to an agent called Herr Jansen. Someone was already in Herr Jansen’s office so Birnbach waited outside in the anteroom. To Birnbach's surprise, it was the so-called police officer who had visited him who stepped out of the office. For a moment the police officer was taken aback. Then he faced him, looked at him and said mockingly, "You're back?"

"Yes, Herr Inspector," said Birnbach respectfully and timidly.

"Are you still doing business like that?" said Frisch, looking at him penetratingly."

"Yes, Herr Inspector." he admitted.

“I believe you have moved apartment and now live on Alserstrasse?"

"Yes, sir."

"I warned you!" said Frisch officiously, and then left. 

Birnbach then turned to Herr Janssen and sympathetically asked "What is that

police officer doing with you? Has something happened?” 

"Don't be a fool," Janssen replied “there was no police officer here.”

"But the young man who just left..."

"He's an insurance agent. What did you think?"

"But I know he’s a police officer."

"Don't be a fool!"

Jansen then explained things to Birnbach who could see the funny side and decided to let the matter lie. 

Paul thought nothing more about the affair but two years later Birnbach changed his mind and filed charges.

In court Paul denied posing as a police officer or asking for money. He said that he was simply angry about the unreasonable terms and conditions that Birnbach had made, and therefore spoke of making a report to the police. That was all.

In his defence he also mentioned that he was from a wealthy family and at that time he was being fed in his parent’s house and receiving 20 florins pocket money from them in addition to his income from Germania so he had no need to obtain money recklessly. He also mentioned that, at the time of the court case, he was earning an income of 5,000K.

At the end of the trial the court found Paul guilty of impersonating a police officer but the jury was unable to decide beyond reasonable doubt whether his swindling could in fact be considered fraud or extortion. He was sentenced to two months imprisonment. Paul’s lawyer lodged an appeal. 

Marriage 1905

On 19 October 1905 Paul married a woman called Ludowika Bobmila Cieslik. The Ciesliks were Catholic and originally from Budapest but had settled in Vienna in the 1880s where her father had built up a business running a mechanic’s workshop in Margareten. 

As it was an interdenominational wedding they got married in a civil ceremony but the marriage was recorded in the Stadttempel record books and two weeks later they registered the wedding in Budapest.

Ludovika must have been heavily pregnant when they got married as barely a month later, on 6 December, Reinhold Rudolf Frisch was born. He was baptised as a Catholic, the day after Christmas. His middle name Rudolf was both a nod to his paternal grandfather (Rudolf Frisch) and his maternal uncle (Stanislaus Rudolf Cieslik). 

Adultery 1909

Paul and Ludovika’s marriage was not a happy one. 

In the spring of 1909 an engineer called Ernst K accused Paul of committing adultery. The case came to court in June and was heard in a secret hearing. The engineer claimed Paul had met his wife at the Viennese ice-skating club in the winter of 1908 and was often in her company. 

Paul confessed to the facts but claimed that he had not been clear whether she was a married woman. She had told him that she was married but he claimed that “as I wore a wedding ring, and she often went out without one, I didn't believe her statements that she was married". He went on to say that when he visited her apartment, the "lady was very accommodating". The woman involved, who was questioned as a key witness, stated that the accused knew very well that she was married and that he had “beguiled her with his behaviour” and that after tripping her up, behaved “very frivolously”. The judge sentenced Paul to a fortnight in prison.

Rather surprisingly, only a few weeks later private-beamter Paul Frisch “mit Frau Ludowika, sohn Reinhold und begd. (company) aus Wien” stayed at the V. Waldert, “Preciosa” on Eduard Knoll Strasse to Karlsbad. One can only imagine the awkward conversations that were had on that holiday.

Blackmail 1910

Having worked in insurance for a few years, first for Germania and then for the Mutual, Paul moved into mortgage brokering, where it appears that he immediately ran into trouble. 

