Language:
English
Pages:
101 pages.
Year of publication:
1999
Keywords:
Gutmann, Jakob,
;
Pick, Margarethe,
;
Pick family
;
Rothberger, Bertha
;
Rothberger family
;
Schulhof family
;
Weil family
;
United States.
;
Jews Persecution.
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Engineers.
;
Education, Higher.
;
Kristallnacht, 1938.
;
Bar mitzvah.
;
Families 20th century.
;
Universities and colleges.
;
World War, 1914-1918.
;
World War, 1939-1945.
;
Austria History Anschluss, 1938.
;
Minsk (Belarus)
;
Ohio.
;
Vienna (Austria)
;
České Budějovice (Czech Republic)
;
United States Emigration and immigration 1933-1945.
;
Autobiographies
;
Biographical sources
;
Memoirs
Abstract:
Description of Vienna of the author's childhood. Childhood memories of World War One with frequent visits at the maternal grandparents in Budweis. His father, Jakob Gutmann, was an engineering executive with Austrian Siemens-Schuckert. His mother, Margarete Pick, had been born in Altbunzlau, Czechoslovakia and moved to Vienna some time before 1914. The family lived in a modern apartment house in the Second District. Description of domestic life with maids and laundresses. The author and his younger sister Hanne had French governesses and piano lessons. Summer vacations in the countryside. Recollections of his school days in the 'Realgymnasium' and rising National Socialism. Bar Mizwah celebration in 1928. Political unrest. Death of his father in 1931. In the fall of 1934 Friedrich Gutmann entered the Engineering College at the Technical University of Vienna. Recollections of "Anschluss" and detailed description of life in Nazi Germany. Shortly after the "Anschluss" he was suspended from university. He tried to escape to the Netherlands from the Westphalian town Bocholt. During "Kristallnacht" the author was arrested and spent a week in prison. When his visa for the US came through, he was released. He went back to Vienna to prepare for his emigration. His sister had already left for England, where she got married soon after. Friedrich Gutmann left Vienna in February, 1939. Via England, he arrived in New York on March 15th of 1939. He lived with distant relatives in Ohio and worked in a factory. In 1941, he enrolled in Fenn College, Cleveland as a transfer student, taking night classes in engineering. He graduated with the Fenn College class of 1942, with the degree of Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Still in Vienna, his mother Margarete was deported to Minsk, in September 1942, where she probably perished. In June 1943, Fred Gutmann was drafted to the US Army.
Abstract:
He served in England and France and was later stationed in Frankfurt, Germany. In August 1945, he came back to Vienna, where he met his future wife, Bertha Rothberger. They married in Vienna in 1946 and went to the USA in 1947. Fred Gutmann worked in various engineering jobs, settling in Caldwell, NJ.
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