Wilhelm Amann

Born:	07-01-1912
Faculty:	Law School
Category:	Expelled student

Wilhelm AMANN, born on July 1^st, 1912 in Vienna/Austro-Hungarian Empire (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna, Citizenship 1938 : Austria), son of Dr. Paul Amann (high school teacher, 1884-1958) and Martha Amann, née Popper (1895-?), lived in Vienna's 14^th district, Einwanggasse 25. He started to study Law at the University of vienna in spring term 1931 and was enrolled finally in the spring term 1936 at the Law School in the 6^th year of his studies. He has since been at the stage of final examinations. In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism he was forced to quit his studies and the examination procedure for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna. Wilhelm Amann had to flee Vienna and was able to emigrate to Great Britain.
His father Paul Amann (until 1906: Amschelberg), since 1910 high school teacher at the Goethe-Gymnasiums in Vienna's 14^th district, Astgasse 3,  was compulsorily retired after the Anschluss. He was also known as a writer (works on German and French national character as well as on Jewish assimilation) and translator (among others of J. R. Bloch, M. Maeterlinck, H. de Montherlant and Romain Rolland from French to German) and was in correspondence with Thomas Mann for over four decades since 1915 (published 1959). His book "Tradition and World Crisis," published in 1934, had been banned in the Third Reich since 1935, but he was made an "Officier de l'Académie Française" in Paris in 1937 for his services to French literature and had also been a member of the Viennese Masonic Lodge B'nai Brith Wahrheit since late 1935. These were all reasons to flee Vienna as quickly as possible, but he only managed to emigrate to Paris with the rest of his family in February 1939, and after the German occupation to Montpellier from where he emigrated to the USA in September 1941. Wilhelm Amann, who had already belonged to the youth group around the anthroposophical physician Dr. Karl König in Vienna since 1936, then went from England to Scotland in 1939 to the later Camphill group in Kirkton House, Aberdeenshire, where an anthroposophical school, life and work community based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner developed around Dr. Karl König. Wilhelm worked as a teacher for mentally handicapped children. The group included numerous other expelled Viennese, such as Alexander Baum, Alix Roth, Peter Roth, Thomas Weihs, Marie Blitz-Korach, Anke Weihs, Hans Schauder, Carlo Pietzner and Gertrude Blau (1915-1987). She had already left Vienna in 1936 for Arlesheim near Basel/Switzerland to join the anthroposophical community there and from 1939 helped to build Camphill and later became his wife (her sister Alice Adler, née Blau, had also been expelled from the University of Vienna in 1938). After the beginning of the war, however, Wilhelm Amann was interned as an enemy alien and, since he was still unmarried, was taken to Canada with the SS Entrick on July 3^rd, 1940, and did not return to England until March 1941 with the SS Georgic, where he was released from internment on March 25^th, 1941, went back to Camphill, where he and Gertrude Blau then married

However, he left his wife and Camphill as early as 1944 to set up a similar project, the Garvald Steiner School in West Linton, Scotland. He was later married to Renate Lore Lewinsohn (1925-1997) and they had four children. Wilhelm Amann died on December 24^th, 1999 in Edinburgh, Scotland/Great Britain.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") IUR 1931–1938; www.ancestry.de; Austrian State Archives OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/VVSt/VA 4991, OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/FLD 1089; www.ancestry.de; wikipedia (zum Vater); Richard STEEL, 80 Jahre Camphill 1940-2020, eine Ausstellung, Aberdeen 2020; information from John Baum, Oslo/Norway 02/2012.

Herbert Posch