Denial

By Ilse Nusbaum

Ilse Nusbaum was four years old in 1938 when Hitler’s soldiers marched into her hometown. Her family was stripped of all that it owned, and her father, Karl Lowy, was denied the right to defend his dissertation. Ten years of academic studies were stolen from him. In 2009, she discovered that the dissertation had survived the war and the Holocaust in his university's library and learned that he was one of the two Jewish students expelled without receiving his doctorate degree. She set forth on a mission of justice on her father’s behalf, a posthumous doctorate. Her efforts resulted in a monument on the campus of his university, honoring all 120 Jewish students at the university in 1938, but she failed in her quest for a degree for her father. Denial tells the story in the form of a labyrinth, with bypaths that include the pandemic and protests of 2020-2021

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667145600

Ilse Nusbaum

Martha was born in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was a young woman when Hitler marched into Vienna. Her daughter, Ilse, grew up in Detroit. A Harvard graduate with a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, she has published medical books, articles, poetry, and a novel. Falling Uphill has been cited on the Vienna University of Economics WU) website and in an Austrian history book about expelled Jewish families. Ilse's work with WU resulted in a memorial site and monument erected on the University's new campus as well as a monograph about expelled scholars

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Copyright © 2021 Ilse Nusbaum.

Cover art ©2018 Robert Scott McWatt

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Threads that guide the hitchhiker are: anti-Semitism, denial, my father’s dissertation, the monument; my mother’s ancestry; my run-over foot; my neighborhood and home; racism and protests; and the Covid pandemic.

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Artistic rendition of the Monument, Closeup

© 2018 Robert Scott McWatt

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THE MONUMENT BUILT

BY A DISSERTATION

The Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) dedicated a monument on its campus on May 8, 2014. Built of stainless steel in the form of a globe, it is eight feet in diameter and consists entirely of the names of the 120 Jewish students who attended the school in 1938. Of the 15 doctoral candidates whose names shine in the sun, 13 received their degrees without ceremonial honors. My father, Karl Löwy, was one of two denied the right to defend his dissertation because he was Jewish. My discovery of the denial was the genesis of the WU memorial project.

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Memorial Monument on the campus of WU

©2017 Amanda Concors

I have this view of the monument woven into a tapestry. My father’s name is smack in the middle.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AND INTRODUCTIONS

Entering My Memory Maze

Eighty-seven years of life on this planet have taught me gratitude. I’m grateful every day – to my daughters, Katherine, Margaret, and Anne – my grandchildren Robert, Richard, Ryan, Austin, and Amanda. I’m grateful to be the great-grandmother of Ellis. I call myself his Oma. I’m grateful to my parents, Karl and Martha Lowy.

I’m beholden to my ancestors – Court Factors in Austria. I’m thankful that my mother’s great-grandmother, Maria Schlesinger Braun, brought their Letter of Protection into our family, and that Maria’s grandson, my grandfather, Jakob Braun, could research our ancestry because of it. I’m grateful to my grandmothers, Gisela Braun and Emma Löwy, and my paternal grandfather, Max Löwy. I’m grateful to mythical creatures like Ariadne, who taught me how to navigate with thread. The Hitchhiker’s Table of Contents provides some threads.

The first thread begins in Austria, where I was born. Austria united with Germany (Anschluss) when I was four years old. My father was a scholar. He’d completed the Ph.D. program at the Vienna University for World Trade in January 1938, except for one essential detail: defense of his dissertation. He didn’t walk away from it.

My mother was heroic; she faced the Gestapo to procure our exit paperwork from Austria. She was brilliant; she had a photographic memory. She was tenacious; on a European tour at age 87, she climbed up and down spiral staircases and walked on cobblestones without a walker or a cane. She was optimistic; she celebrated her 95th birthday with 50 family members and friends. At the end of the day, she said, Let’s do this again five years from now.

It was wishful thinking. Her blood pressure often soared, even after she took her cocktail of anti-hypertensive drugs. Whenever it did, she spent the night in a hospital, was treated, and the following day she’d be discharged. It shot up on Valentine’s Day 2008. She wasn’t discharged at the end of the day. She went from hospital to nursing home to hospital. She died March first. I knew that she’d written an autobiography, Martha’s Universe. She’d distributed it to guests at her party. I didn’t know that she owned folders full of family documents. I put them aside.

