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About Jakob Ludwig Heller
See his memoirs, Long Forgotten Events from Imperial Austria, Ariadne Press (and German version, Längst vergessene Begebenheiten aus Alt-Österreich, Novum Verlag).
Review essay on Jakob Ludwig Heller's Long-Forgotten Events from Imperial Austria: Told with Wisdom and Jewish Humor. Riverside: Ariadne Press, 2005. 295 pp. EUR 26.72 (paper), ISBN 978-1-57241-144-9, by Ulrike Nichols (Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan). Published on H-German (June, 2006) and viewable online. It reads:
Austrian Odysseys. Journeys are not only geographical but also commemorative endeavors. Jakob Ludwig Heller's (1842-1921) memoirs posit a special journey in time, since the manuscript went on a nearly ninety-year odyssey until its original publication in 2001 . . . Heller began to write down his family history at the age of seventy-one in 1913; his manuscript came into the hands of his youngest daughter Agnes at his death. Agnes, like her husband, her oldest sister and a brother in-law, died in Auschwitz in 1944. Agnes' children Antonie (born in 1917) and Otto Neumann (1912-2004) managed to escape to Paris and Sydney, respectively, and for several decades Otto Neumann kept his grandfather's writings in Australia.
During a visit to Paris in 1984, Otto Neumann shared the family treasure with his sister, who after many years managed to transcribe, edit and publish the manuscript. Subsequently, her brother decided to make the book available to an English-speaking audience as well. The siblings sought to "bridge the gap caused by the disappearance of our parents' generation in Auschwitz" (p. 13), the book . . . provides, along with the family history of the Hellers, a piece of cultural history of nineteenth-century Jewish life and trade in the Austrian Empire.
The book documents the time period from 1842 (the year of Jakob Ludwig Heller's birth) to 1918, when Heller, who was never a professional writer, abruptly ended his observations. While the first part of the book provides some family background, mainly about his parents and grandparents, the last part takes the form of a diary, commenting on the events of World War I. In the middle of the book, a chapter called "Character Studies" offers further details on some of Heller's sixty-eight cousins. . . .
Heller's father began as a poor peddler, but eventually established a flourishing business in metal buttons. When Heller was thirteen [1855], his mother died and the boy entered his father's business. He describes the journeys to trade fairs in Leipzig, Paris and London and how he quickly grew up to become a businessman himself.
Literature, art and politics play a minor role in his memoir, which instead focuses on morals, traditions and family values; Heller rhapsodizes about the "good old days" when "children rightly learned to value not only their father, but both of their parents" and "wives [still knew] the value of their husbands' individual responsibilities" and gave their husbands "the care and attention that they deserve[d]" (p. 129) . . .
[W]hile Heller mentions difficulties that Jews had to endure (for example, a Jew had to purchase property in Dresden if he wanted to open a business there), anti-semitism does not feature prominently in his memoirs. The book thus differs substantially in this respect from Stefan Zweig's Die Welt von Gestern (1941) or Arthur Schnitzler's Jugend in Wien (written between 1915-1920 and published posthumously in 1968). Heller rather focuses on the diligence (possibly the most common word in the text) of family members who managed to establish themselves in society through clever negotiations, endless travel, and a learning-by-doing approach.
Heller's book is a valuable document of the time, as he provides insights into the organization of business in the nineteenth century from a salesman's perspective, rather than a literary one. The sometimes quite amusing anecdotes reveal not only how much Heller enjoyed his work and how close he was to his family, but also the ethical values that led to his conformity to public opinion at the outbreak of the First World War. In 1914, Heller witnessed the complete collapse of the religious and ethnic traditions that he had been embracing since his youth, which may have contributed to the writer's final silence in 1918.
Birth record: TEPLICE 2070N 1840-1848 (52/270)
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Jakob Ludwig Heller's Timeline
| 1842 |
May 8, 1842
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Teplitz, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic
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| 1871 |
July 18, 1871
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Teplitz (Teplice), Bohemia, Czech Republic
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| 1872 |
September 9, 1872
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Teplice, Teplice District, Ústí nad Labem Region, Czech Republic
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| 1875 |
July 15, 1875
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Teplice, Teplice District, Ústí nad Labem Region, Czech Republic
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| 1887 |
1887
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| 1920 |
August 15, 1920
Age 78
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