The Shadowy World Of Stefan Eggeler
(1894-1969)
by John Hirschhorn-Smith
Introduction.
This essay first appeared in the Side Real Press edition of Kokain (Side Real Press 2022) which was in itself a collection of translations (by Joe Bandel) of the original rare 1925 magazine for which Eggeler was the art editor.
It has been slightly tweaked to enhance its appearance online, a few minor corrections made but with a lot of extra illustrations added. It is, by far, the fullest biography of Eggeler in English to date.
Although is essay is © by myself, I am happy for it to be quoted elsewhere provided I am credited as the author of it.
For those seeking a more critical analysis of his work, art historian Fiona Piccolo's essay (also from the Side Real Press Kokain volume) ' "A Certain Fantastical Verisimilitude." The Life and Art of the Elusive Stefan Eggeler' is HERE.
When I began my research I discovered, as is often the case, that what I thought was terra incognita, was in fact populated by other similar souls approaching the same subject from different directions all of who added to my knowledge in various ways. I am thus hugely grateful to Fiona Piccolo (University of the Sorbonne) who has done much to fill in gaps in our Eggeler knowledge via her tireless archival efforts detailed in her (French language texts 'La relation texte-image dans les illustrations du fantastique des pays germaniques par Stefan Eggeler'. (The relationship between text and image in Stefan Eggeler's illustrations of the fantastique genre from the German-speaking countries) Master’s thesis, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2018 and 'Le cycle: concept et forme dans la suite d’estampes chez Stefan Eggeler (1894- 1969)' (The cycle: concept and form in printed suites of Stefan Eggeler (1894- 1969) ). Master’s thesis, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2019.
I also wish to thank Nik Pollinger who shared his family archive with me, Doctor Wilfried Kugel (Hanns Ewers’ biographer), Martin Willems (Heinrich Heine Institute Düsseldorf), Nikolaus Domes (Künstlerhaus-Archiv, Vienna), Jonas Ploeger, Michael T. Ricker, and Franz Katzer.
Any inaccuracies or mistakes in what follows are my own and I would be VERY GRATEFUL from anyone offering corrections or amendments. I would also be very keen to hear from anyone who has further information on this amazing and enigmatic artist. I
am also seeking a number of items for my own collection especially variant editions
of the books, particularly those of the Meyrink/Eggeler volume 'Der Mann auf Der Flashe' and information regarding ORIGINAL
ARTWORKS AND PRINTS.
I would thus be extremely grateful to hear from anyone with such
material.
Finally, I would like to extend special thanks to Erich and Inge Fitzbauer who not only knew Eggeler but largely rescued what remained of his archive after his death. This project in dedicated to them.
The Shadowy World Of Stefan Eggeler
(1894-1969)
by John Hirschhorn-Smith
This short time period partly explains why he remains in relative obscurity compared to other artists who explored similar themes such as Max Klinger (1857-1920), Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) and Hugo Steiner-Prag (1880-1945) and those of the subsequent ‘fantastic realist’ school led by fellow Austrian Ernst Fuchs (1930-2015).
As perhaps befits an artist whose work dealt in the shadowlands of the psyche, Eggeler himself is also an elusive figure almost actively resisting research. This introduction, with all its biographical lacunae and circumspect speculation, merely attempts to give a brief summary of Eggeler’s life and work. Any errors in the telling of that are my own.
Stephan (the spelling ‘Stefan’ was adopted primarily as a byline for his art practice) Eggeler was born in Vienna on Christmas Eve 1894 the only child of Anna and Andreas Eggeler. Vienna was then capital of the Habsburg Empire, a vast territory that encompassed not only Austria and Hungary, but Bohemia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, large parts of Poland and Romania, and even a portion of Italy. Andreas was a minor but long-serving member of the imperial court and thus followed the elderly emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916) as he moved between the vast winter and summer Palaces of the Hofburg and Schönbrunn; services for which Franz Joseph would personally award him the Gold Cross of Merit in 1898. The Eggeler family did not live at either palace, residing instead at an apartment on Margaretenstraße in central Vienna conveniently situated a few miles equidistant between the two.
