Repossessing the Past? Property, Memory and Austrian Jewish Narrative Histories

Abstract

In his memoir Last Waltz in Vienna (1981), Austrian émigré George Clare describes his family’s apartments and furnishings almost as lovingly as he does his parents and relatives. In explaining his emotional attachment to the Viennese interiors of his youth, Clare notes that his urge to visit his grandmother’s apartment the day after the Anschluss ‘shows not only that the old lady meant quite a lot to me, but also that I saw in her and her surroundings a permanence more firmly established than that of our own home’.1 In describing the furnishings, Clare artfully elaborates upon them down to the last detail, including their ‘white wood with carved scrolls, flowers and bows’ and the ‘inlaid wood and ormolu-decorated drawers and corners, as well as a big reproduction of a side-board for the dining room’ and ‘a soft blue curtain with embroidered gold leaves’.2 After the Anschluss, Clare’s parents made considerable efforts to ship their household items to a warehouse in Paris. The couple found refuge in a small village in the south of France, while Clare secured a place in England. Though in immediate danger, his parents focused their energy on ensuring the ability of their son to reclaim the family furniture. In fitful, anguished letters, Clare’s mother pleaded with him to remember the warehouse number. In a poignantly recounted scene, Clare describes a note hastily scribbled by his father and thrown from the train as he was being deported, so desperately anxious was he to enable his son to retrieve the furnishings. The last written words Clare possesses from his father are: ‘I beg you to pay the depot rental of fr. 215 per month [. . .]. If possible I want to save everything for my son’.3