During the course of the year and into the fall of 2009, I added tidbits to Mother’s Universe without changing a word that she wrote. The final tacked-on words were mine: I finally found my father. What I’d found was his dissertation’s title in a wine bibliography. A bit of email sleuthing revealed that it was in the library of the Vienna University for World Trade, his old school, renamed the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU).

In 2011, my daughter, Anne, and I flew to Vienna as guests of the Jewish Welcome Service, an agency that welcomes Austrian exiles and their companion to a week-long tour of Vienna. I emailed the JWS schedule to my contact at the WU library and underlined a free afternoon. We made a date and taxied there. She led us inside the building and into the archives. I took my father’s dissertation off the library shelf. I opened it and saw what hadn’t appeared on the photocopy, the back of the title page. It was marked with a swastika.

The sight sent me into a tailspin. I knew there was a reason why my father hadn’t received the degree he’d earned, and that the reason was connected to the swastika. I was told that he hadn’t defended his dissertation. I knew he wouldn’t have walked away from ten years of academic work. He needed the degree to practice his profession. He lost his job as a professor at the Eisenstadt Commercial College. He needed the degree in America, and he didn’t have it.

Back in Los Angeles, I scrutinized his paperwork – the report books and submission application for his dissertation. I scanned and emailed them to the librarian at WU. She forwarded my messages to the rectorate council. They referred them to the legal department, and from there they went to two historians. A bit of digging confirmed my suspicion. I was sent a document that stated: Denied, a Jewish person isn’t permitted to defend his dissertation!

Amends had to be made, and to make them, a list of all Jewish students who’d attended the university in 1938 was compiled, and a competition was held for a memorial sculpture. The winning design was in the form of a globe bearing 120 names. In 2014, I was an honored guest at the unveiling ceremony. The accompanying brochure said nothing specific about my father, but it credited me with initiating the project.

My father’s story has been published in three Austrian books, but the monument itself is generic. Nothing nearby links it to the theft of my father’s academic credentials or suggests that he was one of only two doctoral candidates who was expelled without his degree. Thirteen candidates finished their studies and received their doctorates without ceremony. Question: Why not my father? Answer: His advisor was the Nazi-complicit rector of the school.

After the dedication: In 2015, I spoke at a Harvard/Radcliffe symposium. In Beverly Hills, I teach the creative writing class for adults and am editor of the Beverly Hills quarterly prepared by my writers. I published a series of articles about the dissertation, my quest for justice, and the WU monument. In 2016, my class published a chapbook and gave a reading. In 2017, a truck ran over my foot, and my computer kept crashing. I prepared class lesson plans and edited two issues of the periodical on my iPhone. I was hobbling around. Denial was neglected.

As 2019 drew to a close, I figured that procrastination had merits, that 2020 would be an auspicious year for a book’s publication. The numbers connote perfect vision. I’m a moon gazer: it would be a leap year with a full moon on the Fourth of July, a full moon on my birthday, a full moon on Halloween and nearly so on Christmas Eve, and as a bonus, the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the first day of winter. Under the prospect of those lucky stars, I prepared my Radcliffe 65th reunion report. The virus, SARS-CoV2, didn’t exist, nor did the disease, COVID-19. The 2020 reunion report is a relic of a world before the plague.

News from Los Angeles and Vienna: Austria first, with its ghosts. At our reunion five years ago, I related the saga of a monument on the campus of the Vienna University of Economics (WU), where my father was at the tail end of a doctorate. His dissertation had been accepted on January 20, 1938, and the sole remaining requirement was its defense. Because 13 of its 15 Jewish doctoral candidates had taken the exams and received their degrees, WU claimed my father had voluntarily left without completing the work. I scanned and emailed his report books, proving he’d applied and paid the fees. In response, the school’s historians searched the archives, where they found his application. Scrawled on the bottom were the words, "Da mosaisch zu den Rigorosen nicht zugelassen, translated as, Denied. Jews cannot be admitted to a doctoral defense."

