Malvine, my maternal great- grandmother, was the youngest child of Susanna Reich and Bernhardt Gutmann. Malvine was born on April 24, 1858 and raised in Prerau, Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic.
Some of the following stories I heard from my own mother, who told them rather frequently during my childhood 🙂 I was surprised to find the written form in my late teens in my Granny, Anna’s memoirs ( the first 100 pages had been self- translated into English). Other facts and stories I learned only when I read the complete and fully translated memoir, during the past three years. I’ll include some quoted passages from Anna’s memoirs, as she relates them in quite a lively manner!
Malvine’s grandmother ( my great – great – great grandmother!)
“Great-grandmother Reich must have been an altogether remarkable woman; although she was very poor and provided for her useless husband and her countless children by picking rags, she was still recognized by Jews, and also peasants in the area, as a sort of lay judge. People took their disputes to her rather than to the official tribunal. She spoke fairly and impartially, and, although no police enforced her judgements, people accepted her adjudication.
She was also prone to melancholic episodes that we would call manic-depressive episodes nowadays. She could sit there silently for hours, and nothing could pull her out of her apathy. The doctor tried to startle her out of her stony silence by calling out “Fire!” but she just kept sitting there.”
Malvine’s mother ( my great – great – grandmother)
Susanna was the youngest of those “countless children”, and she married only after she was thirty years old. She had taken the responsibly, when her own mother died, to look after her elder siblings and their children through various difficult circumstances.
Bernhardt ( Benno) Gutmann
After she was thirty, Susanna met a young man, Bernhardt ( Benno) Gutmann, a “bocher” (“Jewish youngster”), who was a Talmudic scholar. In those days in Europe, only the eldest Jewish son could marry legally, as the Jewish population was curbed from expanding by Christian Europe. The offspring of the other sons were considered illegitimate. However, Bernhardt, being the eldest son of a second wife, was enabled to bypass this law and they could have a legally registered union in 1848. This was also the season of emancipation in parts of Europe which were undergoing “ Spring” type revolutions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_emancipation
Susanna started a thriving drapery in town and worked hard to support her family, while Benno, who had hoped to teach school ( see below) studied Talmud.
Enter the rich branch of the Gutmann family, the “von Gutmanns”!
“ My grandparent’s financial situation improved drastically when Wilhelm von Gutmann appeared and made his poor relative [Benno] the representative for his coal business in Prerau. Now grandfather also had a good income and could contribute to the household. But my mother [Malvine], as an adolescent daughter, had to extend her activities over two businesses—mornings at her mother’s drapery store, afternoons at the coal-depot with her father. She must have been very hardworking, for he soon depended entirely on her and fled from the detestable money-making back to his books.
He philosophized with the local priest for hours about Moses Mendelssohn, and Spinoza the “renegade.” The coal business gently ran its course because my mother also hated everything to do with “business.” The full potential of the business was revealed by one of my grandfather’s successors, a man called Kestranek, who became a quasi-millionaire with it. His son then became one of the general managers at Witkowitz.”
So Bernhardt, the “bocher”, who had a wonderful playful sense of humour, and was greatly favoured by Malvine over her serious, busy and intense mother, spent his days studying, whereas Susanna’s thriving lace and drapery shop kept her there working for many hours daily.
Of their ten pregnancies, five miscarried ( possibly due to Susanna’s physical job lifting heavy bolts of cloth), one baby was rolled on and smothered during the night, and the second youngest daughter, Flora, died at age 14.
Only three survived, Regine, Theodor and and Malvine.
Regine and Theodor both suffered from Syphilis as children. They contracted this from their wet- nurse, who was employed because Susanna was so busy working. Both children were eventually taken to Vienna for treatment by Dr. Billroth, his name still famous today for his surgical advances. Theodor, who apparently was blinded for some time, was fully cured, and Regine was left only with some facial defects. She did marry and had one child, Hilda, and shortly after, sadly died of pneumonia.
When I was born, I was pronounced by my Granny to resemble my great – Uncle Theodor – perhaps the dark features?! Wish I inherited his curls!
Theodor became a physician in Vienna and lived to be 78 years old. A newspaper obituary from 1931 shows him to have had three sons. ( more followup to be done to search for more possible cousins!!)
Malvine’s childhood and schooling
“Despite anti-Semitism, the Jewish population in the monarchy was so interwoven with the Catholic majority that the boundaries often became blurred. That’s how my Jewish grandfather, Bernhardt Gutmann, had become fast friends with the Catholic priest of Prerau, while my grandmother, Susanna —who ran a type of draper’s business, from which she sold not only linens, cottons, silks, colourful head kerchiefs for peasant women, but also altar vestments, as well as religious clothing to nuns and priests and provisioned the Prerau convent—had become good friends with the Abbess. This, even though my grandmother was known to be a Jewish zealot and had been nicknamed “God’s police.”
