Every family history has dark periods. But how do you come to terms with the knowledge that your father is a notorious mass murderer? “A Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did,” a 90-minute documentary that had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, tackles this issue with great depth and sensitivity. It…
When we first met we had many conversations like this one. “Help me place your accent,” you say. “I’m from Austria,” I answer. “Oh,” you reply, “My grandmother is from there. She left on a Kindertransport.” And then you add, “Vienna is supposed to be beautiful.” I notice some discomfort. I wonder if you’re wondering…
Oxford, England When my youngest daughter began working on a master’s degree at Oxford University last fall, she became the seventh generation of women in my family to live for an extended period in England. So my husband and I will take a long weekend in June and make a pilgrimage of sorts, back to…
One of Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings will not be returned to the heirs of its Jewish former owner in a case that has tested Austria’s laws on restitution of looted art. The law, which is often applied in cases linked to the country’s Nazi past, was updated in 2009 to include works which were…
Millions of dollars worth of prized art and objects once stolen by the Nazis and later forcibly relinquished to the Austrian government was donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The donation of 186 objects from the original collection of Alphonse and Clarice de Rothschild of Vienna of the famed Jewish banking dynasty…
Carl Djerassi, an Austrian-born chemist who helped to develop the birth control pill before becoming a playwright and novelist, died in San Francisco on Friday at the age of 91, his family said. Djerassi, professor emeritus at Stanford University, was the leader of a team of researchers in Mexico City who synthesized a derivative of…
Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs By Graham Johnson Yale University Press, 3,000 pages, $300 A few months before he died in 1828 at the age of 31, Franz Schubert produced a setting of the 92nd Psalm, Tov Lehodot La’Adonai. Yet, as Graham Johnson asks in his massive new compendium about the Austrian composer, “How many…
The Austrian government could expropriate Adolf Hitler’s childhood home in an effort to ensure the house is not turned into a neo-Nazi shrine. The country’s interior ministry is looking into expropriation if the home’s owner, who has not publicly been identified, refuses to sell it to the government, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. She reportedly…
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