Anschluss and Belton
Anschluss was the annexation of Austria by Hitler in March 1938. Austria became the German equivalent of an English county. Chamberlain’s appeasement left 206,000 Austrian Jews under Nazi control. Belton's visitor book for 1928 to 1951 reveals the guests who stayed there. It records how the owners, the 6th Baron & Baroness, Perry & Kitty Brownlow, helped Jews in their flight from Austria.
Altogether, over 2,700 mainly Jewish members of Vienna University were dismissed and subsequently expelled and/or murdered - teachers, students and administrative employees, and more than 200 people were stripped of their academic degrees. In April 1938, Vienna’s Medical Faculty purged 175 members. At the peak of professional eminence, Julius Hass, an orthopaedic surgeon became a victim of Nazi persecution and was expelled. Being Jewish, he could not legally give allegiance to Hitler. Some university members committed suicide, others died in Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Why didn’t they just leave Austria? That demanded assets for the huge, Reichsfluchtsteuer (Reich Flight Tax), sponsors and numerous documents. Austrians had a 9-year wait for U.S. visas.
Professor Julius Hass in 1936 (1883-1959). Archiv Universität Wien.
Hass's expulsion letter. Hass is merely copied into the correspondence! The addressee is Professor Dr Gerhard Ritter von Haberler (1897-1980). He took over from Hass as Head of the orthopedic ward of the I. Surgical Department, 1939-1945. Haberler participated in a forced sterilization programme.
Julius came to Belton via India in July 1938 intending to move to the U.S. The visitor book records that the Brownlows hosted Julius, son Anton, wife Alice and her brother Kurt Gottlieb.
The introductions likely arose through the Brownlow’s friendship with Baron Franckenstein, Austrian Ambassador. A Belton address book (NT 434766) lists telephone numbers to a 1930s Austrian legation diplomat, Baron Lothar Wimmer. He became Austrian Ambassador in 1952.
Anti-Nazi Franckenstein, sacked after Anschluss, remained in London to devise the Special Operations Executive strategy against wartime Austria. He took British nationality and was knighted to become Sir George Franckenstein.
His Eminence Baron Franckenstein, Austrian Ambassador 1937. Georg Albert Freiherr von und zu Franckenstein GCVO (1878 – 1953). Killed with his wife in a plane crash.
At an Austrian Legation ball. Left Perry Brownlow. From right Alice Hass, Kitty Brownlow & Kurt Gottlieb, sitting (The Sketch 15 December 1937).
Fifteen-year-old Anton (1923-1992) went to Stow School while the family awaited U.S. visas.
Another Belton guest, Dickie Trauttenberg, also housed the Hass family before departure to America in 1939. Embarkation documents flag them as nationality indeterminate from Austria.
Julius and his family arrived in New York City in 1939. He had lost both his professional position and his life savings. He had to sit on the side lines while struggling to pass the State Medical Licensing Board examinations. Julius gained a U.S. medical license in 1941 and specialised in congenital dislocation of the hip. His 1942 draft card below shows him at Montefiore Hospital where he became Chief of the Orthopaedic Department (opens pdf).
Safe haven, Alice (known as Lisl) Hass application for U.S. citizenship, address 1 East 62nd Street, New York. On her arrival documents in New York she is reported to speak English, German, French & Italian, without nationality .
Julius Hass application for U.S. citizenship
Julius Hass draft card. Now living at 830 Park Avenue, New York.
Anton (Anthony) Hass draft card. Anton graduated from Princeton University in 1944. Following graduation with a degree in chemical engineering, he joined Hercules Powder Co. that manufactured gun powder for munitions. He later served as a scientific consultant to the U.S. Army of Occupation in Germany.
Alice returned to Belton in 1950 for the funeral of her brother in Belton’s churchyard. Kurt’s tragic end makes another story.
Anton married in 1957 and had three children, Anthony Cecil, John Randolph and Elizabeth, and grandchildren.
Unconnected, Alfred Bernhard Alexander, another Jewish, Viennese doctor arrived at Belton in 1939.
Distinguishable from Alfred John Alexander, a German physician who served as President of the Berlin Association of Doctors and fled the Nazis for Britain in 1935.
Alfred Bernhard Alexander in later life. The adjacent letter gives him an additional name, Israel. The 1938 Executive Order on the Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names required German Jews bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin to adopt an additional name: Israel for men and Sara for women.
An additional letter gives the grounds for revocation of his doctorate, the Nazi die Ausbürgerung - forcible removal of citizenship. That letter of May 1942 allows a complaint against the decision to be lodged with the Reich Minister for Science, Education and Public Education within one month after delivery.
A letter copied to the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler informing of the revocation of Alfred's doctorate. Note, Alfred, still pursued by the Nazis despite having left for England 2 years earlier. The letter is from, Das Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung, the Education Ministry. It is sent to Bernhard Rust, the Education Minister. Rust committed suicide in May 1945 with Germany's capitulation.
Alfred (1909-1983) an E.N.T. surgeon fled to Britain and within a year had gained qualifications from both Glasgow and Edinburgh. He then worked at Guy’s Hospital and the Royal Nose, Throat and Ear Hospital in Grays Inn Road. He wrote papers on blast injury of the ear. He was appointed Consultant at St James’ Hospital, Balham in 1946, and worked there until 1974. He specialise in treating the voices of singers. He became honorary laryngologist to The Royal College of Music and The Royal Northern College of Music and Consultant to the Royal Academy of Music. In 1982 he was awarded honorary membership of the Royal College of Music. He wrote many articles on the function of the larynx in singers. He condensed his thoughts into his book Operanatomy published in various versions between 1971 and 1979. It took until 1955 for his nullified doctorate to be reinstated by the Vienna University.
As an example of how easily flight was thwarted without the assistance of benefactors like the Brownlows, Walter Benjamin, a famous German philosopher obtained a US visa, but only for travel from neutral Portugal. Travelling there through Franco's Spain, their police proposed to deport him back to the Nazis; he committed suicide. His brother was murdered in Mauthausen concentration camp.