Marina Plistiev, a Kyrgyzstan-born Jew, has lived in Vienna for 34 years but still doesn’t like to take public transport. She recalls the day in 1986 as a teenager when she and her four-year-old brother, whom she’d collected from school with a fever, were told to get off a tram for having the wrong tickets,…
Officials from the Jewish Museum of Vienna said that hundreds of objects in the museum’s possession were looted from Jewish families during the Holocaust. A review of the artifacts found 490 objects and more than 980 books that may have been stolen from Jewish owners, The New York Times reported Wednesday. “For historic reasons, people…
The Vienna Philharmonic has asked three historians to research the orchestra’s alleged Nazi past. The announcement on Jan. 22 comes after Harald Walser, a historian and Parliament member for the Austrian Greens, said in an interview that the orchestra demonstrated sympathy for the country’s Nazi leadership during World War II. Historians Fritz Truempi, Oliver Rathkolb…
When writing of great Viennese artists, influential historians such as Carl Schorske in his landmark “Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture” do not even mention sculptor Teresa Ries (1874-1956), Impressionist landscape painter Tina Blau (1845-1916), and figurative artist Bronica Koller (1863-1934). But posterity can play strange tricks. And now, in “The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women…
An Austrian lawmaker accused the Vienna Philharmonic of attempting to conceal the institution’s sympathy for the country’s Nazi leadership during World War II. Harald Walser, a historian and Parliament member for the Austrian Greens, made the accusations in a recent interview for the ORF national public service broadcaster. Walser cited a listing on the Philharmonic’s…
“There is only one original Sacher-Torte,” our tour guide told us, “and it is here, at the Hotel Sacher.” My two friends and I exchanged glances. “That’s the chocolate cake we’re supposed to try,” said Sam. Eric put his hands on both our shoulders. “Um, yeah. We’re doing that.” We were three American Jews in…
Vienna-born potter Lucie Rie, who is the subject of Emmanuel Cooper’s biography “Lucie Rie: Modernist Potter,” shows how a Jewish artist can express Yiddishkeit in creativity despite repeated assimilations. Rie, who lived from 1902 to 1995, was the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Gomperz, an ear, nose and throat specialist and a friend of Sigmund Freud….
Vienna city councillors removed the name of a notoriously anti-Semitic mayor from a section of the elegant Ring boulevard that encircles the heart of the city. City Councilor Andreas Mailath Pokorny on Wednesday formally exchanged the street sign “Dr. Karl-Lueger-Ring” for one named Universitaetsring (University Ring) in honor of the university located there, the Associated…
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