Wilhelm Müller

“The Jew Müller bought the building for 19,000 Reichsmark at the time and has not undertaken the slightest investment in the maintenance of this property since then. This is the reason why such extensive repairs are now required, a fact that naturally needs to be taken into account when evaluating the buil­ ding.” (Eduard Honisch to the Property Transaction Office in Vienna’s first dis­ trict; St. Pölten, 29. 8. 1940) Wilhelm Müller was born in Polna (Bohemia) on 15 October 1872 to Jacob and Karoline, née Basch. He lived in Budweis with his wife Ernestine, who was born in Prague on 20 October 1867 to Samuel Schreiber and Emilie, née Fischl. Their daughters Hedwig (1906) and Zdenka (1907) were born in Budweis. The family moved to St. Pölten in 1908, where their third daughter, Else, was born in 1909. In the 1930s, Wilhelm Müller regularly took out ads in the city gazette promoting his “exclusive sale of the best and cheapest fuel,” namely gas coke from the Viennese municipal gasworks. His later property register shows that the fuel business at Radetzkystraße 4, which was also the family’s home address, was very successful. Erneste died on 3 May 1938, meaning that she could still be buried in the Jewish cemetery in St. Pölten. Her family had the following words engraved on her tombstone: “Those who knew you, gallant woman, will know what we have lost.” Wilhelm Müller already deregistered to Vienna on 25 July 1938. From 23 January 1939 until their forced relocation to Vienna in May and June, respectively, his villa in Schubertstraße 1 was home to the evicted Jewish lawyers Dr. Hugo Deutsch and Dr. Paul Kohner; a Stone of Remembrance is also being placed for the latter this year. For the first one-and-a-half years, Wilhelm Müller sub-let at Praterstraße 30 in Vienna’s second district, before being forced to relocate twice within the second district from 1 February 1940 onward. He then found accommodation for another year at Biberstraße 9 in the first district, followed by accommodation from 17 September 1941 to 10 September 1942 at Praterstraße 33, again in the second district. He was deported along with 42 other people to his death from his last address in Rotensterngasse 24, also in the second district. On 19 December 1938, the tax authority in St. Pölten demanded a “Jewish property tax” from Wilhelm Müller to the tune of 16,000 Reichsmark, to be paid in four installments. In August 1940, the St. Pölten SA-Standartenführer and member of the German Reichstag Eduard Honisch “Aryanized” Müller’s one-storied villa plus basement, two verandas, and a large garden, which had been built in 1904 at Schubertstraße 1 on the corner to Johann Gasser-Straße 18. The St. Pölten city architect Josef Weidinger justified his extremely low evaluation of the sales price at around 7,700 Reichsmark with anticipated repair costs amounting to 10,000 Reichsmark. Wilhelm Müller was deported to Theresienstadt on 10 September 1942, from where he was already transferred to Treblinka on 29 September on a so-called “elderly transport” for people aged 65 and older. The dates of death for the people murdered in this extermination camp were not recorded. On 9 October 1942, one month after her father, Hedwig Goldmann was deported to Theresienstadt along with her nine-year-old daughter Liesl. Both managed to survive and emigrated in late 1945 to join their sisters/aunts in the USA. Albert Goldmann, Hedwig’s husband and Liesl’s father, had tried in vain to emigrate, finally going to Italy, where he was arrested in May 1944 and deported to Auschwitz. He survived two further camp internments in Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald, before succumbing to blood poisoning in the Ohrdruf-Nord/Buchenwald sub-camp on 9 January 1945, four months before liberation. Wilhelm Müller’s three brothers still living in 1938 were also murdered in the Shoah: Max and Emil along with his wife Ida were murdered in Maly Trostinec, while Eduard and his wife Rita Recha were murdered in Auschwitz. The two other daughters of Wilhelm and Ernestine Müller – Zdenka Blau and Else, from 1942 married name Kraus – managed to flee to the United Kingdom and the USA. On 1 July 1947, Elsa Kraus applied for restitution on behalf of herself and her sisters. The process dragged on for almost a year. Finally, on 9 June 1948, four weeks after Eduard Honisch was stripped of his assets in a people’s court trial, the villa was restituted to the heirs, although Honisch was relieved of repaying the sales price on account of the repairs he had undertaken. Dr. Egon Morgenstern, who had returned from Palestine/Eretz Israel in 1947, acted as “trustee in absentia” for Wilhelm Müller and as the representative for Müller’s daughters. The ownership situation of the “villa” at what is today Theodor-Körner-Straße 1 could not be ascertained. In any case, the building is today uninhabited, derelict, and the garden overgrown.