Susanna (Susanne) Brück (Geburtsname: Feld)
- Born on: 25.4.1910
- Birthplace: Przemyśl (Przemysl),
- Category: Diploma program
- Right of domicile: Wien (Wien),
The English version is based on a translation by artificial intelligence. The authentic version is the German one.
Susanna (or Suanne) Brück was the daughter of the procurator Daniel Feld (merchant). At the time of her birth, her birthplace Przemyśl was located in the Habsburg crown land of Galicia.
On June 29, 1933, Susanna married the private employee (‘manipulant’) Leopold Brück (born December 24, 1899, in Vienna), who, like her, belonged to the Jewish faith. From the marriage, Liesbeth (Lisbeth) was born on April 21, 1934. Susanna ran a business for textiles and laundry goods at Favoritenstraße 122 (10th District of Vienna). The family residence was located at Schönbrunner Straße 106/3/19 (5th District of Vienna). Additionally, the family was registered in Klosterneuburg, specifically at Kierlingerstraße 52a. Here stands an attractive semi-detached house, which belonged to Leopold's mother Ernestine Brück and his uncle Hermann Brück, each half. As will be shown below, it became subject to ‘Aryanization’ after the ‘Anschluss’ of Austria.
At the University for World Trade, Susanna Brück was enrolled in the winter semester 1930/31 and the winter semester 1937/38. As a Jewess, she had to give up her studies after the 'Anschluss' of Austria. In the following years, she and her family faced further persecution measures. Thus, her business fell victim to 'Aryanization': For the amount of 6,279.17 Reichsmarks, which had been set by the Asset Transfer Office, a state robbery organization, as ‘de-Judification assessment’, Antonie Krejci took over the laundry business at Favoritenstraße on December 8, 1938.
In October 1938, Susanna emigrated to the USA with Leopold and Liesbeth. They were financially supported by Susanna’s mother-in-law, Ernestine. Because they had left the Reich territory, the Brück family members were stripped of their citizenship on March 21, 1941. On the same day, SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Karl Ebner, a senior government councilor in the State Police Headquarters Vienna of the Secret State Police, ordered the confiscation of all assets and rights of Leopold and Susanna Brück ‘for reasons of public safety and order with the aim of later appropriation for the German Reich’. Attorney Dr. Stephan Lehner, a member of the National Socialist Law Protectors' League, was appointed as the asset administrator.
On January 21, 1940, Leopold’s mother Ernestine (born November 7, 1877, in Častá/Schattmannsdorf, maiden name Steiner) fled to the USA with her niece Herta, the daughter of her brother-in-law Hermann Brück. The widowed woman of Jewish faith settled in New York and lived at 575 West 159th Street. Previously, she had also been systematically robbed by the Nazi state. She was forced to sell her property in the semi-detached house at Kierlingerstraße 52a to J. and K. Weichselbaum after she had to declare all her assets due to a regulation by the Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan, Hermann Göring, and the Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick from April 26, 1938. And like Susanna and Leopold, Ernestine Brück also had to pay the ‘Jewish asset tax’, which the Nazi regime perversely imposed on Jews in response to the Reich Pogrom Night (November 9/10, 1938) that it had carried out. Based on the Eleventh Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law, after emigration, her assets were also confiscated for the benefit of the German Reich. After World War II, Ernestine was returned her share of the house on Kierlingerstraße.
Leopold’s uncle Hermann lost not only his property due to Nazi persecution but also his life. The Jewish merchant was born on August 8, 1874, in the small town of Galanta/Gallandau, which at the time belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary and was ceded to the newly formed Czechoslovakia through the Treaty of Trianon (1920). Three years earlier, his brother Jakob had also been born in Galanta, who was to marry Ernestine.
Hermann Brück married Anna Laufer (born December 14, 1896, in Vienna, died March 13, 1939, in Klosterneuburg) on March 31, 1920. In a List of Non-Aryan Residents of Klosterneuburg from December 2, 1938, the couple was listed as ‘foreign Jews’. After the death of his wife, Hermann moved from the house on Kierlingerstraße to Vienna, to Liechtensteinstraße 42/5 (9th District). From there, he was deported on the evening of July 22, 1942, as number 604 from the Vienna Aspangbahnhof to the Concentration Camp Theresienstadt/Terezín. In total, the train of the 33rd deportation train from Vienna to Theresienstadt contained about 1,000 Jews, who, despite an average age of 70, had to walk the last ten kilometers from Bohušovice to Theresienstadt on foot. Among them was Babette Kramer (born November 20, 1869), the mother of the writer Theodor Kramer, who had also been enrolled at the k.k. Export Academy, the predecessor of the University for World Trade, until he was drafted for military service in World War I in 1914/15. Hermann Brück had to declare immediately before the departure of the deportation train that he had almost no assets left with shaking hands on an asset directory of evacuated Jews to the eastern territories. The half of the house on Kierlingerstraße that belonged to him was seized on November 5, 1942, by Dr. Ebner and his superior, SS-Brigadeführer and Major General of Police Franz Josef Huber, for the benefit of the Reich Finance Administration. One of the four apartments in this property was subsequently rented to the Wehrmacht. Hermann Brück became a victim of the Holocaust the following year: He died in Theresienstadt in 1943. In the same year, Babette Kramer also died in this concentration camp.
His daughter Herta (born September 15, 1916), who had since married Josef Ehrlich, endeavored to regain the half of the house on Kierlingerstraße stolen from her father after the war from London. Initially, on March 1, 1952, her ownership rights were awarded to her based on the First Restitution Act of July 26, 1946 by decision of the District Court of Klosterneuburg. However, after the Financial Procurator lodged an appeal against the verdict at the Regional Court for Civil Law Matters Vienna, the defunct ‘Greater German Reich’ formally remained the owner. Only after further legal disputes was Herta awarded the ownership rights to her murdered father’s inheritance in December 1953.
Susanna Brück died on February 7, 1964, and her husband Leopold in 1979.
Author: Johannes Koll
Source material
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Universitätsarchiv, Studierendenkarteikarte.
Meldeauskunft des Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchivs, GZ MA 8 – B-MEW – 336227-2013.
GenTeam. Die genealogische Datenbank (http://www.genteam.at , 7. August 2019): Index der jüdischen Matrike Wien und Niederösterreich, Nr. 20113 (Geburt Leopold Brück), 285472 und 199110 (Hochzeit Susanna und Leopold).
Wiener Adreßbuch. Lehmanns Wohnungsanzeiger 1938, 79. Jahrgang, Bd. 1, Wien 1938.
Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien: Trauungszeugnis Susanna Feld und Leopold Brück.
Barbara Weiss/Michael Duscher: … nicht eine Spur mehr von den verflossenen Tagen. Die jüdische Gemeinde Klosterneuburg. Geschichte, Erinnerungen, Schicksale (= Klosterneuburg. Geschichte und Kultur, Sonderband 4), Klosterneuburg 2009, S. 135 f.
Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Archiv der Republik, Bundesministerium für Finanzen, Vermögensverkehrsstelle, Vermögensanmeldungen Nr. 44387 (Susanna), 11599 (Ernestine) und 25671 (Hermann).
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Studiennachrichten der Exportakademie des k.k. österreichischen Handelsmuseums über das 17. Studienjahr 1914/15, Wien 1916, S. 27 zu Theodor Kramer.