When I discovered that, with a stroke of a pen, his academic credentials – his M.B.A. and Ph.D. – had been stolen, I requested a posthumous doctorate for him. They were sorry, they said, but posthumous degrees were illegal. Instead, they started a memorial project. It soon became a very big deal, with an art competition for the design of a memorial sculpture, a monument. The winning design was a globe consisting of names of the 150 expelled students, most of whom were murdered in the Holocaust. When the monument was dedicated on the school’s campus on May 8, 2014, the rector cited my father’s dissertation and the school’s refusal to let him defend it as the project’s genesis.

That’s where my 2015 report ended. I didn’t know that informational signage at the monument credits WU and the Academy of Fine Arts for its inception until my granddaughter went to Vienna and saw it there in 2017. No mention of the dissertation or denial of its defense. In 2018, the university’s new rector mailed me a birthday greeting, adding thanks for initiating the project. Two months later, she sent me an invitation to a ceremony replete with concert and speeches, restoring the doctorates of the students who’d received them in 1938 without those honors. Restoring was the operative word. Since my father hadn’t received the degree, his name was not included anywhere on the invitation, not even on the photo of the monument, taken from another angle. Appalled, I thanked her. All I’d asked for was a piece of paper, not forthcoming legally but ceremonially perhaps.

These events provided insight into my father’s plight. Two Austrian historians recounted them. Johannes Koll, the author of "Säuberungen" an österreichischen Hochschulen 1934-1945, ©2017, gave me the first copy in Los Angeles on July 26, 2017. On June 26, 2018, an esplanade, the Dr. Jakob Braun Promenade, was dedicated in Markt Piesting, Lower Austria, to honor my maternal grandfather. Werner Sulzgruber, the author of a book that includes my maternal family’s history (Lebenslinien, ©2013) was at the dedication. Historians remember history.

My local news also varies. The class I teach at the Roxbury Community Center in Beverly Hills published a chapbook followed by a poetry reading in 2016, and we’re preparing another. I’m editor of the Beverly Hills quarterly, the Roxbury VIEWS. In addition, my poetry has been published in the Phi Kappa Phi Forum. I’m still serving on the HOA board of directors at my condo building. My computer and I stay busy.

If you think nothing can top those events, you’ve never had your foot crushed under the wheels of a truck. My Chicago daughter landed at LAX on a Wednesday afternoon, November 29, 2017. The temperature was in the high 80s, sunny and dry. She changed into summer clothes, and we took a walk. After strolling past dozens of eateries, we settled on a local deli for dinner.

We almost made it there when a Toyota Tacoma shot out of the driveway of a Mobil gas station, onto the sidewalk, and ran over my right foot. The driver claimed I’d placed it under her truck’s tire. She was in denial; I was in shock. I didn’t realize that crushed metatarsals wouldn’t heal in six weeks. I promised my class that I’d return on Groundhog Day. Although my estimate for healing was off by weeks, months, years, a promise is a promise. With the assistance of an aide, I kept the promise.

There are aches and pains of age. I don’t have them. No arthritis, no sore knees or hips, no sciatica – I was the healthiest person I knew. Following the encounter with the truck, I was grateful to be alive and determined to stay active. I have corrected 20/20 vision, but because of longstanding MMD, I no longer drive. Walking is essential. In July, I joined a gym to regain strength. Over the course of a year, I mastered muscular maneuvers previously unknown to this octogenarian. An Austrian documentary that I’d participated in four years ago premiered in Beverly Hills on May 8, 2019. I walked to the theater swinging a cane. Proud of my progress, I signed on for a second year’s sessions at the gym. On May 15, my trainer decided to strengthen the arches of my feet.

A truck randomly running over a foot is one thing. Letting a body builder yank an injured foot with a bungee cord is quite another. The diagnosis – foot and leg, strained and sprained. Nights are a nightmare. I dream about Procrustes and his bed. My favorite gym routines remain off-limits; we concentrate on biceps. Nietzsche said, That which does not kill us makes us stronger. What doesn’t kill me makes me cranky. However, I am an optimist. I’m not fighting a catastrophic injury or a fatal disease. I may be hobbling at our reunion, but I promise myself that in August, when my second-oldest grandson marries, I’ll dance at the wedding without resorting to Reeboks.