The 1890s are the period Stefan Zweig in his autobiography The World of Yesterday (1941) described as “‘the Golden Age of Security’ a well-ordered world with a clear social structure and easy transitions between the parts of that structure, a world without haste.” Yet this was also a period during which Vienna was about to sow the seeds of major twentieth-century events. In its cafes and salons, one might meet Sigmund Freud who in 1895 had just begun the research which would lead to his The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), or the artists Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oscar Kokoschka plotting to create the Vienna Sucession in 1897 together with the ‘Young Vienna’ group of ‘progressive’ writers which included Arthur Schnitzler, Hermann Bahr, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Zweig himself. All accompanied by a soundtrack of ‘modern’ compositions by the likes of Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg. Later, in the years immediately prior to WWI, those same cafes would host the likes of Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.
Eggeler’s early education was at the protestant school at Karlsplatz in central Vienna followed by the nearby Elisabeth Gymnasium which he recalled in a notebook of autobiographical fragments as “boring and bleak, like probably all these schools.” In this text, he also describes his explorations of the vast ornamental summer gardens of the Schönbrunn Palace with its “ancient avenues trimmed according to the French style, allegorical and mythical statues, trees and old water basins, the Roman ruin, the obelisk, the Gloriette” but adds the sad refrain that he was “always alone.” Such solitary experiences might well have helped foster and develop his inward artistic leanings such as learning to play the violin and piano, drawing and an interest in old buildings.
Although Andreas was supportive of these interests, allowing him to take twice-weekly evening classes at Vienna’s Graphische Lehr und Versuchsanstalt (Graphic Education and Research Institute), he did not consider the arts a viable career instead wishing him to take a law degree and enter the civil service.
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Graphische Lehr und Versuchsanstalt Vienna (1938) Credit: Wikipedia.
At the same time, Stefan’s art teacher was assuring him that “the pinnacle of all happiness was admission to the Academy of fine arts.” Thus it was that in late 1912 Eggeler would dutifully enroll at the University to study law and simultaneously sit, and pass, the exams for entry to the Academy. However, once he discovered that “I would have to draw heads for a year, then simple nudes, until I was finally allowed to start drawing heads and nudes for another year in the poorly lit drawing rooms” he left the Academy to concentrate on his legal degree. However, he did return to the Graphische Lehr to take further vocational classes in etching, woodcut and lithography, under the tutelage of Professor Ludwig Michalek (1859-1942) a well-respected painter and etcher.
The artworks that survive from this period are largely boldly-coloured lino and woodcuts of urban and rural buildings, based upon sketches made during visits to various small towns and villages around Vienna which perhaps show some influence of the prints of Carl Moll. None of the work indicates an interest in the supernatural or macabre although some of the architectural elements (buildings and fountains) would be incorporated into that later work.
Untitled Lithograph dated 1913. (© Fitzbauer archive).
In March 1914 Eggeler was the youngest participant in the forty-seventh exhibition of the Austrian Artists Association at the spiritual home of the avant-garde the Secession building. Although the glory days of the movement itself had passed, exhibitions held there were still regarded as prestigious and Eggeler must have been proud that his etching ‘Old House with Flowers’ sold on opening day. More importantly, it was here that he met Ferdinand Schmutzer (1870-1928), then President of the Academy and one of the most important Viennese portrait artists of the period. Schmutzer was also a master etcher and the Academy’s Professor of printing. Recognizing Eggeler’s abilities, he invited Eggeler to join his spezialschule (special school) of graphic arts which, despite the latter’s misgivings regarding the Academy in general, he accepted.
At the outbreak of war in July 1914 Eggeler enlisted but, for reasons unknown, was shortly discharged as ‘unfit for service’, which enabled him to continue his law degree and his fledgling ‘second life’ as an artist. With the Secession building now re-purposed as a Red Cross hospital, exhibitions were now mounted at the nearby Künstlerhaus (Artists house) and although his work was reviewed and even achieved modest sales, Eggeler felt that he was never going to make a career as an artist. Thus, upon his graduation in 1917, he left his art materials in Vienna and took up a post as a k.k. (imperial and royal) trainee involved with the restructuring of the civil service for the local district authority in Gmünd, a small town 75miles N.W. of Vienna.
Life outside the capital, with its wartime shortages and rationing, was more relaxed but Eggeler found the job dull and the town very provincial and so retrieved his art supplies and resumed his practice. Alongside numerous drawings and several commissioned portraits and no doubt partly influenced by the war, his work began to emphasize darker themes such as suicide, death and, especially, the danse macabre in which cowled and skeletal figures are shown menacing towns and properties or emerging from woodlands and lakes to claim their oblivious victims. This period of work culminated in 1918 with his two earliest Zyklen, Puppenspiel III (Puppet Show III) and Die Seuche der Pestilenz (The Plague of Pestilence).
