It is one of the best-known treatments of the Struwwelpeter[1]: let your imagination run wild and follow me to Vienna, the Vienna of circa 1895.
The ‘exclusive nature’ of the Egyptian Struwwelpeter can only be grasped against its cultural and historical context, which needs closer illumination.
There were no particularly close or long-standing historical and political relations between Egypt and the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at all, with the exception of a few individuals, such as, e.g., Slatin Pascha (1857–1932) and Alois Negrelli. Slatin Pascha was an Anglo-Egyptian general who had been born in Vienna in 1857 and as an Austrian lieutenant during the First World War was in charge of aid for prisoners-of-war at the Austrian Red Cross. Alois Ritter of Negrelli Moldelbe (1799–1858) made the plans for the Suez Canal. Both therefore belong either into the category of ‘normal’ diplomatic relations or into the widest possible understanding of the cultural realm.
Reasons for an ‘Egyptian Struwwelpeter’
Austro-Egyptian Relations
There have been numerous treatments of the Struwwelpeter, and probably the most exotic of these is the Egyptian Struwwelpeter, which was created by a team of authors from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.[i]What triggered their decision to set these stories in Egypt? There were no particular historical links between the two countries, after all – and few cultural ties, if they even are such, as mentioned above. However, cultural ties do go back to a time when Vienna was still known as Vindobona (the Romans occupied this territory around the time of the birth of Christ).
In the year 1800, Roman remains were discovered in the centre of the city during construction works. This was nothing special, it was almost a ‘normal’ occurrence in Vienna. What was special about this discovery, however, was that the recovered objects also included an old Egyptian stone sculpture. The sculpture originated from the time around 1200 BCE and was probably taken to Vindobona as a kind of ‘spiritual emissary’ from Egypt. Numerous ritual sites for the Egyptian deities Isis and Serapis existed throughout the Roman empire.
Another valuable item arrived in Vienna via Constantinople in the mid-sixteenth century. It is said that Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, a member of an imperial legation to Constantinople, acquired the statue of a kneeling figure of the Gem-nef-hor-bak for around two hundred ducats, thereby introducing the first Egyptian sculpture to the imperial collections. In 1801, the Austrian Baron of Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856) acquired a stele in Saqqara while he was a member of the diplomatic service. He gifted it to the Oriental Academy, from where it somehow ended up in the Habsburg collection of coins and antiquities. The Oriental Academy had been established by Empress Maria Theresa and exists to his day, now known as the Diplomatische Akademie. Hammer-Purgstall was also a supporter of the foundation[w1] of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, as well as being its first president (1847–1849). He was a greatly merited scholar of oriental studies, in particular Ottoman studies, in Austria, and translated numerous oriental poems, including the Divan of Hafiz.
In 1809, Napoleon conquered Vienna and the French army claimed their spoils – meaning that as many valuable objects of art as possible were confiscated in Vienna and incorporated into French museums. For reasons of politics and diplomacy, the usual process was that after Napoleon’s downfall objects of exchange were offered instead of returning the looted treasures. Thankfully, most of the collection of coins and antiquities, which also included the ancient Egyptian treasures, was secured in time. Any items from the collection that were nevertheless confiscated were luckily returned.
A sub-inventory of the Egyptian holdings in the collection of coins and antiquities was made in 1824 – it comprised 3770 items. Most of these objects had been gifts made by the various emissaries in Constantinople and Cairo who had not themselves attended a dig, but had purchased the items from antiquities dealers. Generous donations were also made to the House of Habsburg by numerous merchants, bankers and other entrepreneurs from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
The Suez Canal, built by the Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805-1894) after plans by Alois Negrelli, was opened in 1869. Emperor Franz Joseph I acquired three papyrus columns from the eighteenth dynasty (c. 1551-1306 BCE) via the mediation of the Austrian technician Anton Lucovich on the occasion. These columns were built into the Egyptian rooms as load-bearing elements when the Imperial-Royal Court Museum (now Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna) was built.
On the occasion of the Viennese World Exhibition in 1873, Ismail Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt, was eager to present his country as an impressive and moreover an independent place. As Egypt was still under Ottoman rule, this representation had tangible political as well as cultural goals. The distinctive Pharaonic culture was set to underline the Egyptian claim to independent statehood.
Paintings from an Egyptian royal tomb in Beni Hasan served as models for a reconstruction of that tomb for the Viennese World Exhibition in 1873. The tomb was a crowd puller! These wall hangings (they were painted on special paper) were purchased after the end of the world exhibition and became part of the decoration of the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection almost two decades later. I will return to these depictions later on. New research has shown that the artist responsible for the works was most probably the Viennese decorative and interiors painter Adolf Falkenstein (d. 31 Dec 1929), and not, as hitherto assumed, Max Weidenbach.
The heir apparent, Crown Prince Rudolf, was of the most distinguished of the many prominent donors and purchasers of Egyptian objects of art for the House of Habsburg. He purchased sixty objects while travelling in Egypt in 1881, and donated these to the collection.
One curious, and nowadays inconceivable, fact, must be mentioned. A sensational discovery had been made in Deir el-Bahari, about twenty-five kilometres north of Giza, in 1891: an intact tomb containing 153 coffins. The discovery was so huge that the stores of the museum in Giza did not have sufficient space at the time. The Egyptian government therefore came to the notable decision that a number of lots of finds would be donated to seventeen museums in Europe and the United States. This was undertaken in 1893/94. The lots of objects were allocated to the diplomatic representatives of the given states by a lottery. The Austrian ‘lottery prize’ went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the prize of the United States is now at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. – What government would take such a truly generous decision nowadays?
‘All the world’ was therefore talking about Egypt, newspapers and magazines kept reporting on new, sensational digs, and there were indeed plenty of digs – but not all of them were authentic. Everyone who was anyone and could afford it (and some who couldn’t) had something of ancient origin in their drawing room at home. Equally well known and also present in almost every household was the Struwwelpeter. It therefore stands to reason that it only took a single spark to combine these two components into a successful jest.
The ‘Company of Authors’: Fritz, Richard and Magdalene Netolitzky
The Netolitzky Family
In around 1870, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy had a size of 676,615 square kilometres, that is about two thirds the size of modern-day Egypt. This multinational state enjoyed the advantages of the mutual influences its various cultures had on each other, but also suffered from a number of disadvantages, especially so for state employees who could be moved to different posts at any time. Such a move not only incurred costs, it also triggered concern for the children’s education, especially if it was planned that they would attend university.
