Franz Schiesslingstrasser

GEDCOM Note

Franz Schiesslingstrasser was born in Kleinreifling #95. He was baptized on 18 Aug 1888 in Weyer (neighboring town in the Enns River Valley). Kleinreifling was a small logging town. His father was the principal of the small country school there. His mother was a trained nurse, having assisted her father who was a doctor in Garsten near Steyr. She also taught in the same school as her husband.</line><line /><line>His father died when Franz was 18 years old.</line><line /><line>Franz Schiesslingstrasser was stationed in Brno, Moravia, Austria (now Czech Republic) during WWI. He was a 2nd Lieutenant in an unknown regiment. </line><line /><line>Brno is where he met and married Maria Drapal. He was 30 years old and Maria was 23. </line><line /><line>HIs address on the marriage certificate was XVIII Eckerggasse 35 in Vienna, a 4 story stone block house in a suburb of Vienna where they lived the remainder of their lives. Their daughter Traute (born 1925) also lived there until she left for the USA in 1948. </line><line /><line>Shortly before her death in 1998, Traute told her family that, during the occupation of Austria by Nazi Germany (1938-1945), her parents had hidden a Jewish aunt in their house in Vienna. Traute never revealed whose aunt she was, her name, or anything about her other than she had married a Jew and converted. Her husband, the uncle, had died by that time. There was great fear that should the Nazis discover that they were hiding her they most probably would have be imprisoned or executed as it was a crime to harbor Jews in Nazi occupied areas.</line><line /><line>In late 2018 genealogical records became available on-line that revealed that Franz’s mother, Laura Rosalia Niedersuss, had a sister, Leah Emilie, who had marred a Jew, Adolf Löw, in Vienna in 1886. The 1915 through 1927 directories (Germany and Surrounding Areas, Address Books, 1815-1974) list Adolf’s address as XVIII Eckperggasse 35, the same address Franz used on his marriage record. Emilie was listed at that address as "widow" in the 1928 address book and in subsequent books through 1942. No address books were available for years 1943 through 1948. She died in June of 1947. Franz Schiesslingstrasser was first listed at the Eckperggasse address in 1927 and each year until 1949. Possibly the Low's owned the house and Franz inherited upon Emilie's death.</line><line /><line />