Eggeler produced a number of Puppenspiel cycles, all involving characters from the Commedia Dell’arte such as Pierrot, Pierrette, Harlequin, and Pantalon. The Commedia Dell’arte, especially the tragicomic figure of Pierrot, had been a popular source of inspiration for the decadent writers of the previous century such as Paul Verlaine, Jules LaForgue. and Leon Hennique (the latter writing a Pierrot play in collaboration with J-K Huysmans). These writers tended to portray a darker more violent side to Pierrot than earlier authors but a common theme is his struggle to attain love and wealth, efforts for which he is invariably thwarted by destiny and the cunning of others.
Puppenspiel III is a grotesque tale of tragedy in which Pierrot kills his newly-wedded wife’s (Pierrette) lover in a duel, only to be murdered by the lover’s friend. The friend is caught, convicted and executed alongside the adulterous Pierrette. Eggeler stated that it was in part inspired by the ‘most gruesome photos’ of wedded couples he had seen displayed in a Gmünd photographer’s window.
First image from the Puppenspiel III portfolio (1918).
Die Seuche der Pestilenz took part of its inspiration in old tracts on folklore and witchcraft, both long-standing interests of Eggeler that he would often draw on in his artwork, but is also surely influenced by the Spanish ‘flu pandemic of 1918. This cycle concerns a witch contaminating a town’s water supply and poisoning the entire population.
“On the suggestion of a friend” he put both forward for the 1919 spring exhibition in Vienna’s Künstlerhaus. Much to his surprise the works were accepted and the Die Seuche der Pestilenz won the prestigious Dumba prize, named after Austrian art patron Nikolaus Dumba (1830-1900). The Künstlerhaus also appointed him as a member and his ‘second life’ as an artist was effectively launched.
Eggeler capitalized on this with a solo exhibition at the Halm and Goldmann Gallery in Central Vienna in October that year, in what would be the only solo show of his career. Alongside Die Seuche der Pestilenz are two earlier Puppenspiel cycles (Puppenspiel II appears in Issue 3 of Kokain ) and Der Narr und der Teufel (The Fool and the Devil), in which Harlequin labours seven years for the Devil only to be immediately robbed of his wages at a local Inn and must thus return to his master to begin the process again. There was also a cycle on the legend of St Simeon tempted to leave his pillar by the Devil, a series of ‘Eight Bad Dreams’ and various portraits and self-portraits. Sadly many of these images, some of which dated back to 1913 are lost or, as in the case of Der Narr und der Teufel, dispersed, although the Fitzbauer archive does hold the complete series of the latter’s preparatory drawings.
The most intriguing production of this period is Der Spielmann und der Teufel im Verwunschenen Schloss (The Musician and the Devil in the Haunted Castle), another portfolio consisting of six hand-tinted woodcuts. Although Eggeler would use both linocuts and woodcuts as mediums for producing numerous ex libris labels, this is the only cycle Eggeler ever produced using this technique. Its time-consuming method of production and its initial edition of only twenty copies printed locally perhaps indicates this to be a more personal than commercial project. The story concerns a violinist arriving in a new town and winning the hand of the Innkeeper’s daughter by removing a devil that lives in a ruined castle nearby. This is achieved by charming the devil with his music and then trimming the devil’s talons so that he is also able to play the instrument.
The first image from Der Spielmann und der Teufel im Verwunschenen Schloss (self-published 1920)
It is interesting to note that the musician figure bears some resemblance to both Eggeler (who also played the instrument) and the virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782 - 1840); the latter’s abilities were sometimes said to have been the result of a pact with the devil. It is also perhaps significant, although it is almost as an aside in the notebook, that Eggeler (an artist/musician in a small town) mentions his marriage to Ottilie Löwy, the fourth of six children of a successful Jewish store owner in Gmünd that same year.
Ottilie Löwy (Etching) 1919 (© Fitzbauer archive).
Also not mentioned in the notebook is the appearance of Eggeler’s work on two local authority vouchers relating to the Jugendhilfswerk (Youth Relief Organisation) which offered holidays to children and youths.
Partly funded by central government, local authorities were also expected to contribute to the scheme, and as part of that effort some regions issued vouchers for various denominations that could be redeemed at various youth hostels. Eggeler produced two designs showing the hostels at Gmünd and nearby Gaming, which appeared as part of a series of vouchers issued in June 1920.
