Australian Embassy and Permanent Mission to the United Nations
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TimBonyhadyarticle

A Circle Closed – Australian Tim Bonyhady Traces His Austrian Heritage
 

November 2013

 
Image © Leonhard Hilzensauer

Australian author and academic Professor Tim Bonyhady recently brought back to Austria the fascinating story of his family, a Jewish family that escaped as refugees from Nazi Vienna in 1938 and settled in Australia. Professor Bonyhady wrote about the family’s experiences in his award-winning book “Good Living Street – The Fortunes of my Viennese Family”. The book was recently published in German by Austrian Zsolnay publishers as “Wohllebengasse. Die Geschichte meiner Wiener Familie”. Professor Bonyhady visited Vienna and Salzburg to present it to Austrian audiences in early November.

The book, and the story told in it, is a model example of how a migrant family has contributed to, and enriched, Australia’s society. As it explores the history of Bonyhady’s family, it brings to life the late 19th and early 20th century in Central Europe, in particular in Vienna, and the 1940s to 1970s in Australia.

The book describes an exceptional private collection of turn-of-the-century art, furniture and design, including works by internationally renowned artists such as Gustav Klimt and Joseph Hoffmann. Miraculously, the owners of the collection were able to move much of it out of Austria under the eyes of Nazi executors and to bring it safely to Australia. After being held privately, the collection, termed ‘Gallia’ after the family name of the collection’s founder, is now owned by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). It was on display as part of the NGV’s Vienna: Art and Design exhibition in 2011.

The book also tells the story of three generations: a Jewish family that made its wealth in the gas lightning business and became a prominent sponsor of the Vienna arts scene at the beginning of the 20th century (Gustav Klimt, for example, painted a full-size portrait of Professor Bonyhady’s great-grandmother Hermine Gallia, which is now held at the UK’s National Gallery); the grandmother and great-aunt who rescued the collection and a few months after the Nazis took power in Austria in 1938 were able to escape to Sydney, where they built up their lives under totally different conditions from the ones they knew; and Tim Bonyhady’s mother Anne, who as a teenage girl arrived in Australia with her mother and aunt, settled into Australia’s society and became a teacher of German.

The book is of high interest to both Australian and Austrian readers. Australians learn about the experience of three migrant women in Australia, and what it was like for them to settle into an environment hitherto unknown to them. For Austrians, it is an insight into life in Vienna in the last decades of the Empire and in the troubled years of the 1920s and 30s. Fittingly, the presentation of the German translation of the book in Austria coincided with commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht (9 November 1938 when Jewish synagogues were destroyed and looted throughout Austria and Germany, and 6,547 Jews were arrested alone in Vienna) and with the 75th anniversary of the family’s escape from Austria.

Tim Bonyhady "Wohllebengasse"
Die Geschichte meiner Wiener Familie – German translation by Brigitte Hilzensauer
Publishing date: 26 August 2013
Hardcover (448 pages)
ISBN 978-3-552-05648-0

www.hanser-literaturverlage.de