It’s been a very long year – it seems like 100. I’ve been homebound. I’ve been vaccinated. We will find a new normal, and I’ll dance at the wedding reception in August, wearing a blue lace dress, a blue mask, and blue Sketcher walking shoes.

March 27, 2021,

under a full moon on Passover Eve,

one year after the lockdown

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SEQUEL

Not every 94-year-old woman mastered a computer in 2007, but my mother was no ordinary woman. She wrote about World War I and the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She wrote about the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and tuberculosis. She came down with both. She recovered from both, thanks to the skill of her physician father. She wrote about the Austrian Anschluss. And she wrote about my father’s dissertation and his stolen doctorate, a story I’d heard since early childhood.

Martha’s Universe became Parts I, II, and IV of our dual memoir, Falling Uphill. Mother died March 1, 2008, at age 95, and I wrote Parts III and V. I wanted my descendants to know what was going on at the start of the new millennium, so I added what I called breadcrumbs, tidbits left behind for a future generation of genealogists to follow if they wished. I reckoned that the book was her legacy and my swan song. It was her legacy. It wasn’t my swan song. I had no idea until the final days of proofreading that the left-behind breadcrumbs were left behind for me.

Mother and I had written the book for our descendants without a thought that it might wind up in Austria and Australia. I didn’t expect it to lead me to previously unknown cousins related through my grandfather’s grandparents or to lost childhood friends. The genealogy bug bit me. The papers handed down to me included my grandfather’s journals, a genealogical chart, as well as my father’s academic records. From them, I learned about the treaties that created Burgenland, and about both World Wars.

My father’s report books and academic documents showed that he’d submitted his dissertation on November 1, 1937, that it was accepted, and that he’d paid the fees to defend it. I embarked on an internet search for him, his dissertation, and his school, but found nothing, not even the name of his university, the Vienna University for World Trade. I thought that it and everything in it had been bombed out of existence during World War II.

Then, during an internet search for Karl Lowy + Burgenland, here’s what I found: Gesellschaft für Geschichte des Weines (Society for the History of Wine, Schoene3) - entered May 31, 2005), WU-Bibliothek #31570. Author: Karl Löwy. Dissertation: Der Weinbau in Österreich. Wirtschaftsgeographische Untersuchungen. 9964. Handelwissenshaft, Hochschule für Welthandel (The Wine Industry in Austria, Economic-Geographic Research, 156 pages; University for World Trade). Dissertation location: WUBB (Vienna University of Economics and Business Library).

Adding to Martha’s Universe as Falling Uphill turned out to have been fortunate. It delayed publication long enough for me to insert a hasty conclusion – I finally found my father.

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BACKSTORY: Chunks of Denial will seem familiar to those of you who’ve read Falling Uphill. After all, how many new events can one record after only 11 years? My childhood was my childhood. My teen years were my teen years, myopia was myopia, and so on. From the publisher’s website:

Publication Date : 1/7/2010; ISBN: 9781440185366

About the Book

Martha’s father was a physician, and her mother was a dentist. Her husband, Karl, was a college professor. In 1938, her world changed overnight. Karl lost his job and the doctorate expected in June 1938. Seven months pregnant with her younger child, she obtained three scarce American visas. On the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 2009 something remarkable happened. Ilse discovered that Karl’s dissertation had survived the war and the Holocaust in the archives of the Vienna University of Economics archives. The book ends with this discovery, but the story does not. Ilse visited the university in 2011 and requested a posthumous doctorate for her father, in the cause of justice. The request was denied, but something more remarkable came of her persistence. The University discovered the names of 150 expelled scholars who were exiled or murdered. A memorial site and monument to honor them will be dedicated in 2014. A website listing each expelled scholar by name begins on the homepage, with Karl’s story, and his biography.

About the Author

Martha was born in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was a young woman when Hitler marched into Vienna. Her daughter, Ilse, grew up in Detroit. A Harvard graduate with a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, she has published medical books, articles, poetry, and a novel. Falling Uphill has been cited on the Vienna University of Economics WU) website and in an Austrian history book about expelled Jewish families. Ilse’s work with WU resulted in a memorial site and monument erected on the University’s new campus as well as a monograph about expelled scholars.

