Fritz Heinegg

He had the baptismal certificates of his mother's family notarized in Vienna on 21 March 1938 (after Germany invaded Austria). He would have needed them to prove he was half Jewish and could thus finish his studies at the University of Vienna.

http://gedenkbuch.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=435&no_cache=1&person_s...

Friedrich/ Fritz Feilchenfeld Heinegg was born 3 March 1914 in St. Gilgen, Austria. His mother died about a year after his birth, and he was raised by a series of four governesses. He also lived several months at a time with his grandmother Gabriele Koenig. He had his tonsils removed when he was four, and his father used that as an excuse to get leave from his service in the war. He moved with his father to Berlin in 1922. They would often meet Otto and his family in St. Gilgen during the Summer and in Gastein or Switzerland to ski over the Christmas holidays. His father remarried on 2 October 1926 and six months later sent him and his brother to boarding school in Zuoz, Switzerland, on the advice of his brother Otto. He spent four months a year on vacation from school in Berlin with his father. (He and Max did not get along with their step-mother). From 1929 to 1933 he attended Gruenwald Gymnasium (high school) in Berlin. He was admitted to the University of Vienna in Spring term 1933, studied at the German University in Prague in the Fall term 1933/4 (probably stayed with his uncle Otto), returned to the University of Vienna in the Summer of 1934, was living with his father at 45 Bilrothstraasse in Vienna in 1936 (after his father fled Germany). In the Summer of 1937 he and his brother Max went climbing in the Piz Bianco Bernina Range in the Alps. He graduated from the University of Vienna Medical School with a medical degree on 27 April 1939. In 1938 he was categorized as a "Mischling grade 1" (half-breed), allowed to continue his studies on a provisional basis. He was engaged to marry Marion Meyer (daughter of "Old Dr. Meyer"), but her parents were strongly against her marrying a non-Aryan. They sent her to Berlin to live with her aunt whose marriage to a Jew had not worked out, and the aunt convinced her to break off the engagement. She sent him a dear-John letter on the day of his final exams. As a half-Jew, he was in less danger from the Nazis, but he was also subject to military service. He obtained a visa to London by pretending to do medical research there. For his visa, he obtained documents for the birth and marriage of both sides of his family and retained them until 1999 when he gave them to me. I posted copies of them to the website geni.com. He said that he happened on a friendly emigration officer in Austria who knew he was not coming back but allowed him an exit visa anyway. He stayed in London with his father for 3 months, obtained a visa for the U.S. on 3 August 1939, and arrived in New York on 12 August 1939, under the name Fritz Feilchenfeld, aboard the Europa, one of the last ships to leave from Southampton before Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. He was called Fritz Heinegg and listed as an intern in a hospital, earning $300 per year, living at 904 Union Street, Brooklyn, (near Grand Army Plaza) when he was counted in the 1940 census on 16 April. He married Arlene Ellsworth Willis on 26 October 1940 at her parish church St. Charles Borromeo, near downtown Brooklyn. Arlene said she met him while she was a student nurse at Caledonian Hospital. She heard he was conducting an autopsy, so she volunteered to assist. They lived first in an apartment on Parkside Avenue, near the hospital (which was at 123 Parkside), then in a large apartment building at 565 Crown Street, near Albany Avenue in Crown Heights, when I was born on 7 June 1943. He was called Fritz Feilchenfeld c/o Heinegg, and was living at 565 Crown Street, Brooklyn, on 22 June 1943, when his naturalization petition came before the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. They had moved to 157 Midwood Street by December 1943 (according to my baby book), and were still living there when I was about 4 years old on 20 July 1947 when there is a photo of Peter and Paul in front of 157 Midwood. They bought 151 Midwood Street, 3 doors down, soon after. Fritz, his brother Max, and Thomas Goedicke (son of Alfred and Blanche) received land on the Wolfgangzee in St. Gilgen by the will of their grandmother Gabriele Koenig in 1957, and they sold it the same year. Arlene died in the hospital in Oneonta, New York, on 1 February 1997. He married Erika Baker in Delhi in 14 July 2000. Fritz died at his home in 15 Second Street, Delhi, New York, on 4 December 2002.