The Netolitzky family had been residents of good standing in Rokitnitz (Eastern Bohemia, now Rokytnice in the Czech Republic) since the early eighteenth century. Until the end of the First World War, Rokitnitz was a purely German-speaking location, where Fritz Netolitzky’s grandfather worked in agriculture as well as the trades of gingerbread baker and wax-chandler. Both of his brothers, however, were already doctors. One of them followed a Russian prince to his estates near Kiev in that position after the Napoleonic wars, and he stayed there. This ‘Russian uncle’ would play an important role in the family tradition and was repeatedly blamed for the ‘pull of the great world’ that Fritz Netolitzky also eventually succumbed to.
The parents of the authors were Dr. med. August Netolitzky and Berlin-born Hedwig v. Stein. August Netolitzky studied in Prague and while he was there he married the daughter of the university professor for zoology Friedrich Ritter von Stein, who originated from a parson’s family in the March of Brandenburg.
Seven children were born into this marriage, the eldest three of whom are the company of authors responsible for the Egyptian Struwwelpeter. Magdalene, the eldest, was born on September 4th, 1872, Richard on September 19th, 1873 and Fritz on October 1st, 1875 in Zwickau in Bohemia.
In the company of their many siblings, the children enjoyed a happy childhood in various German and Czech towns of Bohemia, spending much time outdoors and barely any on social deportment. When Fritz was about ten years old, he had a pipe dream that he considered particularly characteristic. Lying on a meadow, he was grasped by the inconceivable desire to be able to know and name everything that lived on one square metre of meadow – a dream the fulfilment of which would probably keep many specialists in awe, as he added with resignation once he was older.
Fritz Netolitzky’s education and career
As a doctor and civil servant of the monarchy, Fritz Netolitzky’s father was repeatedly reposted, resulting in expensive relocations and several changes of school. Fritz started his secondary education at a humanist grammar school – Gymnasium – in Eger (modern-day Cheb in the very West of the Czech Republic). It brought him more grief than joy. Eger was German-speaking, but Fritz had been taught in Czech for three of his primary school years, and only one year in German. In addition, he had the bad luck of having a ‘pedagogically unfriendly teacher’ for Latin and Greek. It was typical for him, however, that he would always excuse this man, under whose lack of understanding he frequently suffered, as ‘typically suffering of unwellness to the stomach and therefore bitter’. Despite his own bad experiences, he considered a humanist education something that he would also want his own children to receive later on. Although his entry to Gymnasium put an end to the freedom and liberty he had hitherto enjoyed, crafts and collecting remained his passions. The wild boyhood games with his friends and brother Richard were displaced by swimming, ice skating, gymnastics and cycling, later on by mountain climbing and skiing. As a student, he also became a zealous photographer who liked taking photographs of the family.
As his father had been reposted once again in the meantime, this time to the ministry in Vienna, Fritz spent the final two years of his secondary education in Prague, far away from his family. However, he lived with his grandmother Emma von Stein as a boarder together with a cousin: This was a common solution to the schooling problem at the time. His first ‘love trinket’, namely a lock of hair, which is now owned by his granddaughter, is probably from that cousin. His grade average improved at the Gymnasium in Prague, where he had different teachers, and he easily passed his school leaving exams of the Matura on July 13th, 1893.
Fritz followed the family to Vienna and started studying medicine there in that same autumn, so that the entire family was united once more. They were able to pick up on their family life routines again, albeit in financial straits. Fritz kept a regular and precise diary and leaves a very lively impression of the family’s financial worries and needs, also faithfully noting his own personal money problems. For example, he had no money to buy a new exercise book for his diary entries. He only jotted down brief notes on scraps of paper, and then summarized them in the diary. An expensive dental treatment also had to be delayed for months due to a lack of money. The family nevertheless enjoyed a jolly and loving atmosphere. Harmless enjoyments in winter included ice skating on the patch of water spread in the courtyard of their house by the janitor or outings to Nußdorf by the steam tramway together with friends. Now a district of Vienna, Nußdorf was an independent village on the outskirts of Vienna until 1892. Fritz’s youngest sister Emma was lovingly ‘picked up from gym class’ whenever possible. These gym classes probably took place in one of the numerous gym clubs that existed at the time. Fritz Netolitzky was also a member of a gym club, the Wiener Akademischer Turnverein. Such clubs were established at universities and had a similar structure as the fraternities of the time. This attentive fraternal service also had the added advantage of facilitating encounters with friends and other girls, including my great-aunt Kitty von Gunz, a cousin of my maternal grandfather. A diary entry notes: ‘… We had to pick Emma up from the Gunz family. The girls are supposed to be quite pretty, I hardly saw them, but Emma said we [meaning Fritz and his brother Richard] should each take one [there were three sisters]. The things that female heads think up. …’
After the father had been reposted once more, the students Fritz and Richard stayed in Vienna and were looked after by ‘Tante Gersuny’, as she was called – meaning that she would sometimes take care of the laundry or invite the brothers to dinner. They also continued to attend the French and English lessons that took place in her house. Moreover, they were presented to society at her house, not least via dancing classes. Mrs.. Gersuny even sometimes slipped five gulden to the brothers, who lived on the tightest of budgets, ‘so that they would be better able to entertain themselves at the dances’. This connection was decisive for the creation of the Egyptian Struwwelpeter.
On March 23rd, 1899, Fritz was awarded the title of doctor of general medicine and subsequently served as a one-year volunteer with the Kaiserjäger, an elite force of the monarchy, in Vienna and then as an assistant substitute doctor in Innsbruck. This is where he worked as an assistant at the University’s Institute of Pharmacology from 1899 to 1904. During this time, he also passed his ‘Physikat’ exam, which entitled him to accept a position as a state-appointed public medical officer. There followed a one year vacation, which he used for a research trip along the Western coast of South America as a naval doctor aboard a small steam ship of the German Kosmos-Line in Hamburg. This opportunity was an exceptional stroke of luck, as ship’s doctors normally had to conclude contracts for several years – only this contract was available for just one specific journey. He later reported about this in the Innsbrucker Nachrichten edition of February 12th, 1903. Upon his return in 1902, he spent one semester working at the University of Strasbourg’s Institute of Pharmacology and Institute of Physiological Chemistry.
