Karoline Philipine Maria Sarolta Hoffmann Lovatelli

For a long time, Theodor Hoffmann’s marriage to Henriette’s mother Karoline (“Sarolta”) Philipine Maria Inquart (b. 14 Jan 1860 Budapest, d. Venice) was a bit of a mystery. The two were married in a civil ceremony on May 19, 1875 in Vienna, with the 25-year-old groom listed as Jewish and the 15-year-old bride as “konfessionslos” or without any religion. Henriette was born exactly nine moths later on February 22, 1876. Her brother Josef August (“Gusti”) was born the next year. The marriage did not last and Theodor and Karoline were divorced on September 19, 1882. The children stayed with Theodor, who remarried Cilli Reif of Uhersky Ostroh in a Jewish ceremony on February 18, 1883 in Vienna. Karoline remarried an Italian count who was a member of the old Lovatelli del Corno family and lived in Venice estranged from her children and former husband.

Genealogical research has revealed more information about Karoline Inquart and explained how she came to be married at age 15 to Theodor Hoffmann. Karoline’s father was Eugen Gustav Inquart, a secretary in the Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy. Karoline’s mother was Anna Maria (“Irma”) Resch (b. 6 Jan 1839 Kula, Yugoslavia, d. 27 Sep 1897 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien). Irma Resch came from a German Catholic family living in the Bacs-Bodrog region of what is now Yugoslavia (but then was Hungary). Her father, a leather manufacturer, Karl Resch (b. 1810 Pecsvarad, Hungary), son of Franz Resch and Elisabeth Strazsai, married Josefine Vickart, daughter of Benadek Vikhard and Anna Ertl in 1837 in Kula.

Irma Resch was married three times, first to Karoline’s father Eugen Inquart, then to a man named Gromann with whom she had three children, and finally on November 24, 1872 to Alfred Kronegg (b. 27 Jul 1844 Vienna, d. 28 Sep. 1913 Vienna). However, Alfred Kronegg was born Adolf Kohn, and his mother was Emma Biedermann (b. 1823 Vienna, d. 20 Mar 1900 Vienna), the sister of Sofia Biedermann. So it seems very logical to assume that when Karoline Inquart was 15 years old, her step-father Alfred Kronegg (Adolf Kohn) arranged her marriage to his first cousin Theodor Hoffmann. The product of this arranged and ultimately unsuccessful marriage was Nuria’s grandmother Henriette.

 	Indeed, while Karolina’s unusual last name fueled speculation that she was related to the infamous Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyß-Inquart (b. 1892 Stannern bei Iglau, Moravia, d. 16 Oct. 1946 Nürnberg, Germany), a fanciful family legend also had her as an illegitimate child of Princess Eugenie Marie de Montijo (b. 1826 Granada, Spain, d. 1920 England), the wife of Emperor Napoleon III of France!

Gustav committed suicide and died March 31, 1893 in Vienna.
Theodor and Cilli Hoffmann had two sons, Richard and Paul Hoffmann, who emigrated to New Zealand. Richard’s son Richard Hoffmann (b. 1925) came in the 1940’s to Los Angeles and became Schoenberg’s secretary. He later became a professor of music at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Gigi’s mother told Nuria that she remembered meeting the Contessa Lovatelli as a child, and that she had been a fine woman.
For this research I have to thank Ing. Felix Gundacker of the Institute for Historical Family Research , Georg Gaugusch of the Gesellschaft Adler and Wolf-Erich Eckstein, all of Vienna. Further research was conducted by me using microfilms available from the Mormon Family History Library.