{geni:occupation} Stamp Dealer
{geni:about_me} Our family History as given by my father.

I am going to attempt to give some of our family history but this is not going to be easy because i don't remember a great deal.

What is not known is that when i left Vienna I was hardly 17. I was no more than a grown school boy and in our family it was not normally discussed where we came from or what we did except in passing and all i could do was pick upsnippets. Whatever i say here except for a few facts is assumption.


There were two sides of the family ; the Deutsch family which came from Eastern Austria and Hungary; and the Katscher family which basically were Austrian and my grandmother's side (my father's mother) were mainly farmers and country people. But my grandfather, that is Albert Deutsch was in Vienna and I think was a paper merchant because there were always packing papers coming home and lots of paper bags which he said came from his shop. Whether he was making them or wholesaling I really don't know. They had a good income and all the Aunts lived with him; that is Auntie Fanny, Auntie Fifi and Auntie Hansi. There was no one else living there except for a short period of time Auntie Hansi's husband Max. They divorced very soon and all we saw of Max were short visits when everyone had to leave the flat for obvious reasons.

The trouble was the Deutsch family did not approve of Uncle Max's family and talking of not approving, this was the whole problem between the Katscher and Deutsch family because my grandmother Lina totally disapproved of my father marrying mother and as a consequence disinherited him! These things happened because they were all very very class conscious and I will go into this a little closer later.

Anyhow, taking the two sides of the family we here have grandfather Deutsch who i still knew, although i am not sure that i was very much older than 7 or 8 when he died, but i do remember him. He used the most obnoxious thing to shave with, the whole flat used to stink, he put some paste on his face and then scrapped it off and it was disgusting, but often he and i would go into the park for a walk and he was an awfully nice man, he was a very sweet man.

Unfortunately from my point of view and that of my father's, he was orthodox Jewish. He was the only orthodox Jew in the family , no one else gave a dam. No body else wanted to know and nobody else practiced it, one did this purely so he would not be upset and it meant that occasionally we had to attend certain dinners that were cooked in a kosher way and which nobody was really fond of, but we went along and made an effort.

But as far as his wife was concerned i never knew her as she died in 1905 and the only reason i know this is because i have a picture of a grave stone in a Vienna cemetery . Her maiden name which was apparently Steiner, which incidentally came back to me as i know there were some cousins by the name of Steiner who went to the United States and whom Betty and I once or twice heard from. In fact one of the Steiner ladies sent Betty an embroidered table cloth with napkins which she said were from my mother but of course i don't remember ever seeing this.

Anyhow, the Steiner's came from the Hungarian side of the family, so did of course all the cousins. Now, Julie Deutsch, that is my Grandmother (Albert's wife) was born in 1850. Originally there were four daughters and a son; Auntie Fifi, Auntie Hansi and Auntie Fanny we all knew and loved but there was another Aunt by the name of Anna. She died long before i was born, nobody ever told me exactly why but i think it was a heart attack. Anyhow the fifth offspring was Julius, who in order to escape military service for the first world war, emigrated to the United States. Not very patriotic but quite understandable. However, he married over there a woman by the name of Estel le and all i know about that is that Auntie Fanny in 1927, went over to America to be the nanny to their child Juliette. Now this didn't work out as she could not get along with Estel le or perhaps Estel le could not get on with Auntie Fanny, i suspect that neither of them were the easiest people to get on with. So Auntie Fanny came back to Vienna and looked after me and later Lianna, moving into our house.

Now lets get back to the Katscher family. Now here again i have never met Father's Father, though i know there two marriages. He was married before he married my grandmother Lima. I have a picture in memory of his daughter fromhis first marriage, whom we called Auntie Erna. She had two children, Jenny and Fritz. Very precocious little bastards they were, they gave me hell; they were about 6 to 7 years older than me and they had a yapping dog i totallydisliked.

Now i never met my grandfather all i know about him was that he was a 'Freeman of Vienna', a very high position which i suspect had something to do with banking. He certainly must have had a great deal of money because i never knew my grandmother being short of it. She lived in a very sumptuous flat and nor can i recall that Aunt Erna was ever short of money or her children.

He must have had a pretty good influence and the reason i believe this is the following: I was only told in London by Auntie Grete some years ago that Uncle Willy worked in a bank, which i knew, at the Credit Vastaddt Vienna andthat one day they found that there was a shortage in the till. Now she had to pay all this money back but nobody prosecuted Willy and he never lost his pension. You can't tell me that this can be done under normal circumstancesunless there is a big share holder by the name of Daddy in the background with a great deal of influence in that bank. These are assumptions , i do know however that there was a shortage in the till.