A journalist for the weekly Montags Journal, Heinrich Pöschl, had been blackmailing a number of financiers including Paul with the threat of writing unflattering articles about them and ruining their business. In court Paul gave evidence that he had handed over two amounts of 100K in order to escape Poschl's attacks. On the second day of the trial Paul failed to attend court and was fined 25K but on the third day he turned up. He joked in court that since he paid the Montags Journal, which appeared every week, an annual fee of 400 crowns, he only wanted to pay the Hyvothekenmarkl 200 crowns, since it only appeared every 14 days. 

Building a property empire

It’s difficult to know exactly how many property deals Paul was involved in but he was certainly busy. In July Paul made an application under his and Ludovika’s name to make alterations to a property on Paradiesgasse. The following month another joint application was made to add a conservatory to a building on Iglaseegasse in Dobling. Then in November Paul purchased several plots of land in Unter Dobling for development in two auctions. The following Spring he purchased a plot of land in Unter Sievering and put an application in to develop it. 

In May 1913 he purchased another property that was being sold as a result of a foreclosure, this time on Margareten Gürtel in Margareten. The sale once again raised the ire of the press who were critical of mortgage creditors whose eagerness to foreclose they saw as leading to the ruinous damage of builders and the construction industry as a whole. The Wiener Montags-Journal described the sale as far eclipsing anything else that they had seen. The builders had only needed another 22,845K to complete construction of the four-story building which was expected to earn an income of 33,000K and be worth around 330,000K. But despite its value the mortgage lenders chose to foreclose and  sell it for a mere 206,000K, over 100,000K below the asking price. What was worse was that he was able to snap up the property at such a low price because, apart from Paul, not a single other buyer appeared on the day of the sale! 

The newspaper went on to point out that anyone who was able to purchase such a bargain was extremely fortunate and that if one were able to do so three or four times in a row, well, then he would comfortably become a millionaire. But what, they cried, are the builder and his creditors supposed to do? 

Less than two weeks later Paul purchased Schelleingasse 12. The property was estimated to be worth 453,342K but he was able to snap it up for a mere 330,000K, once again substantially less than the market price. The property measured 650 square metres built on a solid truss construction and boasted elegant fittings. Situated in an excellent rental location and with transport links in every direction it was expected to earn 38,000 to 40,000K per year in rental income. Paul would be able to fully make back his investment in less than nine years.

Again the Wiener Montags-Journal were quick to condemn the sale

“Would one think it possible that the various creditors of the builders, at the cost of a loss of their total receivables and those of their fellow traders, formally resort to handing new buildings into the hands of the few buyers at a rock-bottom price?! Forcing the handful of bidders to become millionaires? Where's the big business? Are there otherwise well-funded circles who call themselves clever? One sees the indolence and reluctance of those called upon and ignores them?!” 

It goes on to say

“We aren’t jealous of Herr Frisch for making these highly sought-after purchases. We don’t simply note the addition of these "lucky coincidences" to his tally, but include all of the details in order to confirm our statements and to illustrate the general situation. The system in general places the destruction of one's own values, and yes, one's own existence, above pardoning the debtors and builders.” 

Unperturbed by the newspaper’s moral outrage Paul purchased yet another property, Grubergasse 12, Ottakring in December, and in April 1914 another two properties, Latschkagasse 8 & 9, in Alsergrund. In each and every case he walked away with an absolute bargain. He was able to purchase the two properties on Latschkagasse for a total of 360,000K, almost 100,000K under their market valuation.

In less than two years Paul had purchased seven large properties for a staggering 1.4 million kroner plus several plots of land for development and who knows what else!

Family Festival of the Tiger Cave 1913

Attempted murder! 

Six days after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo the Viennese papers were full of news about a sensational case that was being heard in the Josefstadt criminal court. Ludovika Frisch had accused her ex-husband Paul, a wealthy real estate agent, of attempting to murder her by poisoning her wine with arsenic.   

Paul and Ludovika had divorced in 1913 after he had been found to be having an affair with the former nanny of the house. Ludovika and their son Reinhold had moved out of the family home and into Latschkagasse 8, an elegant, five story apartment building which Paul had recently purchased on the outskirts of Alsergrund. 

After the divorce Paul had repeatedly visited Ludovika in her apartment and, it was claimed, repeatedly threatened and abused her. On one occasion he asked her to resume their relationship in a sort of menage a trois. Ludovika had decidedly refused this request, noting that she could and would only return to the house as his lawful wife and that the nanny would have to step aside. 

