| Born: | 05-19-1909 |
| Faculty: | Law School |
| Category: | Deprivation of academic degree |
Stefan HERZ-KESTRANEK, born on May 19th, 1909 in Vienna/Austro-Hungarian Empire, as son of Dr.iur. Eugen Herz (1875-1944, director of Alpine Montangesellschaft, president of the "Oesterreichische Industriellenkammer" and patron of the arts) and Ida Kestranek (1876-1963), studied law after graduating from the Schottengymnasium and received a “Dr. iur.” degree from the Law School at the University of Vienna on May 13th, 1932. He lived in Vienna's 4th district, Prinz-Eugenstraße 30/I/5. He than decided to become an actor and went to Graz, Stryria, but soon returned and started to work as a lawyer in the steel industry. In 1934 he was adopted by his mother's brother, Hans Kestranek, to continue with the name "Kestranek" and called himself "Herz-Kestranek" since then.
His father had already converted to Catholicism ten years before his birth, but from 1938 Stefan Herz-Kestranek was considered "first-degree mixed race ("Mischling I. Grades")" in the racial classification of National Socialism. However, he was also persecuted under National Socialism for political reasons, as he had been a prominent and exposed member of the Austrofascist Heimwehr and friend of Heimwehr leader Ernst Rüdiger Graf Starhemberg (1899-1956) since 1934. His son Miguel Herz-Kestranek later described him as follows:
"He was - at least until his emigration - upper middle-class, wealthy, with a Christian-social background and largely uninterested in politics, he was assimilated and neither an artist nor an intellectual. But he was an emigrant because, as a Jewish Austrian, he was threatened with annihilation."
He therefore fled from Vienna to Switzerland in 1938, later emigrated to France (Le Lavandou on the Côte d'Azur, where he taught German and raised rabbits and vegetables) and from the end of 1941 via Spain and Lisbon/Portugal to Montevideo/Uruguay. He was expatriated from the German Reich in 1942 (264th expatriation list No. 19, published in the German Reich Gazette No. 225 of 25 September 1942) with the legal consequence, among other things, of the confiscation of all his assets within the German Reich and the withdrawal of his civil rights, including the use of a German academic degree. At the request of the Reich Ministry of Education in Berlin, the University of Vienna then decided on February 26th, 1943 to revoke the doctorate he had earned in 1932, informed the ministry of this on April 1st, 1943 and published the decision in the German Reich Gazette No. 86 of April 13th, 1943, which made the revocation legally binding.
Stefan Herz-Kestranek's letters were published in 1997 by his son Miguel Herz-Kestranek (born 1948 in St. Gallen/Switzerland) and the historian Marie-Therese Arnbom as a kaleidoscope of the feelings of an exile identity: "A world that no one can understand who has not lived in it, the world of the emigrant, the world of the homeless, of the one who is completely dependent on himself. Name, relationships, social status, recommendations, origin, all garbage, the only thing that matters is money, I don't have that, so I only have myself!".
He had married Maria Kreitner in early 1937 (divorced in Zurich in 1938), Hilde Anna Kellner (also soon divorced) in his second marriage when he emigrated to Uruguay and Lieselotte Rothschild, who came from Cologne and had also fled to Montevideo, in his third marriage, with whom he also had two children, and finally Maria Wickl (née Machacek, previously married to an SS man) in his fourth marriage.
Stefan and Lieselotte Herz-Kestranek returned to Vienna from exile in Montevideo at the first opportunity in 1945. In 1948, they temporarily moved to St. Gallen for the birth of their son, in Switzerland - "because the land of chocolate was better for mother and baby" - he later assumed. However, Stefan Herz-Kestranek did not last long either in St. Gallen or in post-war Vienna; he moved to St. Gilgen am Wolfgangsee, where he obtained the restitution of the old Kestranek villa, which had been looted (“aryanized”) in 1938, and moved the center of his life there.
It was not until 12 years after the revocation and long after the end of National Socialism that his doctorate was regranted on May 15th, 1955, or rather the revocation was declared "void from the outset" - albeit, as in all other cases, without informing him.
Dr. Stefan Herz-Kestranek died on July 8th, 1976 in Ried im Innkreis.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") IUR 1924-1939 No. 2327, Rectorate GZ 118 ex 1941/42 No. 186, 186, 190, Rectorate GZ 151 ex 1942/43 (=S 127.9) No. 12, 13, 74-80, Rectorate GZ 561 ex 1944/45 No.15; Marie Therese SCHWANDA-ANRBOM, Bürgerliche, allzu bürgerliche Begriffe... - Lebenserfahrungen in der Emigration am Beispiel von Dr. Stefan Herz-Kestranek, phil. Diss. Univ. of Vienna, Vienna 1994; Miguel HERZ-KESTRANEK and Marie-Therese ARNBOM, eds, “... also hab ich nur mich selbst!” Stefan Herz-Kestranek: Stationen eines großbürgerlichen Emigranten 1938-1945, Vienna et al. 1997; Miguel Herz-Kestranek im Interview mit Inge Dalma: "Ich habe staendig Heimweh", in: Zeitschrift der Auslandsoesterreicher ROTWEISSROT 10/2005; POSCH 2009, 386; GAUGUSCH 2011, 1111f.; Albert Lichtblau, Der Fall Herz-Kestranek in der zweiten Generation, 2012; Manfred Flügge, Stadt ohne Seele: Wien 1938, 2018; WIKIPEDIA.
Herbert Posch