In 1904, he was appointed as an assistant at the royal imperial food safety institution, the Kaiserlich-Königliche allgemeine Untersuchungsanstalt für Lebensmittel in Graz, which was attached to the university’s Institute of Hygiene. He attained his habilitation in pharmacognosy and microscopy of comestible products at the University of Graz the following year and in 1910 moved to the Research Institute for Comestible Products at the University of Czernovitz (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) as an adjunct, his venia docendi qualification being transferred to that university, which was at the time still Austrian. There, he was given a proper appointment as associate professor of pharmacognosy in 1912. In 1914, when the First World War broke out, he entered service, interrupting his work in Czernovitz. Just before the end of the war, he became a member of the professional board of the royal imperial office for popular nutrition, the kaiserlich-königliche Amt für Volksernährung, and was posted to the research station for agriculture and chemistry, the Landwirtschaftlich-chemische Versuchsanstalt, in Vienna.
After the collapse of the monarchy in November 1918, he returned to Czernovitz in order to take up his former professorial position. The university had in the meantime become Romanian, his move occurred in consultation with the Austrian authority of education.
Fritz Netolitzky had married Katharina Edle von Gunz (1880–1935), my grandfather’s cousin, in 1904. It was a very happy marriage, and the couple already had five children so that Fritz faced the same issue as his own father had upon his move: he sought to find the best possible German-language, preferably humanist, education for his children. This was difficult, if not impossible, to achieve with little money during uncertain political times. He therefore decided to remain in Czernovitz while the family returned to Vienna in 1919. Those who were not in the know even assumed that the marriage had been divorced. For two thirds of each year, he lived at his institute in Czernovitz: a narrow, simple bed and mediocre service by an elderly servant, food from a modest public house. The other third of the year – the university holidays – were spent in Vienna with his wife and children. The situation was very difficult for the family, times were hard and moreover it was not possible for his wage to be legally transferred. Despite these adverse conditions, four of his five children completed their university education.
Fritz’s wife died in 1935, but his passionate yearning for a comfortable home led him to re-marry in 1939. He had known his second wife for a long time, she was a First World War widow. By a stroke of luck, he and his wife were out of town when the Russians occupied Bukovina and therefore also Czernovitz in 1940. Leaving all their possessions behind, they fled on foot across the mountains to Hermannstadt (now Sibiu) in Transylvania, which had remained Romanian. As he had reached the age limit of 65, he was retired at the end of that year by the Romanian educational authority. Following a brief spell in the Polish town of Łódź, he was able to move back to Vienna together with his wife in the summer of 1941. On 5 January 1945, he suffered a heart attack while out in the street, putting a sudden end to his busy life. The titles of his academic work reveal that he always had a penchant for Ancient Egypt. The Zoologisch-Botanische Gesellschaft, an Austrian association dedicated to zoology and botany, holds an almost complete register of his works in its library in Vienna.
Creation of the Egyptian Struwwelpeter
Diary entry, Thursday, October 19th, 1893
‘When I returned from the lectures at about two pm, I was met with the terrible news that I would have to visit the dance class at the Gersuny house, where the Billroths, the Nothnagels, the Tolds, etc. will be attending lessons. Won’t that be fun, good luck to us. As if they didn’t have any other problems! …’
How does a dance class organised by the Gersuny family pertain to the Egyptian Struwwelpeter? At the time, learning to dance was simply a part of one’s education from a certain social class upwards. In order to make this possible, befriended families would usually get together to organise private dance classes at their own houses, either taking it in turns or always resorting to one particular of the family homes. They would employ a ‘dance master’ and a pianist – and were all set for the fun and dance. In his ‘Memories’, Richard Netolitzky wrote on the topic: ‘ … living with them was their nephew Edmund Gersuny (parents deceased) and his mother, who was hard of hearing. The young master Gersuny attended grammar school in Seitenstetten (Lower Austria) [the Benedictine Stiftsgymnasium established in 1814]. … Mrs.. Gersuny was very fond of her nephew Edmund’s schoolfellows. In order to keep up old relationships with the youth, Aunt Gersuny (as she was known) organised a dance class in her apartment, where those very schoolfellows met once a week in order to practise dancing and were also joined by other young people from carefully chosen families (mainly girls, for there were sufficient numbers of young men in attendance). There were the two Billroth daughters, one Nothnagel daughter, two von Thausing siblings, two Holzknecht siblings, two Netolitzky siblings (Fritz and Emma). My sister Magdalene and I (Richard) were already too old, and thus were only invited to the monthly ‘extended dance classes’. … I didn’t dance much, I usually retreated to attend to the wine together with Edmund, …’
Who was the Gersuny family, where Fritz and Emma visited dance classes? Dr. Robert Gersuny (1844–1924) was a respected Viennese doctor, a surgeon working closely together with Theodor Billroth. Theodor Billroth (1829–1894) was an important member of the Vienna Medical School, a pioneer in his field. Among other achievements, he introduced mixed anaesthesia using ether and chloroform and invented a watertight wound dressing that became known as the ‘Billroth-Batist’. The most impactful institution that emerged out of his initiative and still exists today is the Rudolfinerhaus. This training institution stemmed from a foundation made by the successor to the throne Crown Prince Rudolf. It is a school for the training of nurses, which Billroth himself directed until his sudden death. After Billroth’s death, Dr. Gersuny took over as the director of the institution. He also developed operation methods in surgery as well as gynaecology and was a vanguard in the field of plastic surgery.
The Netolitzky and Gersuny families had long been friends, connected by the two fathers’ professional association. The father of the future wife of Fritz Netolitzky – my great-aunt – was also a renowned Viennese doctor, who was particularly attentive to the care of the poor. The Gersuny family was very hospitable, their house was a meeting point for numerous well-known and important figures in Viennese society, including the poet Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916).
On the afternoon of December 24th, 1893, a poignant book was introduced to the Gersuny household; the diary entry details:
‘ … In the afternoon, we ourselves had to go there, as we had to deliver a Strubelpeter, which Magda had bought on her way home, as Edmund hadn’t found one. He had probably been looking for it in the bars and cafés. …’
The entry does not detail who the book was intended for; it is probably that the recipient was a young child known to the Gersuny family.
