Albert Hitschmann

Albert HITSCHMANN, born on June 16^th, 1916 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, citizenship 1938: Austria), son of the late Karl Hitschmann (1871-1925, member of the Board of Directors of Brno Schuhfabrik AG and Lederwerke Plunder & Pollak AG Leitmeritz [Litoměřice]) and Irma Hitschmann, née Reich (1887-? ), lived in Vienna's 2^nd district, Kleine Sperlgasse 1/33. He had attended the Bundesrealgymnasium Vienna 2, Kleine Sperlgasse 2c, where he passed his school-leaving examination (Matura) in the summer of 1934 and then began to study chemistry at the Philosophical School at the University of Vienna. However, in the following spring term of 1934, he switched within the University of Vienna to the Law School and studied law, while at the same time enrolling at the University of World Trade (now the Vienna University of Economics and Business), where he also enrolled for economics (spring term of 1935 to fall term of 1937/38). He was last enrolled at the Law School of Vienna University in the spring term of 1938 in the 4^th and last year of his studies.

In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism he was forced to quit his studies for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna.

Although he was still able to take the second part of his diploma examination at the Vienna University of Economics two days after the Wehrmacht invaded Austria, he was no longer able to take the third examination as a Jewish student and had to leave this university without an academic degree and an Absolutorium-certificate.

Albert had grown up in a middle-class environment in Vienna. His parents, Karl and Irma Hitschmann, both came from Bohemia, had married in Iglau in 1908 and had moved to the metropolis of Vienna at the beginning of the 20^th century, becoming wealthy as leather exporters. They held the majority of shares in Plunder & Pollack GmbH Leitmeritz [Litoměřice], which was transformed into a stock corporation in 1912 and was the second largest manufacturer of calfskin in Europe at the time with around 300 employees. They remained in Vienna after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, opted for Austrian citizenship and became entitled to reside in Vienna, as did Albert and his two older brothers Fritz (1909-1963) and Paul Hans (1910). The family lived in a spacious apartment in Vienna's 3^rd district, Arenbergring 20, later in Leopoldstadt, Kleine Sperlgasse 1/33 and all three sons graduated from a secondary school and went to university. After the early death of his father in 1925, the company was managed by his father's brother Richard Hitschmann, who lived in the center of Litomerice in Lippertgasse.
Albert Hitschmann and his older brother Fritz always did internships at Plunder & Pollack in Litomerice, Czechoslovakia, during their school vacations. Their mother Irma continued to live with them in Vienna but also had a luxurious apartment in Kartausergasse (Kartouska) in Prague-Smichov, Czechoslovakia.

In December 1935, Albert's brother Fritz moved to Litomerice (Grillparzerstraße 14) after completing his studies and took over management functions in the company's tannery. In September 1937, he visited Ireland to set up a branch in Carrick-on-Suir, which was in line with Irish efforts to become less dependent on British leather imports by rebuilding the Irish leather industry. However, Fritz was also reacting to the strengthening of the National Socialist Henlein movement in the Sudetenland. Production machines were shipped from the factory in Litomerice via Italy to Ireland and a few weeks after the "Anschluss" of Austria, Pollack & Plunder Ireland Ltd. was founded on April 14^th, 1938 (share capital ￡100,000, divided into 400,000 ordinary shares of 5 shillings each). As uncle Richard and brother Fritz had themselves only come to Ireland from Europe and were therefore considered foreigners, it was not easy to bring the brothers and mother from Vienna and Prague to Ireland before the Nazi persecution. The factory in Litomerice was expropriated ("aryanized")

Albert had to flee Vienna and was able to leave with his mother for Prague/Czechoslovakia at the end of July 1938, where the mother still had an apartment, after he had previously been forced by the Property Transaction Office to "offer" his shares in the family-owned leather factory Plunder & Pollak Leitmeritz to the Vienna branch of the Reichsbank and to sell them at their request. From Prague, he tried to emigrate to his brother in Carrick-on-Suir, Ireland. However, he failed to obtain a working permit for Ireland and had to flee Prague before the final annexation of the rest of Czechoslovakia by Hitler's Germany in the spring of 1939 ("Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia") and managed to emigrate to Bolivia in July 1939, after his mother had narrowly managed to leave for Ireland on March 29^th, 1939.

He remained an Austrian citizen, lived in Bolivia and Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the 1940s and 1950s, was married and had a son, Carlos Hitschmann, before moving to Carrick-on-Suir in Ireland in 1958 to join his mother and his brothers Fritz and Hans (the latter had survived National Socialist perpetration in the Netherlands) and joining the family business, which had become a key economic factor and in which he took over important management positions together with his brother Hans and son Carlos after the death of his brother Fritz in 1963, until the company was closed in 1985.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") Law School 1937–1938; Austrian State Archives OeStA/AdR/Finanzen/VVSt/VA 31876 & VA 13019, OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/Hilfsfonds/Abgeltungsfonds 821, OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/FLD 2257; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 406; Johannes KOLL, Albert Hitschmann, in: Gedenkbuch der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien; Lili ZÀCH, Irish Perceptions of National Identity in Austria-Hungary and its Small Successor States, 1914-1945, phil. Diss. University Galway, 2015, 220-222; Horst DICKEL & Gisela HOLFTER, An Irish Sanctuary : German-speaking Refugees in Ireland 1933–1945, Munch/Vienna 2016, 69-71, 125, 196-201, 379; www.genteam.at

Herbert Posch