THE CZERNOWITZ THAT WAS WALKS AROUND A BYGONE LITTLE VIENNA: Translated from the German and annotated by Otto Appenzeller

By Othmar Andrée and Otto Appenzeller

Only monuments remind us today of the golden age of Czernowitz, once the lively capital of the Bukovina, the easternmost region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Even after the once-mighty empire crumbled in 1918, Czernowitz remained a haven of multicultural coexistence, peopled by Jews, Ruthenes, Bessarabians, Germans, Turks, Poles, and Armenians and animated by a proudly Austrian culture.
That culture, literary and cosmopolitan, has vanished from this corner of Europe. Local fascists, the Nazis and the Holocaust, and the region’s absorption into the Soviet Union insured that the past has here been lost irretrievably. Now the Bukowina is part of Ukraine, where history is being made again.

Otto Appenzeller is a child of prewar Czernowitz, where he absorbed its culture even as the storm clouds gathered. He was born there in 1927; his father was an architect and professor and his mother an accountant. He and his parents escaped the horror of pogroms by emigrating after he joined the Czech brigade, which supported the Soviet efforts to defeat the Germans. He became a neurologist and was delighted to know at least three boyhood acquaintances from this small city followed similar paths in medicine.

For him, translating this book summons memories of literary evenings and family gatherings in the old style and festive occasions to celebrate an era that has now long vanished.

Cover design by Rose Appenzeller

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798823006859

Othmar Andrée

Othmar Andrée was born in 1945 in Radstadt, in Austria. He lives in Berlin, where he works as a publicist and translator. He has been fascinated for many years by the Jewish traditions and culture of Eastern Europe, and specifically with the town of Czernowitz and the history, literature, and art of the province of Bukowina until the second World War. He has published in German, Austrian, and Israeli newspapers such as Die Stimme, Tel Aviv; Israel Nachrichten, Tel Aviv; Zwischenwelt, Vienna; Bukovinskij Journal, Czernowitz, and Spiegelungen, Munich. His translation of the Yiddish memorial text Four Summers with Kubi Wohl, by Vera Hacken, was published by Spiegelungen. This book is dedicated to the memory of Lydia Harnik. Otto Appenzeller was born in Czernowitz in 1927 and now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. He is a retired academic clinical neurologist from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He knows first-hand the places and some people that are described in the book, and he met Othmar Andrée in Lydia Harnik’s apartment in Czernowitz in 1998, when she was already old and bedridden.

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THE CZERNOWITZ

THAT WAS

WALKS AROUND A BYGONE LITTLE VIENNA

Translated from the German

and annotated by Otto Appenzeller

Othmar Andrée

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2023 Othmar Andrée. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  10/12/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-0686-6 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-0685-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023907628

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface to the first edition

Over there

Preface to the Second Edition

A Journey to Czernowitz/Bukowina

To the Volksgarten

The Jewish Cemetery of Czudyn

Habsburg Heights

From the Old Chernivtsi Jewish Cemetery

Around Cecina

To Nepolokoutz

From the Great Temple

Chernivtsi near Sadagora

The Bejs-Ojlem fun Sadigura

Rocking Synagogues

The Imperial and Royal Hussar Regiment

Die Residenz

Out and about in Bukovina

Lehm-Gasse

From the Jewish Hospital

Out of Place

The Residence

The pictures shown in this volume were part of the exhibition in 1997 of the German Literature Archive Fremde N.he. Celan as a translator in the Schiller National Museum Marbach am Neckar. (Exhibition catalogue: Axel Gellhaus. Foreign proximity. Celan as a tran.slator. Marbacher Katalogue 50. Merbach am Neckar, 1997, page 588).

Preface to the first edition

This bundle of essays and impressions grew out of observations and perceptions in a landscape which, as the former and easternmost province of the Habsburg Monarchy, has largely escaped Central European consciousness to this day and is only gradually being recovered for literature and cultural creation, but also for tourism, and restored to its history. In the mirror of historical and literary research, I approach what Paul Celan (a poet who lived in Chernivtsi, then called Czernowitz) put it in his Bremen speech in 1958 as an area where people and books lived, roaming a region that, despite all the problems it must contend with today, surprises in its vitality, tolerance, openness and multifacetedness. I tell of the faded glory of old Austrian-Kankan alleys, of the charm of their architecture, of the peculiar magic and of the aura of a forgotten bourgeoisies. From the great, golden epoch of Bukovina under Habsburg’s crown, something like a dull splendor shines over into our days, a glow that has survived two world wars and Soviet rule, which deserves attention and is worth telling about.