Now we have a nice little cocktail of a peasant family getting together with an almost blue one and therefore the disagreements about inheritance and all that. How father and mother met i am not sure but i do know they were childhood sweethearts and there are one or two very bad photography showing them on holiday, which must have been before the 1st World War. It was a romantic affair and i think for that reason i am very very glad it happened. They were nice people and that they came from such varied backgrounds is really rather charming.

Now to business. My father was a civil engineer of some standing. There are some photographs of some of the harbor installations along the Danube, cranes, small bridges etc which he designed and was instrumental in having thesebuilt and he was awarded the Iron Cross in the First World War for building fortifications on the eastern front that was on the front with the Russians. Unfortunately he was a very bad time keeper and not very keen on taking orders. Consequently i don't know whether he lost his job or he gave it up but he made himself independent and started out with a venture of building the first radio sets. Now this was great fun and they were scratchy and there wereearphones you couldn't hear anything on, so i assume that not enough money was being made out of this unsuccessful venture and he packed it in.

He then started a factory for making razors, knives, boxes and all sorts of things. I remember going along to that place when i was no more than 5 or 6 years old and smelling the acid baths , and being shown around by the staff.That was also good fun but he had a partner and thats where the rum came in because the partnership didn't last very long and my father came out without any money.

My father also wrote about Vienna which i have copied here (original has been scanned).

Vienna - London

I am not intending to write now about my journey from Vienna to London, because I could not tell you much about that. It was winter and terrifically cold and all the carriage-windows were frozen, a fact which annoyed us very much. We often tried to met the ice crust by pouring hot tea over it, but without success, in the reverse, the crust became thicker.

After that introduction, i am sure you would like to know what i am going to write about.

I meet very many English people and of course most of them ask me about my native city and it appears to me that people have quite a wrong idea of Vienna, so I decided to compare Vienna with London, because everyone knows the English capital.

If one regards Vienna from its appearance as a city with two million people, one certainly will be disappointed, because it is not half as busy as London. The area where houses are built up, is about a third of the London area.The whole area, called 'Greater Vienna', is about 40 miles in diameter, not much less than London, but the city itself would probably only cover the north-part of London, it does that.

Traffic in Vienna was pretty busy before 1938, after that 'Uncle Adolf' came and made Vienna into a big village. We still had a lot of traffic, but soldiers and military vehicles only.

Vienna has three means of communication:
65% Electric Tramways, 20% Buses and about 15% Undergrounds, besides that we have, for the suburbs only, trains and some Trolley-Bus-lines, but so far as I remember there are three lines only. The trams are very modern, two or three carriages are put together to make one tram and speed is 30 to 40 miles ab hour in the outer districts. The Underground is built in quite the same way as the tramcars, but the train consists from five carriages to eleven andthe speed sometimes reaches 50 miles an hour. Actually our buses are coaches only, very comfortable and mostly new 'Diesel-Motors' which handle the traffic from the city to the 'Vienna Wood'.

In the north and west the mountains reach quite 1750 feet and in southwest direction there are some hills, not higher that 700 feet, while the south and the east are flat. The Danube enters Vienna in the north and leaves it in the south-south-east. Immediatley after entering Vienna, an artificial channel has been constructed, called the 'Danube-Channel', which leads right into the city. This channel is nearly as broad as the Thames and was built about hundred years ago, to enable ships to land in the city itself, because the main river then passed outside the city. The two Danube-embankments are more than 1000 yards apart, the river itself being 330 yards in extent.

Now let's go back to the north again and we are going to climb one of the mountains, the most famous one, the 'Kahlenberg'. We actually don't clime, but being in the city, take a tram to Grinzing. This will take us about 20 minutes, the way is nearly eight miles. You 'know' Grinzing, it is the most famous wine-place in Vienna. In Grinzing, which appears a little village by itself, we change and take a bus right to the top of the mountain. The road isthe most modern work, concrete and steel and in the evening (in peacetime) full of strong lights. There is room for four cars and at a time and the ascent is 1:20, continuing for more than five and half miles. Roads like this oneare built to most of the mountains around Vienna.

We get off at the top and the first thing we see is a huge parking-place for more than 3000 cars. We walk to the border and, imagining it is evening, as far as our eyes can see, are lights, lights and once more lights. Vienna at night, 1200 feet below. Two dark lines are drawn into this aspect, the Danube and the channel. In the city we see a strong searchlight which turns around continuously on top of the highest building (18 floors) I know this aspect, but as often as I had the opportunity of looking at it, i did so, standing and watching, sometimes more than half an hour without speaking a single word. It is overwhelming.