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From online website:

Famine, sickness, and chaos ravaged the lost empire at war’s end. Martha was five. Her father was the doctor in the village he’d turned into a vacation resort for residents of nearby Vienna. Her mother was the dentist. Their professional duties and a dark family secret shadowed her childhood. Her father’s mind had sunk into madness… . In 1938, her world changed overnight. Swastika flags fluttered in early spring breezes. Karl lost his job. Hitler Youth stood guard at the doors of their house. Evil and death filled the air. Seven months pregnant with her younger child, she obtained three scarce American visas. She, Karl, and their four-year-old daughter, Ilse, sailed to New York on a German ship. They arrived penniless. On the day the ship docked, Martha broke her arm. Ilse was sent to Detroit in the care of an aunt, a stranger to her. Ilse’s past vanished in an instant of shock. Shattered identity can be assembled. It’s called falling uphill.

Despite the fanciful claim, the title’s origin wasn’t the gathering of shattered identities. It was something more prosaic: a fall uphill. I’d tumbled over a carton that a delivery person had left in a walk path. Six weeks later, the bone healed, but I still used a cane when taking a walk. I was swinging the cane and it got caught in a vine. I defied gravity by falling uphill. My shattered identity wasn’t yet assembled, but I was getting there. The book was set for publication when I discovered that my father’s dissertation was archived in his university’s library.

I didn’t yell, Stop the presses! I contacted the bibliographer. He told me where the dissertation was, I searched the school’s directory and found the name of a librarian. I sent her an email, introducing myself as the daughter of Karl Lowy, a former doctoral candidate, and asked for a scan of the title page of his dissertation. Instead, I was mailed an entire Xeroxed copy. I don’t read German, but from his report book and other documents, I knew that his dissertation had been accepted on January 20, 1938. Why didn’t he have the degree? I asked. Their answer was that he hadn’t defended the dissertation.

I wasn’t tilting at windmills or aiming a slingshot. The internet is an equalizer in the 21st century. I knew my father. He would not have failed to finish his work if he’d been allowed to finish it. I was sure he’d been kicked out of the university because he was Jewish. The university administrators denied it. Their proof was that 13 of 15 Jewish doctoral candidates had remained until June and earned their degrees. Only my father (and one other scholar who already had three other doctorates) had left voluntarily before completing the requisites for the Ph.D.

That’s where it stood in 2010. In 2011, I went to Vienna courtesy of the Jewish Welcome Service. I visited the university’s library and saw the entire dissertation, typed and bound. On the back of the title page, I saw a swastika. I kept calm. A temper tantrum never got me anywhere that I wanted to go, but I was mad – angry and a little bit crazy. My father loved to teach, and he was a very good teacher. He’d been a professor at the Eisenstadt Commercial College and was dismissed the Monday after the Anschluss. Although the official letter stated that his employment had been terminated because of a necessary change of personnel, it wasn’t something he could use to find a job at the university level in the U.S. He needed the Ph.D.

As soon as I returned home from Vienna, I began an email barrage. I requested a posthumous doctorate for my father, as a matter of justice. I had no idea that my modest request would lead to denial. What good would it do my father? What harm would it do to the university? For me it was symbolic. For them it was a matter of principle. In order to get the doctorate you have to defend it. My father hadn’t defended it. I told them that he’d been denied the right to defend it.

They countered that of 15 doctoral candidates, 13 had passed the oral exams and had received their degrees. No one had been expelled; my father had left voluntarily. I had his submission document of November 1937 and his report books. I knew he hadn’t walked away from his oral exams. I dig in when I have to. I dug in. They didn’t have to dig in. They had access to all the paperwork they needed to prove that they were right, but they were wrong. He’d been denied the right to defend his dissertation because he was Jewish.