During the visit, after she rejected his proposal, Paul shouted "One of us is too many in the world! You are a nuisance to me because you know too much about me and if I had a revolver with me now, I would shoot you!” 

On another occasion, she complained that her husband had thrown her down, kicked her and finally called out to her: "If only I could get rid of you now…”.

Scared by Paul’s threatening behaviour she reported the matter to the police who referred the complaint to the regional court. 

Paul himself did not attend court. His defence counsel claimed the accusation was merely a symptom of his ex-wife’s hysterical rancour and gave a statement on Paul’s behalf saying that he had not abused his wife and that after the divorce she had repeatedly threatened him with scandal because she didn't want him to break off their relationship again. He admitted that during a visit to his wife's apartment he had said "If only I could get rid of you!" but that at the time he was agitated after she had hit him with a bodice. 

Ludovika was called as a witness and was eager to give testimony. She declared that she still had more to say against her husband. When the judge asked what else I had to say, she explained in an excited tone that her ex-husband had attempted to poison her! 

During one visit a quarrel broke out between them in which she accused him of committing serious insurance fraud. She claimed that despite being diabetic, he had taken out insurance for a sum of 150,000 kroner and had misled the insurance company by using a false medical certificate. 

On another occasion soon after, Paul was particularly nice to her and, having had dinner together, Paul then poured her a glass of wine. An hour or so later she felt very sick. She claimed that after a detailed examination a doctor had found arsenic in her urine, which she claimed, her ex-husband must have poured into her wine glass unnoticed.

The judge reproached Ludovika and reminded her that by making this statement she was making a very serious accusation against her husband and urged her to tell the truth. Ludovika responded that "What I said here is true! I'm still afraid of my husband to this day!" 

At which point the judge adjourned the hearing and decided to assign the case to a higher court due to the suspicion of the crime of attempted poisoning being committed.

As we will see again later, Paul had a habit of fighting legal cases in the court of public opinion and pleading his case in the papers. The day after the case he made a statement to in the papers via his lawyer: 

“Frau Ludovika Frisch, who, as can be seen from yesterday's courtroom reports, made serious accusations against her husband during the trial, has already previously in numerous trials brought serious accusations of a similar nature against a wide number of people, all of which have regularly turned out to be without any objective basis. 

Herr Frisch's representative has already submitted applications to the relevant authorities, in order to put beyond all doubt the complete groundlessness of the outrageous accusations recently brought against him by his ex-wife before the district court in Josefstadt, which, according to medical confirmation, can be traced back to a medical condition."

At this point the press no longer have anything to say about the case. I suspect nothing came of it and the charges dropped. 

Ludovika and Reinhold remained in Paul’s apartment building on Latschkagasse until 1916 but after that they disappeared from view. By this time Reinhold would have been eleven and she was thirty-seven. What exactly became of them remains a mystery however Paul doesn’t completely lose contact with his son and later goes out to Chile in 1939 to live with him.  

The outbreak of war 1914

Five days after the Emperor declared war and only a month after the court case, Ludovika donated 30K in her and Reinhold’s name, to a charitable fund for the families of conscripts organised by Neue Freie Presse.

Three months later the Habsburg government issued the first of eight war loans and Paul patriotically gave 100,000K to the Allgemeinen Depositenbank. Ludovika similarly gave 30,000K to the Wienerbank. These were both sizable amounts and demonstrated that they were both extremely wealthy. To put this figure into some sort of context Paul’s war loan of 100,000K was twenty times his annual salary in 1905.

War profiteering 1916

After the outbreak of war Paul no longer appeared to be involved in property speculation, or at least there were no reports of his activity in the papers. He retained his business acumen or, depending how you see it, his sharp business practices however. 

In March 1916 he was accused, together with three other businessmen, of bribing War Ministry officials. Paul and the others were accused of bribing non-commissioned officers employed in the War Ministry to provide them with inside information about contracts. Some of those accused (we don’t know if this included Paul) had been detained for a few days while the military court carried out their investigation but in the end the case against them was dropped because there was no evidence to suggest such a crime.

