VIENNA, The Gabron Side

I wish I were a better listener.  Or a less diffident interrogator.  Family information I thought I had correct is often not.  Even now, after talking with my cousin’s wife Lieselotte in Vienna, I’m sure I still have some wrong information.  The Gabrons, my father's side of the family, were scattered to several countries before and after the Second World War, and not accessible to me.  I never met my paternal grandmother, for instance.  Gabrons were not given to talking about family.  Maybe there were too many tensions, maybe there were too many unhappy memories.

My father had four sisters, Ella, Adele, Irma and Ida.  I used to get their names confused because they have such a similar rhythm.  Most of their lives were lived without their husbands.  

Schönberg ("pretty mountain"), where my father and his sisters were born, founded by Germans in 1269, now part of the Czech Republic and called Šumperk,.  Painted in 1864 and found on Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Šumperk

Schönberg again, the subject of a painting in Lieselotte's apartment

Ella’s life was the most tragic.  She died young, shot along with several other people by Czech partisans (?) during the Second World War.  (I don’t know why.  Perhaps she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I don’t remember the details, if I ever heard them.)  George, her only child, managed to escape.  “Run!” she had said, handing him her jewelry, and George ran.  Ella’s husband was a monster.  That’s what George told us some years ago.  He hated him.  He was so horrible, said Lieselotte, that I can’t even talk about him.  Ella was my father’s favorite. When he mentioned her name his voice was touched with sadness.  His feelings for his other three sisters were mixed.

George, alone now, wanted to run as far from his father as he could.  Australia would be far enough; Ida was there and could sponsor him.  But it wasn’t easy to get out of Austria at that time. (Or was he in Czechoslovakia?)   He told us of a train ride (in Germany? In Austria? ) when he disguised himself as an American soldier, praying no one would speak to him as he knew not a single word of English. More daring misadventures later, and after several entreaties to Ida, she finally agreed to be his sponsor, and he was allowed to emigrate. 

Violence in stone:  at the entrance to the Hofburg Palace

More mayhem around the corner from the Hofburg
 (If only our enemies were always slimy lizards)

Ida was the strange one.  Before the war she had fallen in love with a man named Hans who took off to Australia to seek his fortune in gold.  Which he made, lost, remade and lost yet again.  Anyway, she followed him, and they eventually settled in a remote area (no longer so remote; now it has a paved road and tourists) on the Daintree River where they established a small plantation.  Without children, she and Hans did not exactly welcome George, and they treated him badly.  Ida was merely eccentric but Hans was ill-tempered, opinionated, and surly.

George soon fled Daintree, to Melbourne this time, to find some way to make a living.  There he eventually met and married Nelly (how she came to be in Australia is yet another story), and they had three children:  Peter, Sonia, and Karin, who have numerous beautiful children and live today in Melbourne and Noosa.  George and Nelly’s family is the only branch I know of that still bears the name Gabron.  But of course George’s last name was not originally Gabron.  He couldn’t bear to carry his father’s name (was it Drobenko?) so he took the name of his mother.

Adele lost her husband in the war, and ended up living in Germany’s mid-section, near Kassel. She had two daughters, Heidi and Margita, both of whom had children, one or more of whom may be living in South America.  No more is known.

Irma's, then Lieselotte's apartment on Paniglgasse.  The painting of Schönberg is on the right. The apartment looks much as I remembered it.

Irma also lost her husband in the war.  My father bought––or perhaps only subsidized––the apartment at 9 Paniglgasse somewhere between 1945 and 1948 for his mother Josephine, daughter Irma, Irma’s son Gernod, and daughter Inge (that odd rhythm of names again).  When Josephine died in her nineties, the apartment became Irma’s.  Daughter Inge wasted no time getting herself out of post-war Vienna (Paniglgasse was in the Russian Zone after the war) and came to the US to marry an American soldier––landing in Gary, Indiana, of all places––divorced him in short order, remarried, and reportedly divorced the second as well.  There her trail ends.  

In Vienna meanwhile, Gernod eventually married Lieselotte whom he met at university. They had much in common.  She had grown up nearby, her father had also been killed in the war, and they both enjoyed mathematics.  And travel.  (Lieselotte worked for Austrian Airlines for over twenty years.)  They lived in Paniglgasse 9 together with Irma until she died around 1984.  After Gernod’s sudden death––he apparently dived into the Danube one summer’s day in 1987 at age 44 and was not seen alive again.  (His body was found days later, but as there was no water in his lungs, it was assumed he did not die by drowning.)  Lieselotte continued to live in #9 Paniglgasse.

Lieselotte, a huge opera fan, at the Vienna Staatsoper stage door where she is a frequent visitor. 

What do I know for certain?

I met Adele and daughters Heidi and Margita when I was 17 and they were living in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere.  I never saw them again, although I heard later that one or both lived in Switzerland, and one or both had children.  Lieselotte traveled to Australia once with Margita. As for the children, the trail is cold.

I met Irma too when I was 17. I visited the apartment at 9 Paniglgasse.  Irma was utterly self-centered, and seemed to be someone who loved a good party. (Lieselotte, who with Gernod had to live with her for seven long years, had much more to say on the topic of Irma.)  Daughter Inge came to New York City and stayed for a while with my family when I was about twelve years old.  She was beautiful and snobbish, with no interest in a twelve year old, so naturally I didn’t like her.  

By the time Ken and I met Ida and Hans they were living in an nursing home in outback Australia, if  “met” is the right word, as they were both in wretched condition and had no idea who we were.  

The first time we met George and Nelly was at our house on Dexter Road in Lexington when my mother drove them up from New York City on their first trip to the US.  Leah took up their invitation and visited Australia the summer after junior year in high school.  We visited them ourselves on our first Australian trip in 1989.  George died that same year at a time when Lieselotte happened to be there.  She made four more trips to Australia after that. We visited Nelly and family twice after George’s death. We met Lieselotte for the first time on this trip and she became our de facto guide to the best of Vienna.

Karlskirche, near our apartment and Lieselotte's 

Paniglgasse:  Five front windows on the second floor are Lieselotte's apartment

The "heurige" (traditional Viennese wine bar) we visited with Lieselotte in the outskirts of Vienna.  Beethoven lived next door.  Below, a pour of the new wine.  The asparagus are in––with hollandaise!

Paniglgasse 9 is in what’s now considered a trendy urban area of Vienna:  near to the beautiful Karlskirche and Karlsplatz, a short walk to the opera, museums, theater, the old and imperial parts of the city, and steps away from the Naschmarkt, a daily cornucopia of food––meat, fruits and vegetables, cheese, spices, pastries, flowers, restaurants and more.  

At the Naschmarkt the food shops and eateries go on and on for many blocks.  On Sundays it vanishes.

ADDENDUM:

What didn't I know?

After writing this I heard from Australia, from Karin, who said she knew my cousin Margita lived in Switzerland; her daughter Christina visited Australia with her boyfriend (and later husband) Romano; my other cousin Heidi lives or lived in Kassel, Germany, while cousin Inge lives in Indiana and has a married daughter Julia living somewhere in New York State, and two sons named Steven and Troy.  Why didn't my father know any of this?  Or was he just not interested?  Or did he know and not tell me?