Culture and education is the bond that brought some believers of different faiths together. In such a small provincial town as Prerau, there were only a few educated people. If one wanted to have good conversation, faith barriers had to be dismissed. Only in the Jewish Gutmann did the Catholic priest find a kindred spirit, knowledgeable in theological scripture. And Grandmother’s good relationship with the Abbess would yet bear unexpected fruit.
Once Grandfather had taken Grandmother to be his wedded wife, it turned out that, as he was not a local, many obstacles were put in the way of his employment as a teacher at the town’s Jewish school, on which he had so set his hopes. He was from Leipnik, a two hour train ride away, and surely one couldn’t really entrust Prerau’s children to such a “train travelled” individual. This was instigated by the local teacher, who saw my educated grandfather as a most dreadful competitor and, consequently, became his arch-enemy.
He also took out his anger on their children, and my mother bitterly told us how he sent them to stand in the corner after every market day, or even beat them over the hand with his ruler. Twice a week was market day, when all the kids had to help out and couldn’t come to school. She had complained repeatedly at home that the teacher hurt her terribly, that her hand would swell to bursting point. But her parents had other worries than to intervene in the situation.
One day, Mother [Malvine] who was seven years old at the time, had to stand in the corner again. She spotted the open classroom door nearby, and before the teacher could stop her, as though chased by furies, she bolted through the town square into her mother’s shop, with a whole crowd of children trailing behind.
Now the scandal was public. Grandmother, bursting with anger, abruptly threw out the teacher, who was leading the group of Jewish school kids and still breathlessly demanding the rebellious child’s return, before going to the Abbess at the convent. She shared her troubles with her, and the Mother Superior gladly accepted her businesswoman friend’s two daughters, Regine and Malvine, into the convent school….
There was a right old revolution in the Jewish community of Prerau; since “Frau Gutmann—God’s police,” who even corrected the Rabbi, had given her kids to be educated by nuns, all other families now brought their adolescent daughters to the Abbess to be schooled. Besides the usual school subjects, the convent school was well known for teaching girls French, fine needlework, and to play the piano. That’s how the girls were taught to be young ladies, opening up a new world for the Jewish girls.
They left the ghetto of their own free will and went to the convent, and better education was the only incentive for this.
With satisfaction my mother never forgot to add, “and they only won over one Jewish girl to be baptized.”
Although Malvine was raised in an observant Jewish household, her parents taught and modeled openness and socialization amongst people of different beliefs and cultures and also modeled the importance of a good education.
Even my strictly observant great- great grandmother Susanna read Shakespeare – pronounced “Shak- es- speare” by her, on Sundays, and when she and Benno went to Vienna every two weeks to buy goods for her shop, they would always take in the culture while there.
“…without fail, Grandmother would spend the first evening at the old Burgtheater in the Michaelerplatz, while jovial Grandfather went to the Carltheater, where Nestroy, Scholz and director Carl, the famous comic threesome, staged Nestroy’s enduring comedies….
Grandfather marvelled at Nestroy, the master satire who almost never stuck to his text, but rather extemporized on it further––something which repeatedly landed him in prison because his political humour was as apt as it was sharp.
When he got back to Prerau, all the educated German speaking inhabitants would gather around him [Benno], and amid a great howdy-do, he would share, with much talent, all the wisecracks he had heard.
The anecdote below, was recounted frequently by my mother to entertain us when children:
But even his [ Benno’s] own family was touched by his humour. One day a “wizard” with a “learned” horse came to Prerau and turned up in the village square. People were standing around in a circle, when the wizard asked the horse to pick out the prettiest girl. The horse turned around, stopped in front of my mother [ Malvine], and bowed its head to her. Beside herself, she bolted to her parents at the shop and, with glowing eyes, related the event, whereupon Grandfather took his perpetually smoking pipe out of his mouth for an instant and remarked drily, “You appeal to a horse?”
And young Malvine did inherit her father’s great sense of humour and ability to entertain others!
My mother [ Malvine] must have been very well liked because when plays were staged, to which Prerau’s upper crust were invited, she assumed all the comic and trouser roles. She just had to step on stage and everyone split their sides laughing. I readily believe it because even as kids, whenever she imitated someone, we would die of laughter at Mother’s comic talent. She inherited this talent for rendering humour from her father.”
Excerpts taken from “soon to be published” Book 1, Chapter 2 of the Memoirs of Anna Helen Mahler Askanaszy.
I have greatly enjoyed reflecting on my ancestors: my great- great -great -grandmother, sought out for her wisdom and judgement; her daughter, Susanna, the responsible devout “God’s police”, who acted decisively in her family’s interest when needed, and especially on my great – grandmother as a spunky child. Much more to come on Malvine’s hard work and comical side!! Stay tuned for more stories.
JenniEliz 