Despite the objective difficulties associated with a journey into this landscape, despite its geographical, political and tourist inaccessibility, its historical distance, behind which it hides rather involuntarily, I would like to call for this hidden corner of Europe to be visited and rediscovered as the home of Jewish-German symbiosis. I try to explain here that the Jews, in their special ethnic and religious role, at the same time as reliable followers of the Austrian imperial family and homeless, maintained the balance between two numerically dominant nations, acted as a pivot for the coexistence of Romanians, Ukrainians (Ruthenians), Germans and Poles, without being able to present themselves as a titular nation.

The historian Mariana Hausleitner describes Chernivtsi as a fairly modern island in a sea of backwardness. In this sea, these people stood for intelligence and diligence, for artistic talent and mercantile spirit, no less than for a pronounced awareness of the rule of law and responsible political action. They were the bearers of the cultural awakening and they did so under the aegis of the German language, even during the fateful Romanian era, which led to the great catastrophe. They have shaped the small Chernivtsi town and made it a topic of world literature. To this day and throughout the Soviet era, the last Jews of Bukovina have preserved their linguistic homeland and their attachment to the old Austrian heritage and carry their humanism to democratic and civil self-understanding and Central European thinking.

With this volume, reference is also made to the beauty of Bukovina, the variety and integrity of its historical buildings and historical testimonies, the openmindedness and cordiality of its current inhabitants. But to the former Jews, whose homeland Czernowitz was and with whom history proceeded so unforgivingly, so mercilessly, may a monument be set with this volume. To us, who have long since lost the connections to the European East or never sought it, this province is recommended.

My thanks go to the last Jews of Chernivtsi, without whose dedicated support this work would not have been possible: Matthias Zwilling, who guided me for several years on many a foray through the city with local knowledge and expertise. Lydia Harnik, [Lydia was a teacher of languages; German, French, Ukrainian, Russian, and English. Her school was in her home. She met a Ukrainian peasant, taught him German; eventually he became professor of German language at the University in Czernowitz] who always met people with warmth, attention and cosmopolitanism and tirelessly and until the end saw herself as an ambassador of the unique and irrevocably lost spirit of the city and this area. This applies also to Rosa Roth-Zuckermann, who still runs an open, hospitable house and has been loyal to the city for over ninety years, finally Minna Plutzer, my hostess in Bräuhausgasse for many years. I do not want to forget the friendly and tireless support of Erich Beck in my literary search for sources and Peter Rychlo’s help as a mediator of the German-language literature of the Bukovinians and their history in today’s Ukraine. I am also indebted to Josef N. Rudel from the Stimme: Newsletter for the Bukovinians, Tel Aviv, for some of the advice that has helped my work to complete, also to the Hirsch family, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA; Konny Rogel (Klara Schächter), Montreal; Edith Silbermann, Düsseldorf; Margit Bartfeld-Feller and Zvi Yavetz, Tel Aviv; and finally, for their hospitality, Lolo Bar from Kimpolung (Cîmpolung-Moldovenesc/Romania) and Don Juni, President of the Jewish Community in Gurahumora (Gurahumorului/ Romania).

Berlin, autumn 1998.

Over there

Only beyond the chestnuts is the world.

From there comes a wind in the cloud wagon at night and

someone is standing on here.

He wants to carry it over to the chestnuts: "With me, angelic

sweetness and red foxglove is with me –"

Only beyond the chestnuts is the world. There I chirp quietly,

as little homes do: that is where I hold him, he must refuse!

(My call is around his joint) I hear the wind return in many

nights: With us, distance flares, with you it is tight ...

I chirp quietly, as little homes do. But even if the night does

not brighten up today and again comes the wind in the cloud

wagon:

With me, angel sweetness and red foxglove is with me!

And wants to wear it over the chestnuts – then stop, then I

don’t stop him here ...

Only beyond the chestnuts is the world.

Paul Celan

Preface to the Second Edition

If I remember correctly, at the beginning of the 1990s the Czeremosch in the south of the city was the only hotel that could be booked from the west. In the early summer of 1993, I had stayed there for a week. Immediately after my arrival, I asked the reception for a line to Germany. The lady behind the counter smiled politely, shook her head, and said, It doesn’t work that way! You must register these calls in good time! It may take a few days! Well, then I would like to register a conversation in Berlin now! The lady nodded and said, We will notify you in your room! I went upstairs and waited. The next morning at seven, the room phone rang: It was Berlin’s turn.

