A Hidden Inheritance:a Jewish Family and History Saga.. His uncle Iggie who was living in Tokyo with his husband had the natsuka collection. It consisted of 264 pieces with a vitrine. Ignace von Ephrussi had this collection that was bought by a cousin of his grandfather Charles Ephrussi who gave it as a wedding gift to her great grandfather Victor von Ephrassi.. In 1857 They were a Jewish family from Odessa from where the 2 oldest sons moved to Vienna to run a branch of the firm in the Austro Hungarian Empire. In 1871 they spread to Paris just after the Prussian siege, where the family tomb was in the Monotreme cemetery. Odessa was a city inside the Russian Pale. In 1860 the family in Odessa was the greatest grain merchant.
.1859 Commodore Perry opened up Japan for trade
1860 In Vianne Emile and Isaac Pereire were 2 Sepharidi brothers who were magnates in Railroad Building and Property
In Paris Baron Hauseman, the city planner spent 15 years demolishing and rebuilding the city.
The Ephrussi children had tutors to teach tem Latin, Greek, German, French and English. Ability to speak languages gave you class allowing you to trade in Europe and to move up in social situations. They looked to invest in oil in Baku and gold in Lake Baikal. Charles was an art collector and had a collection of 40 Impressionists paintings.. He was well received in all the solons despite the novelists' objection to them being Jews.
Phillip Sichel went to Japan and found people desperate to sell sumeria swords, heirlooms and nutsaki items for money. Before Perry there were very erotic art pieces available and erotic nutsaki. Charles wrote a biography of who he considered the greatest German artist. Prounst wrote about the art he saw at Charles' home. Proust represented Charles in his books as Swan. 1889 Kipling was entranced by Nutsami when he visited Japan. 1882 .In response to the Tsarist pogroms against Jews the Ephrussis threatened to flood the market with grain
1886 Drumond published an anti semitic newspaper "La France Juive". Only after the French revolution could Jews in France own land and get full citizenship. Maurice Ephrussi married Beartrice de Rothschild.
The Dreyfus Affair lasted 12 years and resulted in the outbreak of antisemitism. Supporting Dryfus meant you were "Jewish first and only French second."
Zola was accused of libel and fled to England but Dryfus was cleared in 1906.
1863 only 8000 Jews lived in Vienne but when Jews were given civil rights by the Emperor to trade and own property by 1890 118,000 were living there . They came from Bohemia , Monrovia Galicia and Hungary where living conditions were abject. By 1910 only Warsaw and Budapest had larger Jewish communities. In Vienna 71% of the financiers and 65% of the lawyers and 59% of the doctors were Jewish. De Neue Freir Press was owned and edited and written by Jews.
1962 when the Danube flooded Vienne the Ephrussia family loaned the government money to construct embankments and bridges. Vienna university was a hotbed of anti semitism and some Jews became excellent fences to deal with duels. The Emperor spoke out against antisemitism. There was a high incidence of suicide by Jews 3 of the Wittgeanstein brothers as well as Gustav Malhars brother took took their own lives. Also Crown Prince Rudolf and his lover Marie Veteera in 1889.
Joseph Roth set novels to Vienna during the last days of the Empire. The Ephrassi registered their marriages at the Rabbinate and gave money to Jewish charities but never went to synagogue. They did not see why others needed Zion. in 1899 Vienne had its own Jewish orphanage hospitals and 22 synagogues . During WW1 the family had a bank in London, Paris, Vienna and Petrograd. Where did this fit into the war? 100,000 Jews fled Galicia and many came to Leopoldvillle in Vienna.
1914 Oct PM Carl von Sturgkh assasisnated
1916 November Franz Joseph died aged 86 he had been on the throne since 1848 and Emperor Carl replaced him. Joseph Redlich predicted defeat of Austria Germany.
1918 Oct Chezkeslovakia declares independence and the influenza plague. At war's end Karl fled to Switzerland. Vienna was the capital of the empire of 52 million and was now in charge of 6 million citizens.
Rilke the poet was an important part of Aunt Elizabeth's life and when Rilka died she sent the letters back to the family. Rilka wrote a book paying homage to Rodin. 1924 Elizabeth received her doctorate at Vienna and a Rockafellow scholarship to go to NY, one of the first given to a woman.. Elizabeth married Henry de Waal in Paris in the Anglican church. Iggie was a Jewsih banker in Germany during the depression.
Engelbert Dollfuss suspended the Austrian constitution under pressure from Hitler. This was to be a plebiscite to see if Austria wanted to join the Reich and Jews gave money to support the NO but the day before the plebesite the Nazi's marched in. The Germans swarmed through the apartment . There were already maps available of the solid German nation stretching from Alsace Lorraine to the Baltic. The "proper" plebiscite was held where Jews could vote. Several thousand Jews were sent to Dachau. Jews lost their jobs in music as teachers and lawyers . The little English church was baptising Jews and 180 Jews commited suicide.. The Sturmer was sold in Vienna streets.
The contents of the Ephrusssi palace were distributed , old master paintings to the museum, some sold on auction. Some books to the Vienna library, some to Berlin and some to Hitlers private library in Linze. Judiaca to Alfred Rosenberg's Centre to prove how wild Jews were by this Nazi ideology. Jews queued up outside embassies to get visas but they became targets here.for the SS/ Eichman set up the Central office for Jewish emigration in the Rothschild Palace.`` The land of Dichter and Denker became the land of Richter and Henker"
In England his grandmother Elizabeth tutored the neighbours children in Latin. Uncle Iggie arrived from the US as an Army intelligence officer as he spoke German and French.
After the war when Elizabeth went to Vienna to see what she could recover the maid Anne was still living in the house.now American headquarters.She had hidden the nutsake and Elizabbeth brought it back.
Before the Anschluss there were 185000 Jews in Austria only 4000 remained. Dr Karl Ressner, a lawyer and post war President, claimed that Austria was the first victim of Nazism and had no responsibility for the Nazi plunder between 1938 and 1945.
Iggie was working for Bunge the agribusiness company after the war and receiving the nutake made him decide to accept the offer of a position in Tokyo.
In 1923 Japan had survived a bad earthquake. In 1947 Jan Morris wrote the Phoenix Cup on Japan which was under US occupation. Here Mc Author was the Governor and decided that the work day would be 8 hours and that women would get the vote. 1951 Oct Truman sacked Mc Author and the Japanese lined the streets to watch his departure.
90 years after the nutsake left Yokohama, people could identify who made the pieces . Now in 1970 Iggie put a number on the bottom of each piece and the list of names of the artists.
The writer visited Odessa and saw Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin 192 steps. For 50 years a Soviet statue had been in Odessa now the Catherine the Great Statue was restored. He found the Efrussi house and the place where the bank had been in its stairwell had the symbol of wheat on the banister showing that they were grain merchants.
When Iggie died the nutsaki was sent to him and he set it up in his London flat for his 3 children to play with them.