The university learned something new, something they hadn’t known about their school’s past. It was time to make amends. The rector instituted a memorial project. The school’s historians, Peter Berger and Johannes Koll, were called upon to find the names of all the Jewish students who’d been enrolled in 1938. The 13 doctoral candidates who’d been allowed to defend their dissertations had received non-Aryan degrees without the usual ceremony. But they weren’t expelled. The two doctoral candidates who’d been expelled were Arthur Luka (who’d been working on his third doctorate) and my father.

In 2014, the university erected a monument on its campus with the names of all Jewish students enrolled in 1938. The monument was dedicated on May 8, 2014. I was introduced as the person who’d initiated the project. The brochure credited me with the project’s initiation. But what I’d asked for – the only thing I’d asked for – a posthumous doctorate – was denied.

I began writing a sequel to Falling Uphill. The first version, titled Falling Uphill, Part VI, was chock-full of family history and photos. Subsequent versions rolled out like yarn: I have Built Myself a Monument; The Dutiful Daughter; and Lost in the Labyrinth. These iterations reside in a Cloud, unpublished. In 2015, I was one of three speakers at my 60th Harvard/ Radcliffe reunion symposium. I tried to demur, pointing out that the others were more academically accomplished. After being asked how many people force a major university to build a monument, I accepted the challenge, gave a short speech that you’ll read in its various versions, and enjoyed the reunion tremendously.

I finally began writing a sequel. What took me so long? Life intervened. I teach the Beverly Hills creative writing class for adults and am editor of the Beverly Hills quarterly, The ROXBURY VIEWS (ROXVIEWS). I published a string of articles about the Dissertation that Grew into a Monument. The story was also published in the JEWISH JOURNAL. The Vienna Jewish Museum displayed the dissertation in its exhibition about Austrian universities in the Nazi era. In 2016, my writing class published a chapbook, and I put my efforts there.

In the summer of 2017, I completed a year-long kitchen remodeling project, putting the sequel on hold. The Austrian historian, Johannes Koll, visited me in July and gave me the first copy of his book, The Cleansing of Austrian Universities. It would have sufficed, except it was written in German.

A truck ran over my foot on November 29, 2017. Yes, a Toyota Tacoma truck ran over my right foot and crushed the metatarsals. Not needing to prepare lesson plans for December and January might have been a good time to work on a book, except my newish Mac computer kept crashing. I edited two issues of THE ROXVIEWS on my cell phone, which was a chore, and my run-over foot needed care, which was a pain. I hoped that if I nagged the university long enough, it would grant my father a posthumous or honorary doctorate. It never did. I leave it to you whether my trek through the labyrinth ended in success or failure.

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INTRODUCING PEOPLE,

PLACES, AND THINGS

I was Ilse Luzie Löwy in Austria; Ilse Luzie Lowy after we fled to America; Ilse Lucy Lowy when I became an American citizen; Ilse Lucy Nusbaum when I married, and there I remain.

Ilse is a variant of Elisabeth. The <z> in Luzie is pronounced <tz>. Ilse is pronounced Ill-zeh or Ill-sah.

Lowy identifies my father’s family as Levites. My parents dropped the umlaut over the o and chose not to use its alternative spelling, oe. The <o> in Lowy can be pronounced as low (opposite of high) or as in loud (opposite of quiet). I chose low.

Nußbaum is a German village known for its vineyards and wines. The word translates to Walnut Tree. The German letter ß usually transliterates to . My husband’s grandfather chose Nusbaum. I grew up in Detroit and live in Los Angeles.

My husband – Robert Carl Nusbaum was born in Detroit on December 13, 1931; he was killed in a car crash in Detroit on January 8, 1965. Robert’s parents were Emil Justice Nusbaum and Ruth Elizabeth (Monson) Nusbaum. His sister was Ruth Elizabeth (Nusbaum) McWatt. Ruth’s son, Robert McWatt created the cover art for this book.

Our daughters – Katherine, Margaret, and Anne. Grandchildren – Robert, Richard, Ryan; Austin; Amanda. Great-grandson – Ellis.

My father – Karl Lowy (Löwy) was born July 13, 1902 in Oggau (near Neusiedler See), a city that was transferred from Hungary to Burgenland, Austria, after World War I. He died in Detroit on October 6, 1970.

