Sigmund Tieger and his daughter Herta

“In the end, he was transported to Poland with his young daughter, where he became so weak that Hertha, my cousin, had to move him around in a stroller until they were both murdered.” (Egon Kalman, letter to Martha Keil, 17.10.1996, Injoest) The businessman Sigmund Tieger was born in Spitz an der Donau on 3 June 1877 to Adolf and Anna, née Stern. He was married to Marie, née Kohn, with whom he had three children: Friedrich, known as Fritz, who was born in Krems on 15 June 1904; Margarete, who was born in St. Pölten on 18 October 1905; and Herta Esther Chana, who was born in Vienna significantly later on 3 March 1920. Herta lost her mother when she was only twelve years old. Anna died on 12 June 1932 aged only 55 and lies buried in the Jewish cemetery of St. Pölten. Herta was deeply involved in the Jewish community, did gymnastics with the Jewish sports association Makkabi, and was a member of the Zionist association Betar. Sigmund’s nephew Egon Kalman from Türnitz lived with his uncle’s family dur- ing the period that he attended school in St. Pölten. In a letter to the Injoest from November 1996, he reported as follows: “Some years before the ‘Anschluss‘, a boy came to Sigmund Tieger looking for work, saying he had nothing to eat. The Tieger company had by this point moved from the store in the Domgasse to a wholesale store as well as a vegetable stall on the Domplatz. So the boy was employed as a worker at the vegetable stall on the marketplace. When Hitler came, this boy naturally appeared in an SS uniform and, since he wanted to take over the business, he ordered that the store be closed. As soon as it was closed, other SS men came and told Mr. Tieger that everything must remain open. If he closed the store again, he would be locked up. A short time afterwards that fine boy came and told him to shut down immediately.” On 20 May 1938, Sigmund Tieger relocated with Fritz and Herta to an apart- ment building he owned in Schönbrunnerstraße 44 in Vienna’s fifth district, where he also put up his sister Margarete and her husband Hans Frank. He lat- er had to relocate with Herta to Sechskrügelgasse 8 in Vienna’s third district, which would be the last stop for altogether 37 people before their deportation. Fritz and his fiancée Magdalena Leb were able to flee in October 1938 via Italy to Palestine/Eretz Israel. Margarete and Hans Frank managed to flee in May 1939 to Belgian Congo, where they lived until their deaths in 1964 respevtively 1966. There was no rescue for Sigmund and Herta Tieger. Like the Schmatnik couple, for whom a Stone of Remembrance is also being placed this year, they were deported to the totally overcrowded and hygienically catastrophic Opole Ghet- to in Poland on 26 February 1941. The ghetto was liquidated in the spring of 1942 and only 28 of the 2008 deportees from Vienna survived. Egon Kalman’s parents were also on this transport. He was initially able to stay in touch by mail and thus received the above-cited information. Sigmund especially was apparently unable to endure the gruesome conditions in Opole for long, though we know neither the date of his death nor that of Herta. A Stone of Re- membrance is also placed for Sigmund’s sister-in-law Anna Tieger, née Braun, the widow of his brother Moritz, who died in 1931. On 24 February 1941, two days before his deportation, Sigmund Tieger was forced to sign a “special dispensation” authorizing the “Central Agency for Jewish Emigration” under Adolf Eichmann to handle all legal transactions on his behalf. In the corresponding property register, Herta listed a savings account with 300 RM and cash assets of 52 RM belonging to her father. Even these small sums were transferred to a frozen account of the Central Agency. The most attractive plunder, however, was the 700-square-meter building in Vienna’s fifth district, constructed in 1895, in “good structural condition”, and comprising four floors “in a convenient location”. It was “confiscated in favor of the German Empire” in November 1941 and sold for 93,000 Reichsmark on 27 November 1942 to three individuals from Klagenfurt: Franz Rainer, who would later be Health Director in Carinthia; Wilhelm Effenberger, who would later be Building Director in Carinthia, and his wife Franciska Effenberger. On 14 October 1949, a settlement was agreed between the buyers and the heir of the expropriated party: The building had to be returned, yet Fritz Tieger was required to pay Franz Rainer, who owned five sevenths of the building, the sum of 60,000 Schilling plus 4 percent interest within a period of three months, since Rainer had paid the Reich Flight Tax, the Jewish Property Tax, and other fees on behalf of Sigmund Tieger. In return, all proceeds from the building would go to the applicant from 1 November 1949 onwards. Fritz Tieger was pre- sumably unable to cough up this huge sum, basically an ex post facto “Jewish Tax”. There are no indications in the archival sources that any restitution took place. In 1965, Fritz and, after his death in 1966, his daughter Rachel received 25,000 Schilling from the “Property Compensation Fund for the Politically Per- secuted” – a pathetic sum given the actual value of a building in Vienna’s fifth district. In 1952, Fritz Tieger also tried to have his father’s property in St. Pölten restituted, specifically a truck of the Saurer brand and a factory producing sauerkraut and pickles at the Viehofnerberg. His claims were rejected on the basis of spurious arguments by the “Restitution Commission at the Vienna State Court for Civil Law, St. Pölten District Court Branch”. Fritz Tieger even had to cover the costs of the proceedings.