Baden bei Wien 1916

That summer, despite the ongoing war and his brush with the courts, Paul Frisch, realitatenbesitzer (real estate owner) from Vienna vacationed in Baden bei Wien mit familie und dienerschaft [servants]. 

Curiously the party consisted of six people. If we assume that two members of the party were servants then that would leave three to account for. Paul and Ludovika had divorced some two years earlier and he had not yet married his second wife Gisela. Did he take along his elderly parents Rudolf and Ernestine? Did his son Reinhold join him? It could be one of any number of possibilities. 

This was the era of silent movies and the cinema boasted the concert accompaniment of an excellently trained salon band which, it was said, brought the films to life. 

Paul had bought Irma’s shares and replaced her as one of the company’s two managing directors. He then invested an additional 150,000K in the company’s share capital and made arrangements with a bank for further funds to be available if needed. The company now had more than a million crowns at its disposal and was financially in a strong position. 

A year later in April 1918 Paul merged the company with a similar company in Budapest, the Hungaria Film Factory and Sales A.G. which now had a combined share capital of 3.5 million crowns. The merged company intended to increase film production in Budapest to meet the growing demand for films and had signed contracts with the famous actresses Irene Varsanyi, Fedak Sari and Leopoldine Konstantin, the actor Emil Fenyvessy as well the directors Karl Wilhelm and Martin Garas. However the merger was short lived and Paul and his partner Luschinsky stepped down from the Hungarian company in January 1919. Revolution was already in the air that winter and perhaps Paul sensed that within two months Bela Kun and the communists would establish the short-lived Hungarian People’s Republic. 

At the same time another film company, Sascha Filmindustrie A.G., the largest film company in Austria, sued I.Handl GbmH as well as Paul personally. 

They claimed that Paul had signed a contract for the rights to distribute three films - "Christ", "Madame Tallien", "Resurrection" - but had failed to pay for them.

Gisela Ruckendorfer

It is at this point in his life that Paul met Gisela Ruckendorfer. 

As mentioned previously, the details of their marriage remain elusive. I have been unable to find their actual marriage record and so we are left relying on a Genteam record that shows the civil marriage between Paul Frisch and a Giseka (sic) Ruckendorfer in 1919 and no other details. The exact date is not recorded. Only a cryptic note in the margins of Paul’s birth record provides first-hand evidence for their marriage. 

15/6 19

18/2 27

Gisela Frisch

Wien

27.8.54

It is difficult to know what to make of this. The first date could be suggested as the date that Paul got married to a Gisela Frisch in Vienna. The last date might be the date on which the annotation was made. The middle date, 18/2 27 had me stumped but looking through my notes I spotted that Paul resigned the Jewish faith on 1 March 1927 so perhaps it is connected to this? 

In 1917 Gisela Ruckendorfer was living in one of Paul’s apartment buildings -  Latschkagasse 9 which suggests that they met each other the year before. The six story building was diagonally opposite where his ex-wife Ludovika and their son Reinhold had been living. This could certainly explain why, at this point, his ex-wife Ludovika moved out and disappeared from view. 

Like Paul, Gisela listed her occupation as working in ‘realitaten and hypotheken’ - real estate and mortgages - and gave her work address as Paul’s offices on Schreygasse. Initially I assumed that Gisela was simply working as a secretary but it looks like she was more than that. From 1917 until 1925 she was listed as a mortgage broker in Lehmann’s address book. And, for at least a few years, she was a member of the Society of Real Estate and Mortgage Brokers - an association which Paul was conspicuously not a member of. This picture of her as a business woman in her own right would fit with the impression we later get from Musgrave’s book, and Annette’s memory of her grandmother as a business woman.

Try as I might, I have been unable to find a birth record for Gisela. Geni states that her parents were Karl and Wilhelmine Ruckendorfer but provides no evidence for this. We have to take this on blind trust but it seems a reasonable assumption as only a handful of Ruckendorfers are listed as living in Vienna at this time. 