Nowhere was there a map of Chernivtsi. Not in the whole city. There was nothing. For many years I was on the road with the Map of Chernivtsi, a work of the engineer Ludwig West from the time of the Habsburg Monarchy, to which this city belonged until the end of the First World War and which the Austrian War Archive in Vienna had made available to me. The map is now celebrating its hundredth anniversary, but at the time it served me faithfully.

Today you can download current city maps of Chernivtsi from the Internet. However, there is no Wassilkogasse with the birthplace of Paul Celan, no Morariugasse with the memorial plaque for Rose Ausländer and certainly not the house of the painter Vladimir von Zagorodnikow in the Neuewelt-Gasse. You can search for a long time on these maps.

Well, Chernivtsi will change. The city will not remain what it was under the Soviets, nor under Ukrainian rule nor even among Romanians between the two great wars or in the imperial era. In the future, I hope that it will play a role in Europe’s culture. This includes in its literature such as its unique and rugged history of this city and its people, and its architecture, which has rescued itself from a utopian dream city (Alfred Kubin) spared by modern civilization into our days and the recent Ukrainian war.

The architecture is a very sensitive creature; the architectural Gesamtkunstwerk (artistic assembly) that we can still visit at any time, and look at, understand, and perceive as reality, is still there. It tells us what the city was all about and where it wanted to go. In the process of preservation and change, it must not be damaged. Berlin, Spring 2008.

A Journey to Czernowitz/Bukowina

The center of a city, the market square, was in eastern part of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy known as the Ringplatz or Ring. This designation was replaced in the Polish-speaking territories by the word Rynek. Krakow, Przemysl and Lviv each had a Rynek. They still have it. Chernivtsi, the easternmost city of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, had a ring square, since 1847, the year of the construction of the town hall. No ring square in the multiethnic state was circular, contrary to what the word suggests. But the houses usually stood around a monument, often a Marian column, (a column topped by a representation of the Virgin Mary) from which the viewer perceived the backdrop of the surrounding houses compressed in perspective and often arranged as if in a circle.

The town hall square of Chernivtsi was a rectangle. It extended roughly eighty by two hundred meters, against the four cardinal points. The directions may not be so important, but they summon a quite irritating fact: Chernivtsi and Bukovina were ruled until 1918 from Vienna in the West. From Bucharest in the south, the Romanians steered the country’s fortunes from 1918 to 1940 and from 1940 with a three-year interruption during the Second World War until December 1991, the Soviets held the reins from Moscow, to the North. Since then, Kiev, the East, has been in charge. Thus, for the time being, the change of the cardinal directions seems to have been exhausted and any further change is only repetition.

The town hall with its high clock tower was and remains a landmark of the city. This has not changed since its construction in 1847. On Sundays and public holidays, the representatives of the third estate, small craftsmen and merchants, gathered at the magistrate’s staircase, the ‘Czernowitzer Bürgerwinkel,’ to reflect in loose groups on the problems of the city and to be outraged against this or that. The ‘citizen of Chernivtsi’ was a feared institution. This is how Martin Pollack reports in his Imaginary journey through the vanished world of Eastern Galicia and Bukovina.

Unforgettable are the Sunday strolls along the sidewalk on the east side of the Ringplatz, the ‘Pardinihöhe’ (Pardini height), which was not a height at all and owed its name to the university bookstore Heinrich Pardini (later Engel & Suchanka) located here. On Sundays, young garrison officers stood there in groups in their pretty parade uniforms, while the sons of the alma mater Francisco-Josephina walked, their caps offering a colorful picture. Coquettish girls, smiling and chatting, received the men’s challenging and admiring glances as a tribute to them and seemed to overhear the remarks addressed to them. So wrote Hermann Sternberg in his History of the Jews in Chernivtsi, about the time before the First World War.

The center of the square was decorated with the Marian Column, donated in 1827 by Lazar Michalowicz, a wealthy Czernowitz citizen. Today there are benches around the Marian Column. Of course, after the occupation of Bukovina in November 1918, Romanians took up this space for their own artistic efforts and replaced the Marian column with the Moldovan, the heraldic animal of Bukovina. This wild ox, his head lowered, trampled the Austrian eagle with a forefoot.

This is reminiscent of Prague, nine hundred kilometers away. The Marian column on the Old Town Square disappeared there and was replaced by the Jan Hus monument in 1915. The column was a parable for the Catholic-Jesuit- Habsburg element of Bohemian rule, which had found its way into the history of the Bohemian lands with the Battle of White Mountain in