Five Kronen and fifty Heller vouchers designed by Eggeller (c1920)
The Walpurgisnacht prints were not published until 1922 but are of interest as the portfolio includes a two-page ‘preface’ written by one of Eggeler’s favourite living writers, Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932) now best known as the author of The Golem (1915).
Eggeler had initiated a correspondence with him in an attempt to generate collaborative projects and would almost certainly have been aware of Meyrink’s long-standing personal interest in the occult which had begun in semi-mysterious circumstances while suffering a nervous breakdown in 1891. Meyrink had written a novel titled Walpurgisnacht in 1917, but whereas his tale was one of political upheaval, Eggeler’s etchings were more primal and inspired by the folklore of the pagan ‘Witches’ Night’ traditionally held on May 1st eve. In his short one page preface, Meyrink refers to a ‘cosmic Walpurgisnacht’ and the alignment of a black starless hole over the Southern Cross which is a portent of disaster, a feeling evoked when Meyrink views Eggeler’s etchings.
The first image from the Walpurgisnacht portfolio (Frisch and Co. 1922).
That same year Eggeler would also produce illustrations for Meyrink’s short story ‘Der Mann auf der Flasche’ (The Man On The Bottle) a surreal tale of revenge which owes something to Poe’s tale ‘Hop Frog’. It was issued by the same publishers of Walpurgisnacht (Frisch & Co.) a year later in a deluxe edition of 300 copies. In a letter to Eggeler, Meyrink informed him that he thought the etchings were “beautifully original”.
Illustration from Der Mann auf der Flasche’ (Frisch & Co. 1923)
Eggeler also sought collaborative work with the controversial German author Hanns Heinz Ewers, a relationship that seems, from the surviving letters between them, to have been one of mutual admiration.
Ewers (1871 -1943) was another best-selling author of the period whose novels and short stories such as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1910) and Alraune (1911) were suffused with occultism and perversity. This was backed by a high-rolling decadent lifestyle of drink, drugs and sex that gave him the reputation as someone who was, like Lord Byron, ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’.
Ewers loved Eggeler’s artwork, stating that he was the only one of the fifty or sixty so artists that had approached him who had any style and value. Their mutual sympathies and a joint interest in the macabre and grotesque led to some of Eggeler’s best, and controversial, work. In Musikalische Miniaturen (Musical Miniatures), (Frisch & Co. 1921) the prose and imagery seem to complement each other perfectly. The opening sentences indicate their joint credo: “More than ever before, for today’s artist the dream is life itself. And that is certainly the case for the artist who created these prints. In them, he tells about his life – about the dream that is life for him. He is Pierrot and sings his song of love and death to Columbine, the woman he loves”.
The texts and images which follow portray Columbine in the various decadent tropes of Madonna, whore and ultimately witch; the final image ‘Death Game: The Burning of Witches’, having as its text “She is a saint to him – but also a witch who atones at the stake for her pact with the devil”. In it Columbine is shown naked on a pyre surrounded by skeletal figures’ one of which is violating her. This image (with its centrally placed vagina) resulted in the portfolio being prosecuted for obscenity.
The first and final (prosecuted) image from Musikalische Miniaturen (Frisch & Co. 1921)
In contrast, his illustrations for Ewers’ volume Die Herzen der Könige (The Hearts of Kings) (also published by Frisch & Co. in 1922) are more suggestive and dreamlike rather than a literal interpretation of the story which concerns a painter using colours prepared from hearts stolen from the corpses of the French kings. The tale is based on an urban myth relating to the French Alsatian painter Martin Drölling (1752-1817) who was said to have purchased the hearts of Kings stolen from the Saint-Denis Basilica in Paris during the revolution and mixed them with his pigments, which are supposedly used in his Intérieur de cuisine (Kitchen Interior) still on show in the Louvre today.
Eggeler would no doubt also have relished informing Ewers that as part of the burial process of the Habsburg Emperors, the bodies are interred in the Imperial Burial Crypt beneath the church and monastery of the Capuchin Friars’ but their hearts are removed and separately placed on display in a separate crypt at the nearby Augustinian Church.
