Tales of the Viennese Jews: 8, Simon Wiesenthal and the café in Mauthausen

A sketch by Simon Wiesenthal for ‘Café As’ in the Jewish Museum in Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

The Tales from the Vienna Woods is a waltz by the composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), written just over a century and a half ago, in 1868. Although Strauss was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church, he was born into a prominent Jewish family. Because the Nazis had a particular penchant for Strauss’s music, they tried to conceal and even deny the Jewish identity of the Strauss family.

However, the stories of Vienna’s Jews cannot be hidden, and many of those stories from Vienna are told in the exhibits in the Jewish Museum in its two locations, at the Palais Eskeles on Dorotheergasse and in the Misrachi-Haus in Judenplatz.

Rather than describe both museums in detail in one or two blog postings, I have decided over these few days or weeks to re-tell some of these stories, celebrating a culture and a community whose stories should never be forgotten.

Throughout the Jewish Museum on Dorotheergasse, many of the exhibits refer to the work and legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, and a current exhibition is devoted to his studies and art – until this month’s visit to Vienna, I had never thought of him as an artist.

Simon Wiesenthal (1908-2005) was a Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer, who is closely identified with Vienna. He is remembered for his tireless efforts to bring those responsible for the Holocaust to justice. He was also a trained architect. But when I thought of Wiesenthal and Mauthausen in the past, I did not think of cafés and coffee, cake and croissants, and art.

The ‘Café As’ (‘Café Ace) exhibition at the museum shows how the bright light of creativity and friendship can blossom in even the most trying of circumstances, and the coffeehouse drawings and plans by Simon Wiesenthal tells an implicit tale of survival and friendship.

Simon Wiesenthal was born on 31 December 1908 in Buczacz (Buchach), now in Ukraine but then in Galicia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He studied architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague, then an important centre of modernism and functionalism.

He moved in 1932 to the Polytechnic University in Lviv (Lwów), then in Poland but now in Ukraine, and once an important city in the Austro-Hungarian empire. As well as working in an architectural practice, he also drew cartoons for a Zionist newspaper, Chwila, and for a satirical magazine, Omnibus.

He was living in Lviv at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Lwów ghetto, concentration camps in Janowska (1941-1944), Kraków-Płaszów (1944) and Gross-Rosen, a death march to Chemnitz, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Mauthausen (1945).

By chance, Wiesenthal became friends in Mauthausen with the Polish writer, Edmund Staniszewski, a political prisoner who used a bureaucratic sleight of hand to keep Wiesenthal out of the gas chambers and also gave bread to his severely malnourished Jewish companion.

Staniszewski dreamt of opening a coffeehouse (‘Café As’) after the war, and his friend offered to design the building for him.

Even while he was still at Mauthausen, Wiesenthal began sketching out ideas using pens and paper ‘borrowed’ from the concentration camp offices. He worked on all aspects of the proposed café, much in the spirit of famous Viennese architects and designers like Wagner or Hoffmann, designing furniture, advertising, cake decorations, invitations, and even the uniforms of the waiting and kitchen staff.

In the weeks after the liberation of Mauthausen, Wiesenthal turned his sketches into dozens of detailed plans and drawings for Café As. Although Staniszewski never built his coffeehouse, he kept Wiesenthal’s drawings. These are now owned by the Jewish Museum and currently on display.

Selected drawings form the bulk of the present exhibition, with 80 drawings inviting visitors to wonder what might have been had Wiesenthal’s life taken a more innocent turn.

The drawings also provide another symbol of the triumph of perseverance, friendship and humanity in even the most difficult circumstances. And Café As looks like it might just have been the place where I would have found a fine double espresso.

The Café As exhibition also presents biographical details and examples of Wiesenthal’s talents with the pencil.

A section on his architecture studies includes exhibits such as his 1932 student report card from the Czech Technical University in Prague.

Some of Wiesenthal’s sketches of Mauthausen include the poignant ‘Transports,’ in which a giant skeletal SS officer swallows row after row of wagons full of people.

The exhibition also looks at his time immediately after the liberation of Mauthausen, when Wiesenthal worked with US army counter-intelligence. This includes a sweet letter to his wife Cyla anticipating their reunion.

After World War II, Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial. He played a role in capturing Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960. He died in Vienna at the age of 96 on 20 September 2005 and was buried in Herzliya in Israel.

The Café As exhibition, curated by Michaela Vocelka, opened on 29 May 2019 and continues until Sunday 12 January 2020.