The diary entry goes on to say the following about the family celebration: ‘The party itself was very beautiful and of all the presents, every single one of which brought me joy, I was most touched by one particular present from Mrs.. Gersuny, a book! You’d hardly believe it, we go there to eat and drink like horses, attend their dances without having to pay a cent, and then she gives us presents on top of that! We’ll have to return the favour! But how? … Indeed, Richard and Magda also received books from Mrs.. Gersuny, the ‘dancing auntie’…’
On December 26th, he wrote: ‘ …We want to make an Egyptian Strubelpeter [sic!] for Mrs.. Gersuny. We already have our ‘wicked’ Frederick. It was my idea. …’
December 27th, 1893: ‘ … In the evening, we picked Emma up from gym class, and while we were waiting and talking about Strubelpeter, I had the glorious idea of turning Johnny Look-In-The-Air into a girl with an eye for male students. The whole idea is entirely mine, this might turn out great. …’
December 29th, 1893: ‘ …For Gersuny, we’re turning ‘Robert’ into someone who keeps going out into the simoom winds with his mother’s crinoline. ([w2] [AH3] Again it was my idea, Richard then executes it all.) … if we’d had the money, we would have exchanged our Strubelpeter ideas over a pint or a glass of wine, but as it was we had to be good and go home to play a game of Halma.’
December 30th, 1893: ‘ … While I was studying, I took a drag from Richard’s pipe tip, and that gave me the idea of turning Harriet with the Matches into someone who comes across their father’s pipe, and Richard turned Augustus Who Would Not Have Any Soup into Sneferu Who Waltzed Not.’
The brothers attended the university library as well as the reading and debate club of the ‘Germania’ fraternity, the Rede- und Leseverein der deutschen Hochschüler in Wien Germania, for their studies as well as their private entertainment. During university holidays, they would read and borrow books there. On January 5th, 1894, they spent time in the university library, ‘ … where Richard researched for the Strubelpeter in Uhlemann while I was leafing through a two-volume history of India. Then I also got stuck into Egypt, and the book was so fascinating that I planned to return to it soon.’
On January 10th, 1894, the diary recounts that ‘ … Magda drew some pictures for Strubelpeter, which are very good, as Magda had made copies from originals at the museum [the royal imperial court museum]’. These originals are the above-mentioned paintings by Ernst Weidenbach, which are still on display today.
The sibling eagerly collected information about Egypt from a range of books, so that they would be true to life, and spent their leisure time working on the project.
Sunday, January 28th, 1894: ‘ … While Richard was studying in the garden below, I was having a well-deserved nap on the sofa until I had finally had enough of lazing about at around 4 pm and made some sheets for the Strubelpeter.’
Friday, February 2nd, 1894: ‘ … Instead of going to the café, as we had originally planned, we continued to work on Strubelpeter, which needs to be finished by the end of February. Even Papa seems to like it.’
Saturday, February 3rd, 1894: ‘ … Then we lazed about and made paper for Struwwelpeter until we had to go to the office for corrections …’
One of Fritz’s diaries bears the motto: ‘A mirror that only shows the beautiful sides is a bad mirror. Even worse is a diary that conceals the mistakes.’ Faithful to this motto, he also included his thoughts about various girls he liked, including an entry about my great-aunt: ‘ … that is why we missed the Gunz family, which I was sorry for, as I would have liked to meet Kitti, with whom I appear to be in love without having ever seen her. Isn’t that stupid, even idiotic …’ (Another decade would pass, incidentally, before Fritz Netolitzky married my great-aunt on November 10th, 1904.)
When the message of the death of Prof. Billroth (February 6th, 1894 in Abbazia/Opatija, now in Croatia) reached Vienna, it put an end to the dance classes at the Gersuny residence, which Fritz was very sorry for. The entries about his change of heart give cause for the notion that he may have been the model for ‘Sneferu Who Waltzed Not’.
Sunday, February 25th, 1894: ‘ … In the afternoon, I ‘made’ paper for Strubelpeter and then lazed about terribly, which was a great relief after having worked all week’.
Letter by Hedwig Netolitzky (the three authors’ mother) on March 11th, 1894: ‘ … Magda is making drawings for her Struwwelpeter for Mrs.. Gersuny, which has lain discarded for a while, she is not quite in the mood for it …’
Letter by Hedwig Netolitzky (the three authors’ mother) in August 1894: ‘ … the whole Struwwelpeter story was a great joy for us, but we mustn’t put too much store in it. Gersuny wrote that he wanted to speak to Magda upon his return, that the book could appear in the autumn of 95, but some changes would have to be made, as there were some aspects that weren’t suitable for a larger audience, but on the whole those are just minor details and I would be so glad for the children; especially for Magda, who is always so modest. …’
Fritz’s diary, October 1894: ‘ … The entire family has been exceptionally taken up by the Struwelpeter, which really promised to turn out quite well and which gave us all such joy. I made the paper, Richard the poems and Magda painted it in bright colours, giving her imagination free reign. On Sunday 7/10, I and Emma delivered it to Mrs. Gersuny, but she did not take a look until after we had left. … This is also the month we started the French lessons, which initially always rather intimidated us, until we had finally hit upon the method by which we could best get away with it (not quite to the benefit of our progress, though). We would converse quite eagerly in German and still learned enough to be able to understand quite a lot within a few months. Mrs. Gersuny is paying for the classes, “in order to support the Frenchwoman”. …’
There is an extant original calling card which Dr. Gersuny left on April 12th, 1895 with the following message for Magda: ‘Dear Ms Magda! The publisher wants to take the Egyptian book to Leipzig at the end of April, but he demands a change of the title to Egypt. Struwwelpeter and instead of the Dandy Typhon he wants a sketch that goes with the title on the first page. Would the company of authors please oblige? Best wishes! R. Gersuny
In fact, Typhon is a deity in Greek mythology, namely the youngest son of Gaia and Tartarus. He is described as a giant with a hundred snake or dragon heads and was later identified with the god Seth by the Greeks.
Diary entry by Hedwig Netolitzky on August 10th, 1895: ‘ … Dr. Gersuny delivered the first copy …’
October 27th, 1895: Dr. Gersuny delivered a fee of 150,- gulden for the company of authors. The siblings were hugely pleased, even if they had not received any copies yet, as their delivery was promised for the coming days. Lithography and printing were completed by Nister in Nuremberg, the publisher was Gerold’s Sohn in Vienna.
