With some dogged digging, the internet can sometimes divulge the most unexpected stories. It recently revealed Hilde Loewe, wife of my great-uncle Otto Flatter of […]
Continue reading
A Jewish blessing
My father was 12 when he learned that he was Jewish and that life was no longer safe. Just after the Anschluss, his mother told […]
Continue reading
Jindřich Blum – My Uncle Otto’s sorely lamented friend
Great-uncle Otto wrote a moving tribute in his memoir to his friend the Czech architect Jindřich (Heinrich) Blum, which didn’t make it into my book […]
Continue reading
Mahler, Freud and me
I based my book “Uncle Otto’s Puppet Theatre” on seven family memoirs, but I also read as much as I could about the Austro-Hungarian Empire. […]
Continue reading
Einstein’s helping hand for my refugee family
Albert Einstein must have had hundreds of letters from desperate European Jews asking for help. My grandmother Emma was among those 1930s letter-writers to him […]
Continue reading
The family’s “shameful” secret
A good many stories didn’t make it into “Uncle Otto’s Puppet Theatre”. One of these was about the lovely illegitimate Martha. Born of unmarried Adelheid’s […]
Continue reading
Snake, lizard and toadskin: my family’s handmade shoes
Hand-made shoes were once the nec plus ultra, and my family made some of the very best. Artists, aristocrats and business tycoons wore Graumann shoes […]
Continue reading
The girl with the military tattoo
Tattoos may be ubiquitous nowadays, but it wasn’t always thus. So I was amused by an anecdote of my great-uncle Richard Flatter, lawyer by day, […]
Continue reading
Smutty art in Vienna
When Uncle Otto was trying to become an established figure in the art world, the Viennese had sex on the brain. Vienna could be called […]
Continue reading
Fake Sacher torte
“Uncle Otto’s Puppet Theatre” aims to bring to life those of my family in bygone times in Vienna. The taste of Viennese pastries is very […]
Continue reading