Simon Wiesenthal … a portrait in the Jewish Museum in Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Other postings in this series:

1, the chief rabbi and a French artist’s ‘pogrom’

2, a ‘positively rabbinic’ portrait of an Anglican dean

3, portraits of two imperial court financiers

4, portrait of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis

5, Lily Renée, from Holocaust Survivor to Escape Artist

6, Sir Moses Montefiore and a decorative Torah Mantle

7, Theodor Herzl and the cycle of contradictions

8, Simon Wiesenthal and the café in Mauthausen

9, Leonard Cohen and ‘The Spice-Box of Earth’

10, Ludwig Wittgenstein and his Jewish grandparents

11, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Jewish librettist

12, Salomon Mayer von Rothschild and the railways in Vienna

13, Gustav Mahler and the ‘thrice homeless’ Jew

14, Beethoven at 250 and his Jewish connections in Vienna

15, Martin Buber and the idea of the ‘I-Thou’ relationship

16, Three Holocaust survivors who lived in Northern Ireland.

17, Schubert’s setting of Psalm 92 for the synagogue.

18, Bert Linder and his campaign against the Swiss banks.

19, Adele Bloch-Bauer and Gustav Klimt’s ‘Lady in Gold’.

20, Max Perutz, Nobel laureate and ‘the godfather of molecular biology’.

Saint John’s, Sligo: from mediaeval parish church to cathedral

The Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist … the Church of Ireland Cathedral in Sligo since 1961 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Saint John the Baptist Cathedral, Sligo, or more properly the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist, is also known as Sligo Cathedral and is one of two cathedral churches in the Church of Ireland Diocese of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh – the other cathedral in the diocese is Saint Fethlimidh’s Cathedral in Kilmore, Co Cavan.

I visited the cathedral last weekend while I was attending a family wedding in the neighbouring Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Saint John’s Cathedral on John Street is almost certainly built on the site of a mediaeval hospital and parish church, founded in the 13th or early 14th century and dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Some of this 13th century work is likely to be incorporated in the west tower of the present cathedral.

A royal visitation of Sligo in the early 17th century reported the church was ‘recently repaired.’ However, during the armed conflicts later that century, the church was used as the military headquarters of insurgent forces.

Richard Cassels rebuilt Saint John’s Church in the 1730s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

When the German-born architect Richard Cassel (1690-1751), came to Sligo in 1730 to design Hazelwood House for Colonel Owen Wynne, he was also commissioned by the new Rector of Sligo, the Revd Eubele Ormsby, to rebuild Saint John’s Church.

Cassels was considered one of the greatest archiects working in Ireland at the time. He was responsible for designing of many prestigious buildings in Ireland at the time, including Leinster House, Dublin; the Dining Hall in Trinity College, Dublin; Powerscourt House, Co Wicklow; Russborough House, near Blessington, Co Wicklow; Carton House, Co Kildare; Westport House, Co Mayo; and the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin. But he designed only three churches in Ireland: Knockbreda Parish Church, Belfast, the now-demolished old Parish Church of Castlebar, Co Mayo, and Saint John’s Church, Sligo.

The mediaeval church in Sligo was demolished, and in his designs for a new Saint John’s Church Cassel was greatly influenced by the basilica pattern in early Roman architecture.

Saint John’s Church was remodelled in a Gothic style in the 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

In subsequent building modifications in 1812 and 1883, the external appearance was substantially altered. The original Romanesque windows, with their round arches, were replaced, battlements and small towers were added, and the chancel was extended.

Some of the former Romanesque windows may still be seen in the west tower, but the church looks more like a fantasy Gothic castle.

The grave of William and Elizabeth Pollexfen, grandparents of William Butler Yeats, in Saint John’s Church churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

This was the parish church attended by William and Elizabeth Pollexfen, grandparents of the poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) and the painter Jack B Yeats (1871-1957). William Pollexfen was a well-known shipowner who also ran mills in Sligo and Ballisodare, and the family lived nearby in Merville.

William Pollexfen was originally from Devon and he married Elizabeth Middleton of Rosses Point in Saint John’s Church, Sligo, on 4 May 1837. Their eldest daughter, Susan Mary, married John Butler Yeats, father of the poet and the painter, in Saint John’s Church on 19 September 1863.

Saint Mary’s Cathedral in the village of Elphin, south Co Roscommon, suffered severe storm damage in February 1957. A bill passed in the General Synod in 1958 moved the seat of Dioceses of Elphin and Ardagh to Saint John’s Church, Sligo, and the wrecked cathedral in Elphin was abandoned by the Church of Ireland in 1961.

Saint John’s Church, Sligo, became the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist on 25 October 1961. The former choir stalls were removed to make way for a new bishop’s throne and chapter stalls, the only indication of the building’s status as a cathedral.

An exhibition board outlining the history of the connection between Saint John’s and Bram Stoker’s mother, Charlotte Thornley, and her family, was unveiled in the cathedral by Dacre Stoker, the great-nephew of Bram Stoker, last month [23 October].

In deference to tradition, the dean is not known as the Dean of Sligo, but is still styled ‘Dean of Elphin and Ardagh.’ The Very Revd Arfon Williams has been the Dean of Elphin and Ardagh and Rector of Sligo since 2004. The other churches in the Sligo group of parishes are Saint Anne’s, Strandhill, and Rosses Point, Co Sligo.

Saint John’s Cathedral seen from the grounds of its neighbour, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)