Who instigated the publication of this parody? Mrs. Gersuny had displayed the inventive present on view in her salon to show it to her guests. It is said that it was Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach who convinced her publisher Gerold’s Sohn to publish. However, insufficient legal cover resulted in a legal claim that was made by Rütten & Loening, the original Struwwelpeter publisher. References to this plagiarism claim led me to study the history of the publishing company Rütten & Loening, but I could not find a single mention of the matter. I also suspect that the archives no longer contain any relevant documents. The publisher moved its official seat several times over the course of its history, both within Frankfurt and throughout Germany. The company archives incurred their greatest losses during the final months of the war. Material that had been stored in Templin (about 60 kilometres north of Berlin) was used ‘to fill up air-raid protection ditches in the forest’. When it was eventually possible and desired to dig out the material again, it had largely been spoiled. The losses incurred as a result included much more valuable material than an exchange of letters on this matter, such as books, original manuscripts, contracts, and much more.
The Gerold’s Sohn archive is kept at the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek library in Vienna. Mrs. Dr. Luitgard Knoll, one of Fritz Netolitzky’s granddaughters, had already gone through the materials from the period in question when Kindler in Munich reprinted the volume in 1975; but she unfortunately did not find any mention of the incident, either.
Upon the death of Mrs. Gersuny, the original of the Egyptian Struwwelpeter was returned to the family of Magda Netolitzky, whose married name was now Kuzmany. This is where it remained until April 1945, when the apartment burnt down after it had been hit by a bomb, so that the original, known as the ‘Urstruwwelpeter’ was also reduced to ashes. This is a particularly sad loss, as the original contained one additional story that was not included in the printed version: that relating to Fidgety Philipp. This story had made fun of the training of conscripts, and it would not have been particularly expedient to poke fun at the sacred institution of the military in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1895. We only have an oral record of the final line, and that sounds outrageous enough: ‘Pereat das Militär!’ (‘Down with the military!’). There had also been a pseudo-scholarly preface that was lost as a result: it had explained that the Frankfurt Struwwelpeter was but a copy of the Egyptian Struwwelpeter, and that the discovered papyrus that had been the model for that book was obviously much older!
The Plagiarism Case
A lecture during the annual meeting of the Freundeskreis Struwwelpeter-Museum association in 2012 inspired me to turn my attention once more to the history of the creation of the book as we know it.[ii] This history reports that, as mentioned above, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach had played a decisive role in the publication of the book. The notion that it had been a birthday present for ‘Aunt Bertha’ was also a recurring part of the story as told in the family. There was also much uncertainty regarding the plagiarism case instigated by Rütten & Loening mentioned above. At this point, no facts had been ascertained regarding its exact outcome. The book was sold in antiquarian bookstores and at auctions for high prices that were based on the claim that there are only ‘few extant copies’ because the print run had had to be destroyed as per court order.
I was immediately reminded of the brief note addressed to Magdalena Netolitzky from April 12th, 1895, which she had received on a calling card from Dr. Gersuny, the husband of the gift’s recipient. The note asked her whether the ‘company of authors’ agreed to alterations regarding title and illustration as suggested by the publisher. Why would the publisher turn to Gersuny if, as family lore has it, the contact had allegedly been established by Ebner-Eschenbach? If that had really been the case, Gerold would certainly have addressed the Netolitzky family directly. Gersuny as an intermediary made sense because he was also an author under the care of Gerold’s Sohn, as Dr. Sauer had found out. According to him, Ebner-Eschenbach had other publishers. It is also Gersuny who delivered that first copy and the fee of 150.- gulden to the Netolitzky siblings, as Fritz Netolitzky noted in his diaries.
These diaries include an entry from April 11th, 1896, made while he was visiting relatives in Rokitnitz: ‘ … I received a very warm welcome, as always, had to report much and also found out some things, such as that the Struwelpeter had been cleared.’ This sentence had been bothering me for a while, but it turned out to be a dead end: I could not find a demonstrable explanation for the statement. I turned to a classmate, a professional in law and history, for advice. Even before I received that advice, I received a message from a member of the Netolitzky family in mid-November 2012. This person wrote to me that he had found a newspaper article while sorting through old documents. This article, which had been published by Neues Wiener Tagblatt on (Easter Tuesday) April 7th, 1896; under the heading Court Room, recounts:
(The Egyptian Struwwelpeter – cleared.) Just after New Year’s Day, we had reported that the old ‘Struwwelpeter’ has attracted competition by way of the ‘Egyptian Struwwelpeter’ which entered bookstores at Christmas. The appearance of the Egyptian rascals had triggered plagiarism proceedings, which the Frankfurt publisher Rutten u. Löning [sic!] instigated against the publishing company Gerold’s Sohn. In response, the latter company withdrew the book from sales shortly after its appearance. As we have now found out, the proceedings have been discontinued due to a decision by the Oberlandesgericht [the provincial high court and appeals court][iii] and the ‘Egyptian Struwwelpeter’, which was written by the young daughter of a Viennese civil servant, is free to enter our nurseries.
