The family history of the five Erdheim brothers begins around 1870. It is set in Boryslav/Drohobycz in oil-rich Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Moses Hersch, the patriarch, has made a fortune out of oil and mineral discoveries. He owns mines, an oil refinery and a brewery. Against the background of Manchester capitalism, the brothers grow up in the sheltered warmth of a Jewish family. They are devout but enlightened Jews. At the end of the century, four brothers move to Vienna to study medicine and law. One brother remains in Galicia, another returns home a qualified lawyer. The family is now centered on Vienna with its hospitals and clinics, its university dissecting rooms and its dubious pleasures in the Prater. One brother becomes a prosperous businessman hiring domestic servants and sending his wife to summer health resorts in Franzensbad and Wörrishofen. His rebellious daughter joins the sozialistische Mittelschüler, qualifies as a medical doctor and intends to train as a psychoanalyst. Following the National Socialist Machtergreifung,  the family is under threat. The Erdheims who remained in Boryslav/Drohobycz perish in Galician ghettos. One of the brother’s sons, living in Hungary at the time, dies in a concentration camp in Melk – one of the camps in the notorious Mauthausen network. One of the brohters and his wife assume false names and manage to survive in occupied Poland until the coming of the Red Army. The rebellious daughter survives the Third Reich in Vienna with her non-Jewish partner, an anti-Fascist and resistence fighter. They marry in August 1945. Her husband becomes a member of the provisional post-war Karl Renner government and she gets the professional qualifications denied her during the Third Reich.

The Erdheims

This account is not a family saga in the genre of Frenzen, Foer, Lewinsky et al. Technically superior to the standard rose-tinted formulaic examples, the book’s subtitles – A Family History. A Novel. – indicate, in common parlance, a hybrid. The family history of the Erdheims is meticulously recounted from 1866 to 1945- in part using family and historical documents. Tea Erdheim, the mother of the author and a fascinating figure - rebellious, courageous and endowed with exceptional staying power – marries Lenz, a member of the resistance, in 1945. By ending the novel in 1945, the year of her birth, the author distances herself from any autobiographical involvement. In contrast to Peter Singer’s family history, My Grandfather, the only comparable account, Längst nicht mehr koscher details the workings of assimilation and the dream of its accomplishment. Assimilation dominates the lives of the five Erdheim brothers, sons of Tea’s grandfather, Moses Hersch. Moses Hersch is the owner of oil wells in Galician Boryslav. The hopes of the protagonists and their striving for assimiliation are sharply contrasted with contemporary political opinion about the Jews as expressed in the newspapers. When the Erdheims celebrate Christmas in 1914 in much the same way as their Viennese contemparies, the talk turns to Jakob, a medical doctor at the front – “A Jewish hero. There are no Jewish heroes.” The author went so far as to learn both Polish and Yiddish to be able to research newspaper reports and documents and read exchanges of letters between members of the family. Many of these moving letters are reproduced in the text and stand witness to the history of the times. Even though some of them are the author’s constructs, they are so true to the style of the originals that the reader is unaware of the difference. Against a background of the sons striving for social respectability - two of them are medical doctors, two of them businessmen and one a lawyer – the author sketches out a multi-facetted panorama of Jewish life at the turn of the century. Some of this panorama may seem familiar as the Erdheim family was by no means atypical. Professional crises, illnesses, separations, unconventional lifestyles and intellectual preoccupations – Schnitzler, Nordau and Kraus – figure strongly. From 1934 on the persecution of the Jews begins to impact on every member of the family in Austria, Poland, the Ukraine and Hungary. As Nazi racial ideology leads to the destruction of European Jewry, family and political history intertwine. This occupies about one third of the book. Deploying short and simple, unvarnished sentences, the author leaves the reader with no illusions and avoids the dangers of over-sentimentality. At no point does the book threaten to be an escapist family record. This stylistic approach permits the author to convey the horror of the times plainly and directly. “All the remaining valuables have to be taken along. A ring, a necklace and a watch. They are taken to a sports ground. A crowd of people is present.” The emotional quality of the events is directly and effectively communicated. This represents a gain of literary terrain over dry historical accounts. Whether this literary technique is appropriate remains an open question. Even though it may not be a calculated device – the author’s novels all employ the present tense – the power of the approach cannot be denied. Claudia Erdheim’s novel is highly authentic, of great density and confronts the irrationality of Austrian history without a reourse to shallow entertainment. 

Günther A. Höfler. Illustrierte Neue Welt. February/March 2007

Chane, the maid, serves breakfast. Bread, cold chicken and chicory coffee. The floor of the sitting room is varnished and the walls freshly painted. In the middle of the room is a table, around it cane-bottomed chairs. The room is also furnished with an armchair and a desk. And there’s a sideboard holding Passover dishes, a menorah, silver candlesticks, the Book of Esther in a library case and a pearl handled Sabbath knife engraved with the words “Holy Sabbath”. On the shelves are small jars for spices and herbs, carafes, trays and vases. Beside the door is a large picture in a gilt frame. It depicts a tropical scene - a bluish sky over a bamboo jungle with gazelles in the foreground. A portrait of Moses Montefiore hangs on the east wall of the room. 

• You weren’t in synagogue today, says Esther. 

• Yes. 

• Yesterday and the day before you didn’t go either. 

• Yes. 

• Gitel has told Chane. 

• Let her talk. 

• Naphtali has told Schejne. Milka isn’t talking to you. 

• What difference does it make? 

• Chane told me people say you smoke cigars on the Sabbath. 

• That’s a lie. 

• Everyone’s talking about it. Joel, Hinda, Mendel. Nobody talks to us anymore. They say we’ll go to the Gehenna.

Moses Hersch laughs. 

• Fool. Let them talk. 

• But they’re our neighbors. 

• I’m a God-fearing man. I pray in the morning and in the evening. That suffices. Gottesmann, Kornhaber, and Mendelson don’t go to synagogue every day either. Ephraim’s Meier and Simon’s Feigele are in the same class as Sische. Azriel, Berman, and Dow don’t go to the cheder anymore either. We’ll soon be moving to Drohobycz.  

Moses Hersch takes a pinch of snuff. The infant starts crying. Esther takes him and holds him to her breast.  

• Osias has to go to the cheder.  

• He doesn’t have to go to the cheder. 

• He has to go to the cheder. 

• He ought to go school. 

• But first to the cheder. He has to learn Hebrew and study the Talmud. 

• He can do that with a private teacher. At the cheder he’ll only learn Hebrew and Chumesh. He ought to learn German. Rabbi Wolf is not a good teacher and his house is disorderly and he’s got hens running around in it and it smells and there are diapers hanging around everywhere and his ungroomed children scream and Rebekka is constantly busy at the stove nagging. You know that. 

• He doesn’t have to go to Rabbi Wolf. He could be sent to Rabbi Selig. Sische was his pupil too. He’s not a Hassid, but he is a man of learning.  

• Rabbi Selig isn’t much better and Rabbi Menasse is a Hassidic drunkard.  

• He’s got to go to the cheder until he starts school. He’s old enough to begin to learn.  

• Take care of the children and attend to the orders. 

Moses Hersch stands up, slips into his fur-lined greatcoat and leaves. He has to go to Drohobycz and have the brewery listed at the land registry office. The snow is deep upon the ground. He harnesses the horses to the sleigh.