My blog - Uncle Otto's Puppet Theatre

Above, Richard Flatter with my infant father The internet brings unexpected connections. It led the other day to my drinking coffee with a writer whose […]

History

The “total theatre” of Max Reinhardt and great-uncle Richard’s ill-fated book about it

by Brigid GRAUMAN2021-05-192021-05-19 No Comments

Flamboyant Max Reinhardt was a theatrical revolutionary. A Jewish boy whose father was a corset-maker in Vienna, his wild creative ambitions brought revolving sets and […]

History

Chicken farming to the strains of string quartets in New Jersey

by Brigid GRAUMAN2021-03-182021-03-20 No Comments

When in Vienna, my grandparents had been middle-class intellectuals; my grandfather a well-paid lawyer, my grandmother a socialist and music-lover. The Second World War put […]

Psychology

Freud was jealous of my great-aunt’s lover

by Brigid GRAUMAN2021-02-262021-02-26 No Comments

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 […]

History

A Jewish blessing

by Brigid GRAUMAN2021-02-022021-02-02 No Comments

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 […]

Architecture

Jindřich Blum – My Uncle Otto’s sorely lamented friend

by Brigid GRAUMAN2021-01-252021-02-09 No Comments

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 […]

History

Mahler, Freud and me

by Brigid GRAUMAN2021-01-152021-01-15 No Comments

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. […]

History

Einstein’s helping hand for my refugee family

by Brigid GRAUMAN2021-01-072021-01-07 No Comments

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 […]

Society

The family’s “shameful” secret

by Brigid GRAUMAN2020-12-302020-12-13 No Comments

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 […]

Society

Snake, lizard and toadskin: my family’s handmade shoes

by Brigid GRAUMAN2020-12-182021-02-07 No Comments

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 […]