My mother– Martha (Braun) Lowy was born in Markt Piesting, Lower Austria, on January 20, 1913. She did the paperwork that got us out of Austria in 1938. She died in Los Angeles on March 1, 2008.

My brother – Paul Lowy was born in Detroit a few weeks after our arrival in America. He moved from Michigan to Los Angeles in 1976. I followed him, as he says, Promptly, twelve years later.

Father’s parents – Maria (Werndorfer) Löwy and Max (Miksa) Löwy were married June 30, 1891 in Mattersdorf, Hungary, now Burgenland, Austria. Max worked at the Wolf Winery in Eisenstadt. He died June 23, 1923, and is buried in Vienna. Maria (whom I knew as Oma Emma) was killed in an air raid strike in Belgrade (April 6/8, 1941).

Father’s siblings – His brother Ignatz was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. One sister, Frieda (Vera) Jovanovich, lived in Belgrade; her son was Božo. Two sisters, Gisela and Hermine, lived in Ecorse, Michigan. Gisela married Heinrich Schipper in 1924. Gisela died of meningitis in 1931, when her daughter, Laura, was nine months old. After Gisela Schipper’s death, Hermine cared for Laura and married Heinrich. Hermine and Heinrich were our sponsors to America.

Mother’s parents – Jakob Braun was an honored physician, amateur genealogist and poet. He died in 1936 in Baden bei Wien. Gisela (Fuchs) Braun was the dentist in the Baden-bei-Wein region. Their home, where my mother and her brothers were raised, included their professional offices. The Piesting River ran through its backyard. For my mother, the idyllic setting shrouded the harsh reality of growing up during times of famine, sickness, and war.

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My grandparents’ house in Markt Piesting

Jakob Braun, physician, and Gisela Braun, dentist

©Ilse Nusbaum

Mother’s brothers – were Rudolf (Rudy), a physician, and Joseph (Joszi – pronounced, YO-zhee), an engineer. The families of Rudy and Joszi were sponsored by Gisela’s sister and brother-in-law, Bertha and Paul Breiner. They lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Mother’s ancestors –Mordecai ben Avraham Joffe (known as the Levush). His descendants were Marx Schlesinger and his son Moyses Schlesinger (financiers in the court of Emperor Charles VI) They were the ancestors of Maria Schlesinger Braun, my mother’s great-grandmother.

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The university my father attended was called Hochschule für Welthandel Wien – Vienna University for World Trade. A Hochschule is a university. What we call a high school in the U.S. is called a Gymnasium in Austria. Renamed Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien-WU in 1975, it is the largest European university specializing in the field of economics and one of the largest universities in Austria. Founded October 1, 1898 as k.u.k. Exportakademie, a professional business college, it became a university in 1919.

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Hochschule ©2011 Anne Concors

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Hochschule closeup ©2011 Anne Concors

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MY FATHER’S STOLEN

CREDENTIALS

My father completed the academic requirements for a master’s degree in economics (Diplomkaufmann) at the University for World Trade; on November 20, 1923, he passed the oral exam. Starting September 1925, he taught at the Commercial College in Eisenstadt. In the summer semester of 1931, he re-enrolled in the University for World Trade with the goal of earning a doctorate in economics. On November 10, 1937, he submitted his dissertation. On January 20, 1938, the dissertation was approved. On March 15, 1938, he was denied the right to defend it because he was Jewish.

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Diplomkaufmann diploma – his M.B.A.

© Ilse Nusbaum

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report book (1) 1931

© Ilse Nusbaum

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report book (2) 1931

© Ilse Nusbaum

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Dissertation submitted 11/1/1937

© Ilse Nusbaum

He submitted his dissertation in 1937, and it was approved January 20, 1938.

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Report book (3) 1931-1938

© Ilse Nusbaum

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Rigorosum denied- A Jewish person is not allowed to defend his dissertation

© Ilse Nusbaum

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My father was fired

© Ilse Nusbaum

The unification of Austria into the Third Reich (Anschluss) occurred on March 12, 1938. My father was fired on March 15. He was denied the right to defend his dissertation immediately after the Anschluss.