Illustration from Die Herzen der Könige (Frisch and Co. 1922)
Such was their artistic rapport that in October 1922 Ewers and Eggeler discussed the possibility of Eggeler licensing two of Ewers’ tales ‘Der Letzte Wille des Stanislawa d’Asp’ (The Last Will of Stanislawa d’Asp) and ‘Die Topharbraut’ (The Tophar Bride) for film adaptation. Ewers had long been interested in film as a medium of poetic expression and had experienced critical and commercial success for his art movie The Student of Prague in 1913 so it is possibly an indication of how highly he regarded Eggeler to allow this. Although Ewers would later form his own production company in 1928 there is no record of either of these projects being developed.
If Ewers was regarded as something of a ‘low-brow’ author, Arthur Schnitzler was regarded as a more ‘intellectual’ if equally controversial heavyweight. Schnitzler (1862-1931) was a member of the ‘Young Vienna’ school of writers and had initially trained, alongside Freud, as a neurologist before taking up a career in writing. He is now perhaps best known for his novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story), (1926) which was the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut, but his most controversial work was Reigen (often translated a bit clumsily as Hands Around or Round Dance), (1910), a play which consists of ten short dialogues between couples. In the first, a prostitute attempts to pick up a soldier, the soldier subsequently sleeps with a housemaid who in turns then sleeps with a young gentleman and so on up the social ladder until a Count seeks out the prostitute of the first scene and the cycle (or ring) is complete. Reigen was not publicly performed until 1920, and when it premiered in Berlin was almost immediately closed down and prosecuted for indecency, a situation repeated when it was performed in Vienna a few months later. The subsequent public scandal played out in the press and led to various anti-Semitic attacks on Schnitzler who was described as a ‘Jewish pornographer’.
Eggeler had approached Schnitzler in early 1921, around the time of the Viennese performance and was perhaps hoping to capitalize on the controversy. He would ultimately produce a suite of ten drawings for the play which were published as both a deluxe portfolio and a limited edition book. Schnitzler liked Eggeler personally, considering him talented and amusing company, but did not like the etchings which he thought displayed too much nudity.
In the booklet accompanying the portfolio, Eggeler writes “In the end, we came to a compromise so to speak, I was willing to dress the Actress in a transparent night-gown, while he permitted the Young Wife to remain naked, although he would have preferred to see her clad in a nightshirt.”
Illustration from Reigen (Frisch and Co. 1921)
Although he did not care for the Reigen illustrations, Eggeler successfully negotiated with Schnitzler to illustrate a limited edition of the latter’s Der Schleier der Pierrette (The Veil of Pierrette), a play in which Pierrette, finding herself unable to marry Pierrot, suggests a suicide pact with him. However, it is only the hapless Pierrot who drinks the poison.
Illustration from Der Schleier der Pierrette (Frisch and Co. 1921)
Eggeler also suggested illustrating Schnitzler’s plays Der Grüne Kakadu (The Green Cockatoo) and Die Schwestern (The Sisters) to no avail and perhaps inspired by his discussions with Ewers regarding film rights, wrote and submitted a potential film treatment (now lost) for Reigen early in 1923. Schnitzler thought the latter “horrible” and their relationship appears to have petered out from this time onward.
Fritz Bauer is something of a mystery man in this story, which was perhaps something deliberately desired by him given that when he does appear in various newspaper reports of the period it is in the context of his being a journalist-cum-occasional publisher whose efforts tended to leave a trail of debts in their wake.
Eggeler would have been useful to Bauer not only for his artistic abilities, but because of his connections with well known (and controversial) authors whose potential contributions to the magazine might help generate interest in, and perhaps even create a succès de scandale for, the new publication.
It is perhaps surprising that Eggeler had never worked in such a commercial environment prior to Kokain, as his work would have been ideally suited to a magazine such as Der Orchideengarten, (The Orchid Garden), the worlds first fantasy magazine, which ran from 1919-1921 under the part editorship of Karl Hans Strobl. This might have been because Eggeler considered himself a ‘fine’ as opposed to ‘commercial’ artist and wished to maintain his distance from such ventures, although Der Orchideengarten included work by well known and respected artists such as Alfred Kubin and Aubrey Beardsley.
However, it is apparent that Eggeler took to his new role as Kokain’s art editor with dedication and the magazine laid out its credentials with its debut issue in January 1925. The cover proclaimed it to be a ‘Moderne Revue’, its titles seemingly crudely cut and hastily pasted above an illustration depicting a dark moment of a presumably lost weekend in which a leering man is fondling the breast of a seemingly oblivious dishevelled ‘snowbird’ in the shadows of a distorted townscape.