Karl and Wilhelmine Ruckendorfer married on 15 January 1889 in Mariahilfer, Vienna and had four other children that we know about - Margaretha (1890), Alexander (1891), Augusta Laura (1896) and Rudolf (1898). 

Karl’s death certificate describes his occupation as a realitaten und hypotheken and so it seems pretty likely that he was Gisela’s father even if we can’t find a birth certificate to prove it. It would seem probable that she was born somewhere between 1892 and 1895. If so, Gisela would have been in her mid-twenties and more than ten years younger than Paul when they got married.  

Gisela’s father Karl died in May 1914 and it seems plausible that she took over the reins of his business. This would also mean that when she and Paul got married she already had her own business.

Two further pieces of evidence also suggest that Gisela was part of this family. Alexander Ruckendorfer lived at the same address as her in 1919 and in 1921 her Margaretha Ruckendorfer gave Latschkagasse 9, Gisela’s address, as her address when she got married. 

Tax charges

It is perhaps worth noting in passing that Paul was twice summoned by the courts to face tax charges during this period. 

We know nothing about the amounts involved or the outcome of the cases and so we cannot make any further comment on them, but the fact that he was summoned to court on tax charges on two occasions at least suggests that he and the tax authorities had a difference of opinion. 

Bad Ischl 1923

On 30 August 1923 Paul Frisch, a businessman from Vienna, checked into the Hotel Franz Karl in Bad Ischl. His party of five included his family (presumably his wife Gisela and daughter Liselotte), a chauffeur and a maid. 

Two days later they booked into the Pension Rudolfshöhe, a grand boarding house in Kaltenbach on the outskirts of the town, which had once been a popular meeting place for the aristocracy before the war.

1925-1940

At this point Paul and Gisela begin to fade from view. 

Up until 1924 Gisela was listed as living at Latschkagasse 9 and having offices at Schreyvogelgasse 3. She then appears to have abruptly stopped working in real estate, a date that would conveniently fit with the birth of her daughter Edith in February 1925. 

Paul, the subject of so much scandal over the previous twenty five years, appears to have settled for a quiet life and no longer appears in the Viennese papers. Now in his mid-forties Paul joined the Austrian Touring Club, a motor enthusiasts club in the summer of 1925. 

In 1927 he resigned from the Jewish community. 

In the summer of 1929 Paul and the family vacationed in Gmunden. The following summer Paul Frisch again is listed as visiting Gmunden, this time  vacationing at the ParkHotel Mucha. Awkwardly the curliste fails to mention any daughters and so this may well not be our Paul Frisch but then again it’s possible that they left the girls behind with the nanny and went on holiday with Reinhold.    

From 1926 onwards Paul remained in Schreyvogelgasse but is no longer listed as a mortgage broker and instead is simply listed as “private”, a catch-all term that could mean anything from “retired” to “none-of-your-business”. Then, in 1931, he disappeared entirely from the Viennese address books. 

The Berlin and Vienna address books give an overlapping chronology of their whereabouts but I now believe that Paul and Gisela moved to Berlin in 1929 and perhaps shuttled back and forth for a few years before settling down in Berlin in 1931 where they lived in Am Park 11, Schoneburg. 

Liselotte attends the Toilettenbild Ball 1937

In January 1937 eighteen-year old Liselotte attended the Toilettenbild Ball, presided over by the Archduchess Margarethen. The ballroom was filled with precious furs, mink, ermine as well as more modest capes, and accessorised with shoes, gloves and bags.

Girls were encouraged to wear dance dresses in “all shades of blue” but Liselotte, showing some independent spirit perhaps, bucked the trend and wore a dress of “baby pink taffeta and tulle”.

Was Liselotte Jewish or Aryan?

Given what we now know I am inclined to think that the story about Liselotte’s supposed Aryan parentage was a total fabrication that Paul and Gisela came up with to evade the Nazi anti-Jewish laws. 

I have never found any evidence of the preposterously sounding Count Karl Firmian zu Krometz und Meggel and now think that this was an elaborate tale that Paul and Gisela told the Nazis to allow her to continue to study at the Addemy of Fine Arts. Furthermore I think that seventy years later their ploy fooled the American academic Prof. Evan Burr Bukey when he wrote about her parentage in his book Jews and Intermarriage in Nazi Austria. 