In 2009, I discovered that my father’s dissertation was in the library of the Vienna University for Economics and Business, the former Vienna University for World Trade. In 2011, Anne and I went to the WU library during our visit to Vienna as guests of the Jewish Welcome Service. I smiled when I took his dissertation off the library shelf. Then I opened it and saw a swastika stamped om the back of the title page. It shocked me into action. I embarked on what I called a Quest for Justice, a posthumous doctorate for my father.

The university launched a Memorial Project, and credited me with its initiation at the dedication of the Monument on May 8, 2014.

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In the Archives of WU © 2011Anne Concors

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Acknowledgement Page of Brochure

© Ilse Nusbaum 2014

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VIENNA

WU historian – Johannes Koll – Senior Scientist and Head of the Historical Archives at WU. We communicate frequently via email.

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Johannes Koll and me

© 2017 Ursula Preiss

WU librarian – Regina Zodl – WU Librarian and Archives Team Member hails from my mother’s hometown of Markt Piesting. Her efforts and those of her cousin, Brigette, led to the naming of a river-walk along the Piesting River – the DR. JAKOB BRAUN PROMENADE – that honors my grandfather.

The Vienna Jewish Museum – displayed the dissertation in its exhibition about Austrian universities in the Nazi era. It included my father’s dissertation. When the exhibition ended and the dissertation was returned to the library, I was sent the descriptive plaque. For a while I hoped that the final sentence would lead to a postscript, but it never did.

Kittie Berger Morelock – Retired University of Michigan-Ann Arbor psychiatric social worker. More than a friend.

The Wine Industry in Austria – My father’s doctoral dissertation.

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Anschluss – The merger of Austria into the Third Reich.

Nazi – Narrowly, a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party; more broadly, someone who went along with Nazi principles.

Nuremberg Laws – German laws of 1935 that defined Jews as individuals with at least one Jewish grandparent and eliminated their rights as citizens.

Mosaic Law – refers to laws specified in the Five Books of Moses (Pentateuch), such as the Ten Commandments, dietary laws, and ethics.

A Mosaic person – A person who follows Mosaic Law – a Jewish person. The document that denied my father the right to defend his dissertation used the word Mosaic: Da mosaisch zu den Rigorosen nicht zugelassen. The right to defend the dissertation is denied because he is Jewish.

Anti-Semitism – Definition from the U.S. Department of State website (2015): Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews… . Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for ‘why things go wrong.’ The percentage of Jews in the world is about 0.2%. Anti-Semitism throughout history and now, left wing and right wing, is a main thread in this book. It was the reason that my father lost his academic credentials in Nazi Austria.

Labyrinth – a maze that requires thread for navigation.

Ariadne’s thread – Ariadne’s thread is a method of problem solving. Backtracking (as in a labyrinth) to find a solution is permitted. Following threads runs in my family. In high school, I spun a yarn about Penelope – her trick of weaving and unravelling to buy time, an unconscious identification with my mother’s profession as a French weaver. The threads in Denial run in circles, tangle, and end where they began, with anti-Semitism.

Weaving/interlacing threads – tapestry – macramé/knotting – tessellation/tiling/mosaicism. My mother worked as a French weaver who restored damaged garments invisibly, thread by thread and was an expert in the arts of petit point, crocheting, and knitting.

Pandemic – COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China. It is caused by SARS-Cov-2, a previously unknown coronavirus. The California lockdown began March 18, 2020; the disease caused 541,030 American deaths by March 14, 2021.

Quest for Justice – my attempt to obtain a posthumous doctorate for my father from the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Mahnmal – The monument dedicated May 8, 2014 on the campus of WU is in the form of a globe with the names of Jewish students who attended the university in 1938.

Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales – took over this book during the shelter-in-place isolation of the pandemic lockdown. They fashioned the way I think about monsters and witches. Yarns and threads, pebbles and breadcrumbs guide me through this memory maze.

Lament – an expression of sorrow. Half of my memories consist of gratitude and the other half consist of laments.

Myopia and myopic macular degeneration – My form of macular degeneration (MMD) began with extreme (high) myopia. The perceptual distortions led to dizziness and panic attacks, causing me to resort to a cane, collapsible cart, or walker to keep me steady. In 2018, the dry form advanced