Front cover of the first issue of Kokain
Subsequent issues showed the same attention to detail and its contributors made an impresive line-up including further works by Ewers (some under pseudonyms) and other popular but now largely forgotten authors such as Otto Soyka, Joseph Roth and Arthur Zapp.
It is also worth noting that the magazine carried a significant number of items in translation by the likes of Leonid Andreyev (one of the best-known authors of the ‘silver age’ of Russian literature), The brothers Karel and Josef Čapek (best known for inventing the term ‘robot’), Paul Leppin (‘the German-Bohemian Baudelaire’) and Joseph Roth (author of The Radetzky March). Whilst, on the one hand, this might be seen as a refreshing change from ‘home-grown’ material, on the other, it was also the case that copyright laws at that time were somewhat ineffective and thus the original writers of the pieces that appeared under their name might never have known of their appearance or, more pertinently, been paid for their contributions. Their pieces to the magazine rarely appears in their bibliographies.
As it has been impossible to locate any information regarding some of the other contributors to Kokain this might indicate that some might be pseudononymous. Ewers certainly contributed various pieces under his own and alternate names and this begs the question as to whether Eggeler wrote anything apart from the short signed piece ‘Dearest, Dearest Model’ in Issue 3. Sadly, as no original material relating to Kokain appears to have survived and the only other known pieces of published prose from Eggeler’s pen during his lifetime is a short technical booklet relating to printing techniques; Der Almanach vom Schönen Buch (The Almanac of the Beautiful Book), Artur Wolf (1924) and a very dry contribution to a legal book we will probably never know.
Kokain appears to
actively courted controversy from the off and it quickly fell foul
of the Austrian censors. The controversial cover of Issue 1 and the lesbian spy serial resulted in it being banned from public display making it literally 'under the counter' but it ran into major problems over Issue
3 with Erwin Stranik’s story ‘In The Cellar Hole’ and Max Stebich’s
‘The Yellow Cat’ both of which included graphic sexual content and in the case of Stranik appalling anti-Semitism. These tales, the ongoing ‘Diary...’ serial and Eggelers artwork led to the magazine’s seizure and prosecution with Eggeler,
Bauer and Stranik charged with obscenity.
It is unclear how it came to pass that the fourth issue (which was a reprint of the previous issue with the addition of an essay on pornography by Erwin Stanik written in reaction to the prosecution) evaded the authorities a second time, but what was certain was that the magazine could not continue its battles with the authorities and survive, especially as tensions between publisher Bauer and artistic editor Stefan Eggeler began to get greater.
The final issue is a mixture of short reprinted material with the most substantial contributions being from ‘Raoul Romain’ (Ewers) and Eggeler’s etchings for Schnitzler’s The Veil of Pierrette; the latter’s accompanying text written by Fritz Bauer rather than, as might have been expected, either Schnitzler or Eggeler. The final pages of that issue are advertisements seeking staff for W[iener] Z[eitung] am Abend (Vienna Evening News) “the big, interesting, richly illustrated daily newspaper that will appear in Vienna soon”.
The WZ was Fritz Bauer’s latest publishing venture, the ‘WZ’ implicitly standing for Wiener Zeitung (Vienna Newspaper), disingenuously suggesting an affiliation with Vienna’s (and the world’s) longest-running newspaper of that name.
Bauer’s version only ran until October that year until he was prosecuted for non-payment of various outstanding bills, mainly wages to journalists. At the same time the police banned the sale of Kokain via street sales, newspaper shops and from public display in shop windows, in effect withdrawing it from its market. In a letter to Ewers written after these events, Eggeler states he is filing [unspecified] criminal charges against Bauer, calling him a “cheeky crook” and asks Ewers “not to be angry with me for bringing you into such company!”
With the collapse of Kokain, Eggeler’s artistic life seems to have virtually ceased and there are no records of further publications including his work. However, he did continue to remain a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus and, for a few years in the late 1920s, he collaborated with various groups such as the Vienna watercolourist society and the School of Arts and Crafts to design and decorate rooms of the building as part of various Künstlerhaus’ arts’ festivals. In 1929 the building hosted events in rooms decorated under the themes of ‘Venusberg’, ‘Hexenküche’ (Witches Kitchen), ‘Walpurgisnacht’, ‘Mäusefalle’ (Mousetrap) and ‘Der Garten der Menschenfresse’ (The Garden Of The Cannibals), while the following year saw rooms decorated under themes such as ‘Eros’ (Hermaphrodite), ‘Opiumhöhle’ (Opium den) and ‘Sodom’. To judge from these titles, they might easily have been suggested by Eggeler. A few photographs of these proto-environments have survived but only one has been identified as having his definite involvement.