I could not believe my luck, I had reached the end of my trail! I only had to find its beginning. The only help I now wanted from my classmate was to see the court records from the year 1895/1896, if they were extant. In the meantime, I sought out the Neues Wiener Tagblatt in the microfiche department of the Austrian National Library to find the referenced article ‘just after New Year’s Day’, as well as any announcements on the occasion of the book’s publication before Christmas. I found no mention of the new publication in November and December 1895. However, I did find an article from January 19th, 1896:
Court Room
(‘Struwwelpeter’ proceedings.) Hasn’t there been many a little rascal whose mother threatened him with the Struwwelpeter before the young man was even able to read? And once he was finally old enough to read, has not every boy spent hours entertained by the fun pictures and laughed at Peter with his shock of long hair and interminable fingernails? Everybody knows that the picture book, which is known across the world, and its funny rhymes were written by the doctor and friend of all children Dr. Heinrich Hofmann [sic!] in Frankfurt; the two hundredth edition of ‘Struwwelpeter’ is currently in preparation. Then, just before Christmas, a new book appeared in the bookstores, ‘The Egyptian Struwwelpeter’, which appears to have translated good German Peter into an Egyptian setting in words and pictures. Wicked Frederick became Cruel Psamtek, great Nikolas was turned into Osiris, fidgety Philipp, who never wants to sit still at table, becomes Thothmes, who climbs the pyramids of Giza and perishes in a terrible manner.[iv] Augustus Who Would Not Have Any Soup has been turned into Sneferu Who Waltzed Not and so on. It was not possible, however, to put to the test whether the Egyptian character which the Struwwelpeter figures taken on in the new picture book will prove popular with modern youth, for the publisher Carl Gerold’s Sohn, which published the Egyptian Struwwelpeter, withdrew the book from sales just before Christmas. Just after the book had appeared, the Frankfurt publisher Rütten u. Löning [sic!], who own the rights for the real Struwwelpeter, entered a claim with the provincial court for unauthorized reprinting committed by the publication of the ‘Egyptian Struwwelpeter’. As mentioned, the publisher Gerold responded by withdrawing the book until completion of the trial. The court has already obtained two expert witness reports in the matter. However, these contradict each other entirely. While one report declares that the ‘Egyptian Struwwelpeter’ was written on the basis of the old German Struwwelpeter and copied some of its contents, the other report avers that the ‘Egyptian Struwwelpeter’ is an entirely new book based on original ideas. At this point, it is impossible to tell whether the matter will be dealt with before the courts; in any case, the publishers of Dr. Hofmann [sic!] are undertaking all efforts to protect the old, ancestral rights of their Struwwelpeter.
(Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Yr. 30 No. 18; Sunday, January 19th, 1896)
Parts of this report are identical to a report in Nachrichten aus dem Buchhandel, No. 20 of January 25th, 1896, p. 194f. Nachrichten aus dem Buchhandel were published in Germany six days after the Neues Wiener Tagblatt article. At the time, the fame of Struwwelpeter had spread far beyond the borders of Germany, as the many translations of the period demonstrate. It is nevertheless remarkable that the article from the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, or possibly the one from Nachrichten aus dem Buchhandel was adopted almost ad verbatim by Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad on February 6th, 1896.[v]
My classmate was not able to locate any court files, but he was able to give me a plausible explanation for the dismissal of the claim and the discontinuation of the proceedings, namely an act of law:
Act of the 26th of December, 1895 (contained in part XCI of the imperial law gazette RGBl as issued on this day, the 31st of December, 1895, at No. 197) regarding the [first] copyright for works of literature, art and photography. With the agreement of both houses of the imperial council [House of Lords and House of Parliament] I [Emperor Fr. Joseph I] deign to order as follows: ….
Chapter II, Content of the Copyright
a) For works of literature, section 24, para 3: To be deemed a contravention of the copyright (reprinting) is in particular: … the publication of an extract or adaptation, which copies only the other work or its components[vi], without having the character of an original work; …
What did this mean for the Egyptian Struwwelpeter?
- It is clearly a work of literature
- It does not copy any components of the original, it is an ADAPTATION with original character; this was permitted for publication within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy WITHOUT approval by the original author and publisher.
- In the German empire, the adaptation of literary works had to receive the approval of the author.
- This law also applied in the context of a German work/Austrian adaptation and was not altered in the subsequent convention on literature between Austria-Hungary and the German empire.
No mention was made in the corresponding issue no. 37/1896 of the Österreichische Buchhändler-Correspondenz and we therefore have to assume that the matter had come to a happy end with this decision by the Oberlandesgericht court.
My hunting instincts inspired me to keep looking, turning this time to the Wiener Zeitung. I looked for the announcement of the act mentioned above and found it in no. 302 from December 31st, 1895 in the section on official matters, Amtlicher Theil. The act was decided on December 26th and entered into force with immediate effect. Its section 65 states that ‘This present law shall enter into force as of the day of its announcement. It will apply to works that have appeared prior[vii] to its coming into force; however, any existing periods of protection, should they be longer, shall remain effective for such works.’ The day of the announcement was 26 December 1895.
I also hoped for an indication of the republication of the book by the publisher Gerold’s Sohn, which was not specialised in the publication of children’s books. I simply did not want to believe that this book was sold in bookstores just so, without any announcement. My persistence was rewarded:
Wiener Zeitung no. 268, Tuesday, November 19th, 1895, p. 5
The following entry was made in the chronicle section Kleine Chronik:
(The Egyptian Struwelpeter) [sic!] The publisher C. Gerold‘s Sohn in Vienna is introducing an ‘Egyptian Struwelpeter’ [sic!], a fun picture book, to the Christmas market. Children and possibly adults looking for entertainment will be amused and regaled by the old stories and their jaunty, colourful pictures in ‘Egyptian style’.
I had found the start of my trail!
I had not yet ascertained the life dates of Mrs.. Bertha Gersuny and therefore still did not know her birthday. As so often, the internet helped. I found there a register of persons buried in Viennese cemeteries. I had no reason to doubt that the members of the Gersuny family would have been buried in Vienna. I found the life dates of Richard Gersuny in the ÖBL[viii] and used this information to conduct a search through the databank of the Viennese cemeteries. My very first attempt struck home: The Gersuny couple are buried at the Dornbach cemetery, group 14, row 3, grave number 35. Dr. Robert Gersuny died on October 31st, 1924 and was buried on November 3rd, 1924. Mrs. Bertha Gersuny died on April 5th, 1900 and was buried on April 7th, 1900. Unfortunately, the record still did not supply the exact dates of her life, but did indicate that the deceased was 56 years old at the time of her death. Customer service additionally provided me with some information on where I might turn to find more precise dates of her life: at the Viennese municipal and provincial archive, the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, where I might find probate files. My inquiries there met with partial success: there was no documentation of the kind for Robert Gersuny, but there was a file for Bertha Gersuny. Some of the probate file was legible, other parts were illegible and I learnt that Mrs. Gersuny had been born as Bertha Götzl in Lauterbach in the Teplitz district of Bohemia, and also that she had no direct descendants, but many relatives who were entitled to a part of the inheritance. I was surprised not to find the date of her birth that I had been looking for, but I did find confirmation of her age at the time of her death: she had been 56 years old. Having done my maths, I realised that Mrs. Gersuny had probably been the same age as her husband: had both been born in 1844? Robert Gersuny was born on January 15th, 1844, that much is certain.