Yes, this is Vienna, beautiful and gay. But we have time always, no rushing and busy traffic, because every Viennese follows the proverb: ;if I don' do it today, there is still time tomorrow'.


My father arrived in England on the 17th December 1938

This is something my father wrote when he was first in Uk. I have typed it word for word, including all spelling and grammatical mistakes (the original has been scanned).

'Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am sure you heard a lot about Germany already and i hope that everything i am telling you to night will be a completion for you.

Some of these things i was told by my friend Max, because i am out of Germany - better said out of Austria - nearly 6 months and the circumstances changed since last December.

The German politik is in the first line to make people believe, that other nations want to distroy Germany. That's done by liepropaganda.

For instance: Hitler sais to the people that all nations boycott German goods . So Germany is not able to change her industrial productions against food. Than Hitler maks believe the people that the fruit trade is in Jewish hands. The Jews are to boycott and people is requested not to buy fruits. Of course people does not reolise, that no Jew has any opportunity to have trade or shop or any position and therefor the fruittrade can't be in Jewish hands.

Besides this Hitler knows exactly that he needs all the money for armament. He knows it because armament givs work for millions of people. How is he making believe the people? that's quite simple: Mr Goering make a speech and invites either 100,000 fanatical Nazis or he pays for 100,000 men and they have to agree everithing and to shout at certain passages of the speech. The speech is transmissed by all broadcasting stations and in the time Goering is speaking , the shops are to close and in every factory as well as on larger squares you'll find several loud-speakers. So people forced to listen in.

Now Mr Goering asks the 100,000 - after having mentioned all the actions the Nazis have done for the country and the willpower of all nations to distroy Germany - Goering asks now, wether they want butter or guns. And the 100,000are shouting 'guns' and they say 'Sieg Heil' because they are paid for it.

the people doesn't believe - half of them are not believing, what are they to do?

The Gestapo and party are behind them and make them unable to move.

They can't defend themselves because they have no guns. Germany is reigned by Gestapo and Party.

About money I can tell you only the same as Goering said about one year ago in one of his speeches: it is silly to spare the money because you never can tell wether the Mark is not becoming valueless over night. The Mark is no money at all, it is a promissory note, you are receiving it for working and you can get for it any goods in changing trade.

His English and spelling was not yet as perfect as it grew to be in the lifetime he spent in England a country he grew to love and felt was his true home.

When my father first came to Britain he was interned on the Isle of Man and this is what he wrote about it.

Something about the Isle of Man

The first time iI set foot on Manx soil was on August 3rd 1940. It was very hot and strangely enough the only really hot day I experienced in the island. There's always a breeze and the weather changes abruptly inside a couple of hours.

The landscape - as much as I was permitted to see of it - is beautiful. But this is more or less the only good impression I gained of the place. That doesn't mean that there are no other attractions to it, only during the periodof my internment i was in no mood to find out if there was anything praiseworthy about the locality of my involuntary stay.

Before I was sent there I had no idea that the Isle of Man was a country as much as England or Germany is. The Manx people have their own Government and are quite independent, they hadn't for instance, declared war on Germany inSeptember 1939. That wasn't necessary. They have been at war with Germany since 1914, not having signed the Treaty of Versailles'.

The Manx government have signed trade pacts with Ireland which make them independent of supplies from England and Scotland. With the exception of tea, sugar nothing was rationed up to September 1940. Butter and cheese were rationed then, Jam and syrup followed in May 1941.

When i left there was no shortage of meat, bacon, margarine, eggs or petrol, but i understand petrol was rationed as from 1st September 1941.

Another strange instance is the fact that there exists a law which permits the killing on sight of any Scotsman or woman. This law originated at the time when the Scots used to raid the island and somehow or other it has never been canceled.

We had many cats in the camp. When we arrived there, a fellow said to me: 'how cruel these Manx people must be. Fancy cutting off the tails of all cats'. But we soon found out that these so called 'Manx Cats' are born with no tails. Personally, i took an instant dislike to these creatures. My intuition proved right very soon. In August 1940 the came was populated by 5 cats. In August 1941 the cat population had risen to some four dozen heads. If allgoes well there will be 500 cats in August 1942 and 5000 by Autumn 1943. I was lucky to get released in 1941.

When my father married my mother on the 5th February 1944 he was living at 368 Heath Road South, Northfield, Birmingham and he was working as a warehouse man sorting seeds.