Image (by Julius Scherb) courtesy and © of the Künstlerhaus-Archiv, Vienna.
Although Eggeler appears not to have contributed to other Künstlerhaus events he remained a member (with a few lapses) until his death and was awarded the Künstlerhaus’ Golden Laurel for this long-standing association on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1965.
The Künstlerhaus decorations are the last we know of Eggeler’s artistic career and would also mark the end of almost any biographical information regarding him, were it not for the recent discovery of a cache of letters exchanged between Ottilie Eggeler and her sister Hedwig Pöllinger during the late 1930s and the work subsequently carried out by a descendant of the Pöllinger family. This new information makes for disturbing and contradictory reading.
In March 1938, after the annexation of Austria under the Anschluss (the pretence of ‘unifying’ Austria and Germany) and the swift removal of the main political opposition, the Nazis began a systematic program of seizure of Jewish property under a process termed Aryanization. As the comfortably off Löwy family were Jews they were an obvious target and would ultimately be stripped of their property, but just prior to that, Eggeler launched a lawsuit against Ottilie’s brothers Karl and Hermann Löwy, claiming that they had defrauded their widowed mother before her death in 1936.
In the court papers, the brothers claimed that Eggeler’s action was motivated by revenge, because they had not acquiesced in his attempt to take over the business immediately post Anschluss, ostensibly, so Eggeler claimed at the time, to protect it from the Nazis. Furthermore, they alleged that he had stolen correspondence from the shop’s office on an earlier visit, to concoct his case. They also pointed to a letter from Stefan to their mother in 1936 that indicated that he was in financial difficulties and seeking her support, threatening to leave Ottilie and the children in her care should she fail to provide some assistance. Finally, the brothers noted that one would have expected the other Löwy siblings to have supported Stefan’s allegations had they any merit.
Karl and Hermann also backed their defence by providing forensically examined accounts demonstrating the falsity of Eggeler’s claim and the case was swiftly settled in the Löwy families favour.
What must have been particularly distressing to the family members is that Eggeler deliberately used Nazi expressions, such as signing off his letter about taking over the business ‘Mit Deutschem Gruss’ (‘with a German greeting’ i.e. the Nazi raised arm salute), an entirely unnecessary and intimidatory gesture.
However, this shameful episode contrasts markedly with the subsequent assistance Stefan renders to Ottilie’s older sister Hedwig concerning Hedwig’s fourteen-year-old child Otto who he helped to escape to England the following year.
Otto’s mother Hedwig had fled to England in March 1939 to escape her violent anti-Semitic ex-husband and the Anschluss while Otto (partially protected because he was, by Nazi definition, a ‘Mischling’ i.e. ‘half breed’) had remained at a boarding school in Vienna with the Eggeler’s looking after him at the weekends. Both Otto and the Eggelers were partly supported by the Löwy family who had by this time lost their property to the Nazis and were now also living a precarious existence in the capital. All concerned were attempting to get Otto a passport to allow passage on a ‘Kindertransport’ to join his mother in the UK, a move opposed by the ex-husband who wished his son to have an ‘Aryan upbringing’.
It was Stefan who managed to convince Otto’s father to sign a document that gave Stefan the legal authority to sign Otto’s passport and thus allow Otto to leave Vienna, just in time to catch the imminent ‘Kindertransport’ on July 11th, to join his mother in England.
Whilst this was a brave move by the Eggeler’s who, by looking after Otto, experienced abuse and risked false accusations from Otto’s father that could have been lethal, there is also an element of self-interest in proceedings as Eggeler had asked his sister-in-law (via Ottilie) if she might also be able to help him get a visa to England.
It is difficult to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory actions by Stefan and one must wonder at the state of their marriage during and after these events. Life for Jews in Nazi-occupied Vienna had become more precarious day by day and Ottilie was increasingly ostracised by Stefan’s family, his widowed mother adopting the racist ideology of the Nazi's and banning family visits to her. It was only the fact that Ottilie was in a so-called ‘privileged’ marriage to an Aryan that was saving her from being deported to a concentration camp from 1941, although there is evidence she was made to do forced labour at a munitions factory.