In his lecture, Dr. Sauer pondered on the date provided on the depicted decree banning minors and ladies from smoking (11th day of the month of Ahyr) in the Tragic Tale of Khufu and Tobacco: might this have been a reference to Bertha Gersuny’s birthday? According to Wikipedia, this day occurs in September, and in the predynastic period it occurred in October. Was Mrs.. Gersuny’s birthday in fact October 11th and not in late February at all? That would mean that she had been born in 1843 and therefore was even three months her husband’s senior. Since her age was stated as 56 years old in April 1900, she was not yet 57 years old at the time of her death.
The three authors’ birthdays (Magdalena – September 4th, Richard – September 19th, Fritz – October 1st) also all fall within the given time frame for the month of Ahyr in September and October; might these in fact be a reference?
I believe that there is another and very probable version for the ‘present theory’. In a letter dated March 1894, the three authors’ mother wrote to her own mother that the work on Struwwelpeter had languished for some time. ‘… Magda is making drawings for her Struwwelpeter for Mrs. Gersuny, which has lain discarded for a while, she is not quite in the mood for it …’ (This refers to the sudden death of Dr. Billroth on February 6th, 1894; he was Robert Gersuny’s superior and also a friend of the three authors’ father, Dr. Netolitzky.) Is it possible that the Egyptian Struwwelpeter wasn’t intended as a birthday present at all, but rather a ‘token of gratitude’ to be given to her for the dancing classes and other attentive gifts and invitations? I will return to this in more detail later.
I had one possibility left of ascertaining the date of birth: the death register, which sometimes includes the dates of birth of the deceased. To locate that register, I had to find the parish responsible for the residential address of the Gersuny family. Assuming that this would be the Dornbach parish (it is that parish cemetery where they are buried), I went to the Dornbach cemetery. As I was by this point well informed about the exact location of the grave, I found it quickly. My vague hope that the exact dates of life might be indicated on the headstone was not fulfilled, so I turned to the cemetery administration. Their register revealed that the Gersuny family did not belong to the Dornbach parish at all, and that their home parish was unfortunately not registered. I used the internet and their residential address to find the correct parish and its office hours. My enquiries by phone confirmed that the registers did not necessarily have to include the life dates. I visited the parish office and found an entry on page 33 of the death register for the year 1900 that lists Bertha Gersuny: she died on April 5th at six p.m. The cause of death was listed as regeneration of the peritoneum – cancer. It was also noted that she had been married since February 15th, 1873, that she had been – as I already knew – 56 years old at the time of her death, and underneath there were some further figures which I was not able to interpret straight away. Having compared them to some of the other entries and having done some calculations, I solved the riddle: Mrs.. Bertha Gersuny had been born on April 4th, 1844! It is therefore certain that the Egyptian Struwwelpeter was definitely not a birthday present!!!
Let us return to Mrs. Netolitzky’s letter to the three authors’ grandmother and Fritz’ note that the book was meant to be finished by the end of February. I think that there is another, more plausible explanation: In his recollection of the Gersuny dance classes, Richard Netolitzky reports that one dance class each month was an ‘extended dance class’ to which older friends and siblings of the dance students were also invited. It is highly likely that as noted in the diary the siblings had planned to present the gift at the extended dance class planned for the end of February, which was even intended to be designed as a fancy-dress ball, as mentioned elsewhere. The sudden death of Dr. Billroth on February 6th, 1894, however, put an end to the dance class. The siblings nevertheless stuck to their plan, as Fritz notes on February 25th: ‘ … In the afternoon I ‘made’ paper for Strubelpeter [sic!] …’
The decisive talks between Gersuny and his publisher were held during the period from March to August, as is apparent from the mother’s letter. In her letter written on October 8th, 1894, she reports as follows: ‘… Yesterday, Magdalene finished Struwwelpeter, which is now called ‘Dandy Typhon‘ and delivered it to Mrs.. Gersuny, …’ The belated ‘token of gratitude’ for the dance classes was therefore delivered on October 7th, 1894. I was unfortunately not able to clarify why such different informations were given on who presented the gift.
It is another letter by the mother, on June 11th, 1895, that refers to the above-mentioned calling card and adds further information: the publication of the book was planned for October 1895, but the high printing costs meant it was reduced to sixteen sheets. The witty preface that claimed that the Frankfurt Struwwelpeterwas but a copy of the Egyptian one was omitted to save costs. The story about the military also fell victim to the publisher’s own ‘censorship’ and the need to reduce costs. The book was to appear under the title Egyptian Struwwelpeter. The printing costs of 5000,- gulden that the printing shop Nister in Nuremberg demanded were too high[ix], the planned sales price had to remain less than one gulden. The authors would therefore only receive a fee of 150,- gulden as well as thirty copies free of charge. The Gersuny couple were sorry about the small sum, but promised to renegotiate if there was a second print run and then insist on printing all the pictures.
Following all these new insights, it is relatively safe to assume that this is more or less what happened. The plagiarism claim that keeps being reported is clearly rebutted by the facts listed above (copyright law of December 26th, 1895 and thereupon dismissal of the claim by the Oberlandesgericht court in Vienna) and yet another little puzzle piece can be added to the story of Austrian children’s and young adult literature research.
On August 8th, 2013, Wiener Zeitung – at the time the oldest daily newspaper in the world still in publication – celebrated its 310th anniversary. The jubilee edition included a supplement called Zeitreisen [time travel] which contained a contribution titled Struwwelpeter im Pharaonenland [Struwwelpeter in Pharao’s Land], which detailed the story of the book’s creation.
Translations of the ‘Egyptian Struwwelpeter’
The Egyptian Struwwelpeter: being the Struwwelpeter papyrus; with full text and 100 original vignettes from the Vienna papyri; dedicated to children of all ages.
This was the title of an English translation that was published by Grevel in London in 1896, and printed by Nister in Nuremberg, where the Austrian edition had also been printed. An American edition was published by Stokes in New York at the same time, also printed by Nister. I own a copy of the English original edition.
Egyptiläinen Jörö-Jukka
Veikko Pihlajamäki (1921-2006) is the book’s translator into Finnish. His translation was published in the translator’s own publishing company in Tampere in 1993. The entire print run of a thousand copies was sold during an exhibition on Egyptian art that was held at the museum of Tampere from 30 August 1993 until 2 January 1994. A second edition was published in 1999, also by the translator.