Paul was her father and she had been born out of wedlock, pure and simple. 

If they were prepared to take on the Nazis in court and argue that their daughter was in fact illegimate, and therefore was not Aryan and not half-Jewish, what else would they be prepared to do? In the course of my research I have searched for hundreds of Viennese birth records and on the whole from 1870 onwards the records are pretty reliable. The absence of both Liselotte and Edith’s birth records, and that of their mother, stands out as highly unusual. It is not inconceivable that Paul and Gisela  attempted to expunge their daughter’s births from the records in an attempt to protect them from Nazi persecution. 

Given what we now know I am inclined to think that the story about Liselotte’s supposed Aryan parentage was a total fabrication that Paul and Gisela came up with to evade the Nazi anti-Jewish laws. 

I have never found any evidence of the preposterously sounding Count Karl Firmian zu Krometz und Meggel and now think that this was an elaborate tale that Paul and Gisela told the Nazis to allow her to continue to study at the Addemy of Fine Arts. Furthermore I think that seventy years later their ploy fooled the American academic Prof. Evan Burr Bukey when he wrote about her parentage in his book Jews and Intermarriage in Nazi Austria. 

Paul was her father and she had been born out of wedlock, pure and simple. 

If they were prepared to take on the Nazis in court and argue that their daughter was in fact illegimate, and therefore was not Aryan and not half-Jewish, what else would they be prepared to do? In the course of my research I have searched for hundreds of Viennese birth records and on the whole from 1870 onwards the records are pretty reliable. The absence of both Liselotte and Edith’s birth records, and that of their mother, stands out as highly unusual. It is not inconceivable that Paul and Gisela  attempted to expunge their daughter’s births from the records in an attempt to protect them from Nazi persecution. 

Reinhold Frisch

Paul’s son Reinhold is described as being tall and thin with brown hair and eyes and wearing glasses. In later life he spoke both German and Spanish and liked reading, classical music and spending time with his family. 

After finishing school he went to Leipzig where he studied medicine. I’ve found no evidence of him ever actually using the title ‘Doctor’ so it’s possible that he may not have completed his studies. 

Reinhold was a keen motorcyclist and in the summer of 1925 he wrote to the papers to inform them that for several months he had been the proud owner of a large BSA two-cylinder motorbike. Having tried many German and British bikes he had reached the conclusion that the British BSA machines, despite their relatively low horsepower, outperformed all other bikes. He went on to claim that despite the enormous challenge of driving in the mountainous areas around Vogtland and Erzgebirge he never had any difficulties with the engine. In addition to their great reliability, they were fast and he could easily make trips with a sidecar up to 500 to 600 km when loaded with two people and two large suitcases. He concludes his letter by describing himself as a serious motorcyclist and gives his address as Doerienstrasse 5/7, Leipzig. 

It’s difficult to tell whether Reinhold was simply an avid fan of BSA motorbikes who was keen to share his enthusiasm or did he receive some sort of compensation for his flattering endorsement?

Santiago, Chile

Some time during the 1930s Reinhold moved to Santiago and adopted the more Spanish sounding name Reinaldo. Annette hints that his emigration may have had something to do with gambling debts or some similar sort of scandal.

His father Paul joined him at the end of 1939. According to Musgrave Paul’s new address was S.Isabell 69, Santiago.   

Around this time Reinhold married a woman called Maria Amelia Lynch. Her family had English roots but she herself was born in Chile. 

In 1941 Reinhold and Maria Amelia had a daughter called Lucy Lorena who I believe prefers to go by the name Lorena. Twelve years later they had a son called Carlos Reinaldo.

Reinhold died in a car accident in 1962, aged 57.

Carlos Reinaldo Frisch Lynch

Carlos lives in Iquique, Chile, and is an independent businessman working in industrial maintenance operations. For the past twenty years he’s been working as an operations manager maintaining battleships and tanks for the Chilean military. He speaks fluent Spanish and Portuguese and is also able to speak English.