Given this backdrop, it is thus incredible that in June 1944 when almost all of Austria’s 200,000 Jews had been expelled or deported to their deaths, Stefan initiated divorce proceedings against Ottilie, something he must have known would put her life in jeopardy and possibly those of his ‘Mischling’ daughters too. Fortunately for them, Ottilie’s lawyer was able to appeal to a Government decree issued the year previously which stated that non-war-essential court proceedings would be held over until after the war was won. That it worked out differently for Austria did not change matters: Stefan re-initiated proceedings as soon as courts began functioning again in mid-1945.
From what we know of the divorce papers, Stefan claimed an irretrievable breakdown through Ottilie’s mismanagement of the household budget together with other failings over such petty issues such as cleaning and repairing his clothes. He claimed that the marriage had actually been in trouble for a long time and that Ottilie had gone to a lawyer almost twenty years previously (interestingly that would be around 1925/26 the Kokain period) to instigate proceedings against him, but had not followed through at that time for the sake of the children.
Ottilie robustly defended herself by stating that Stefan had previously indulged in extra-marital affairs and that from late 1943 was spending nights away, a claim backed up by a witness statement from the mistress’ flatmate. With regards to money, what he gave her barely covered the essentials and that during their domestic rows he was violent towards her, calling her a Judensau (Jewish sow) and using similar derogatory terms towards their daughters. It was also denied that the marriage was as irretrievably broken as early as he had claimed.
Given the weight of evidence against him, the Court decided that it was Ottilie and not Stefan who was the aggrieved party in proceedings and Eggeler was forced to pay alimony to her from the wages he was receiving from his then employment at the Springer publishing house, one of Germany’s largest publishers. These payments would continue for many years with occasional adjustments when Eggeler changed jobs such as when he began to work for the E-Werke electrical company (responsible for the city’s power stations) in the late 40s and later, the legal department of the Vienna Stadtwerke (Municipal works).
For her part, Ottilie remained in Austria until 1967, when she joined her daughter Dora, who had since married a Canadian, in Toronto. She remained there until her death in 1968.
Eggeler remained in Vienna, remarrying in 1948 (not to the lover named in the divorce proceedings) and, it is assumed, continuing to work for the Vienna Stadtwerke until his retirement in the mid-sixties. He contributed to the book of Österreichisches Elektrizitätsrecht nach dem Stand vom 1.6.1956 (Austrian Electricity Law As Of June 1st, 1956).
One of the few known photos of Stefan Eggeler c. 1950 (© Fitzbauer archive).
It was not until the late sixties that he was ‘rediscovered’ by Erich and Inge Fitzbauer who, after finding one of his portfolios in an antique store, located him by the simple expedient of looking him up in the telephone directory. When they visited him in the small studio flat he maintained next to his apartment they found him kind, courteous and content, surrounded by his collections of books, antiques and musical instruments which included a harmonium upon which he would play pre-Bach music. However, he was reticent about his art and it was not until their third or fourth visit that he showed them any of his original prints and drawings, jokingly referring to the effort it had taken to remove them from the upper shelves. He told them that he no longer made art and when the Fitzbauers suggested that perhaps he should, he replied that he didn’t ‘wish to dirty his hands,’ an enigmatic reply that might refer to either the physical process itself or his previous difficulties with the censors. When he was taken to visit the group show ‘Die Entwicklung der Wiener Schule’ (The Development of the Vienna School) at the Künstlerhaus in July 1968 (which included some of his work, the first exhibition of his work for nearly forty years), the Fitzbauers reported him as seemingly disengaged, appearing to regard his artworks as part of a life that had long ceased to have any great importance to him. The Stefan of the 1920s had long gone. Stephan Eggeler, the retired lawyer would die on July 17, 1969.
Eggeler’s indifference to his artwork in later life has been mirrored by that of the art world in general. Had he persevered or been re-discovered earlier he might perhaps have been given due recognition for his remarkable oeuvre. Aside from two other exhibitions, one in the Künstlerhaus almost immediately after his death organized by a Künstlerhaus member Karlheinz Pilcz (also a part of Fuch’s ‘fantastic realist’ school) and another organized by the Fitzbauers in 1980, his work has remained largely unseen and ignored. His renaissance is long overdue. It is hoped this essay might assist in some small way towards this.