It is possible that the adaptation of Struwwelpeter and his time travel to ancient Egypt was modelled on the three Aegyptische Humoresken [Egyptian Humoresques] by Carl Maria Seyppel (1847–1913). Born in Dusseldorf, Seyppel published his first three so-called Mumiendrucke [mummy prints] at Bagel in Dusseldorf in 1882. They bore the title ‘Schlau, schläuer, am schläusten’ [‘Clever, Cleverer, Cleverest’]. The humoresque starts:
Rhampsinit, King of Egypt from the twentieth dynasty,
had treasures, oh so many, and guarded them quite eagerly…
The cover bears the heading ‘Discovered Book’. The title page design follows the theme. The title Schlau, schläuer, am schläusten’ is borne by a huge palm frond carried by a servant. The characters of the narrative are shown marching from right to left, a headless person walking among them as the penultimate figure. It continues: 1st Egyptian Humoresque. Written down and copied in painting 1315 years before the birth of Christ by C. M. Seyppel. Court painter and poet to his majesty King Rhampsinit III Memphis, Mummy Street No. 35, 3rd Floor, ring the bell four times.
The work is dedicated to Mr. Dr. H. Schliemann in Athens. The jocular preface describes that a German scholar with a penchant for archaeology had reached Cairo in 1882 in the course of military events with the English army. There, he was lucky enough during the looting of the rabble to save a valuable old Egyptian book from its irrevocable destruction. While it had been touched by the ravages of time, it was still the onlyextant sample of painting and poetry by the old Egyptians. The frayed and apparently stained pages of the book served as firm evidence of the old age of this valuable discovery. This first humoresque met with such success that its fifth edition was published as soon as 1884. In 1883, there appeared another volume titled ‘Er, sie, es’ [He, She, It’], which was a sequel to the first humoresque. A third volume also appeared in 1884, its title being ‘Die Plagen’ (‘Aufgeschrieben und abgemalt bei dem Auszuge der Juden aus Aegypten’) [‘The Plagues’ (‘Noted down and painted during the exodus of the Jews from Egypt’)]. Not at all unusually for this time, the story is not devoid of antisemitic expressions. Reprints were made in 1974 and in 1982: in 1974 by Heimeran in Munich (Dialog mit der Antike 3), while the 1982 edition was printed by the Rheinland publishing company in Cologne in their series Schriften des Museumsvereins Dorenburg (volume 37), titled Carl Maria Seyppels altägyptische Trilogie [Carl Maria Seyppel’s Ancient Egyptian Trilogy]. Heinz-Peter Mielke was the editor. I was kindly able to receive a copy of the first volume from this trilogy as a present from a collector, who noted that it matched my collection much better than his own. The text is written in verse form, partly somewhat clumsily, and in fact the entire story has several macabre aspects: the story is altogether not quite above board, and it includes the victor being forced to behead his own brother to avoid the discovery of their atrocious deeds. I have now been able to acquire one copy each of the first two volumes, but from a different edition: the cover is Hessian-lined, the block is sewn together with cord, the ends of the ‘thread’ are fastened with a thick seal. The centre of the seal bears an image of the Egyptian royal head, the circumscription is only partly legible any more. The book can be closed by fastening its leather straps. I still hope to find the third part of the trilogy, at least as a reprint or a copy. A collector never gives up!
Sources:
Diaries of Fritz and Richard Netolitzky, family letters, interviews with Dr. Luitgard Knoll, granddaughter of Fritz Netolitzky
Hölzl, Regina; Jánosi, Peter: Vom Nil an die Donau. Die Geschichte der ägyptischen Wandtapeten im Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien; Berlin 2023
Rühle, Reiner: Böse Kinder; kommentierte Bibliographie von Struwwelpetriaden und Max-und-Moritziaden mit biographischen Daten zu Verfassern, Illustratoren und Verlegern, Vols. 1, 2; Osnabrück 1999 and 2019
Satzinger, Helmut: Das Kunsthistorische Museum in Wien: Die Ägyptisch-Orientalische Sammlung; Vienna and Mainz ©1994
Wurm, Carsten: 150 Jahre Rütten & Löning; Berlin 19941
Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Year 30, no. 18, no. 96
Wiener Zeitung no. 268, 19 Nov. 1895
The citations in italics are taken from diaries, letters and newspapers, adopting the original spelling in the German.
[1] Translator’s note: The German children’s book Struwwelpeter, named for the first of several short stories in the collection, has been variously translated into English as Slovenly Peter or Shock-Headed Peter, or has retained its German title, which will be used throughout this text.
[i] In the German edition, it was necessary to use the spelling Aegyptisch rather than the more usual Ägyptisch, as it was not yet possible to print the capital Umlaut.
[ii] The lecture was held at the annual meeting of the association ‘Freundeskreis Struwwelpeter-Museum’. It summarises deliberations on the occasion of the publication of the bilingual reversible book The Egyptian Struwwelpeter by its publisher Dr. Walter Sauer; Editon Tintenfaß 2013, ISBN 978-3-943052-09-1
[iii] Emphasis added by the author
[iv] This is not true. The Fidgety Philipp story was missing in the Egyptian Struwwelpeter because this parody touched on the Austrian military. The basis for the Thothmes story is the wild huntsman, from which there are even citations taken in the scene of his flight from the mummy: ‘He cries and screams, and runs away, “Help me, good people, help! I pray”’. Moreover, the picture is a direct reference to Fritz Netolitzky, who was an enthusiastic mountaineer. There is an extant photograph showing him in a very similar pose.
[v] I owe this interesting item of information to Theo Gielen (1946-2015), the Dutch expert on children’s and juvenile literature research and therefore also on Struwwelpeter and its distribution in the Netherlands. He was a member of the above-mentioned association in Frankfurt.
[vi] Emphasis added by the author
[vii] Emphasis added by the author
[viii] Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon [Austrian Biographical Lexicon]
[ix] That corresponds to approx. € 40,000.- for printing costs, and approx. € 1,200.- for the authors’ fee.
Um nicht den Eindruck zu erwecken, er wäre der alleinige Begründer der ÖAW habe ich diese englische Umschreibung gewählt.
Auch im deutschen Text schließt diese Klammer nicht.
[AH3]Ist im Original vorhanden und wurde ergänzt.