From the Villa Schleiffelder to the Flow House: The Journey of a Viennese Mansion

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Charles “Chuck” Thomas (P ’04, ’12) retired from Wake Forest as a history professor in 2025. He taught at Flow House in Vienna along with his wife, Rebecca Thomas (P ’04, ’12) , who retired in 2025 as a professor of German and Flow House program director.

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The Setting—Two Communities, One Concept

The¹ Flow House, built originally as the Villa Schleiffelder, is situated on the northwestern edge of Vienna in an area known as the Cottage Viertel (Cottage Quarter). This area straddles Vienna’s 18^th and 19^th Districts, Währing and Döbling respectively. Until the mid-19^th century, both communities remained little more than a collection of even smaller farm villages². Both served as agricultural suppliers for the nearby city of Vienna, with wine playing a particularly important role. Both communities also suffered crippling devastation from three historic invasions of Austria: by the Hungarians in 1482, by the Ottoman Turks in 1529, and, most famously, by the Ottoman Turks again in 1683. Indeed, on September 12, 1683, the area just to the west of the current Flow House, already known as the Türkenschanz (“Turkish entrenchment” or “Turkish redoubt”), witnessed some of the most ferocious fighting during the relief of the capital from the second siege³. These historic events aside, until well into the nineteenth century, the two communities seemed destined to retain their essential rusticity, serving at best as occasional excursion goals for thirsty Viennese and their guests.

The increasing political, administrative, and industrial importance of the Austrian capital began to change this picture in the mid-19^th century. Between 1830 and 1869 the population of Vienna more than doubled, from just under 400,000 inhabitants to approximately 900,000. Part of this growth simply reflected the incorporation of communities that lay just outside the fortifications of the medieval city, such as Josefstadt (8^th District) and Alsergrund (9^th District). Much of the growth in population, however, stemmed from the influx of low-level administrative officials, craftsmen, industrial workers, and their families into the city from the broad reaches of the Austrian Empire and beyond. In the process, Vienna was radically transformed. Much of the 1^st District inside the city walls remained an area of imperial and princely palaces, but both this area and the newly incorporated outer districts also witnessed the proliferation of sprawling, poorly designed, and badly ventilated tenement buildings (Mietkasernen—literally “rent barracks”) that were constructed to house Vienna’s expanding working-class population.

These circumstances, so reminiscent of the cityscapes of the British industrial revolution decried in William Blake’s “dark Satanic mills,” prompted a variety of responses⁴. One of the most promising was inspired by Britain’s own experience with the myriad challenges of industrialization. In 1851 Heinrich Ferstel, an aspiring architect and recent graduate of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, traveled to London for the Great Exhibition. There he encountered the “cottage movement,” a proposed solution to industrial blight that emphasized the creation of free-standing single-family homes, each surrounded by substantial greenery or, as both the British and the Viennese would put it, a “garden.” Upon his return from Britain, Ferstel was soon distracted by a variety of projects associated with the recently initiated building of the Ringstraβe, but he continued to be intrigued by the idea of a cottage-based community. In 1860 he collaborated with the Viennese art professor, Rudolf Eitelberger Ritter von Edelberg, on a book entitled Das bürgerliche Wohnhaus und das Wiener Zinshaus (“The Middle Class Home and the Viennese Tenement Building”), in which the two men argued for the familial and societal benefits to be derived from individual family houses. The target audience was an emerging element of the Viennese middle class, not the aristocracy-aping grande bourgeoisie, but rather the backbone of the state, the civil servants, mid-ranking officers—active duty and retired—and their families, one social rung below the upper middle class. Over the next decade, Ferstel pursued ways to finance the project, seeking support from several Viennese banks that would allow purchase on an installment basis. After several false starts and after Ferstel’s attention partially drifted to other more prestigious projects, two other individuals—the banking official Dr. Eduard Kral and the architect Karl Borkowski, a colleague and former university classmate of Ferstel—assumed the lead in the Vienna cottage movement. Their efforts were crowned with success on January 24, 1872, when the Vienna Cottage Verein (Association) was founded with Kral and nine other individuals, primarily bank officials and civil servants, as members. Shortly thereafter the support of Austria-Hungary’s ruling Habsburg dynasty was attained with the announcement that Archduke Carl Ludwig, a younger brother of the Emperor Franz Josef, would serve as patron of the Verein.

The planned location for the Cottage Verein was originally intended to be in Vienna’s 3rd District, an area to the southeast of the oldest part of the city. The areas of Währing and Döbling, however, being further removed from the center of the city, offered more reasonably priced real estate, convenient sources of fresh water, and fresh air from the Vienna Woods and the neighboring Kahlenberg heights. The Verein soon began purchasing parcels of mostly sandy farmland that would initially amount to 42,500 square meters (10.5 acres) of land. Building of the infrastructure as well as the first 51 cottages proceeded rapidly, with the initial project being completed by the end of 1873.

The theme for this first portion of the project reflected the continuing influence of Ferstel, who soon joined the leadership of the Verein and would remain active in it until his death in 1883. More decisive was the leadership of the architect and supervisor of construction, Ferstel’s colleague Borkowski. House owners chose from one of thirteen building plans, with nine of these evidently proving more popular than the other four. Each of the plans envisioned a “cottage” with a basement, a main floor, a second floor, and an attic. House owners obligated themselves to a Servitut, essentially a building covenant, that bound them to build only single-family houses or duplexes. The houses were to have a front lawn or garden that was three meters removed from the street, and the overall ratio between garden and living space was to be 3:1 (later changed to 2:1). This relatively high (by urban European standards) ratio between lawn and living space guaranteed that the back lawns of adjoining houses on the same city block would combine to form large open green spaces, a feature that remains a part of the Cottage Viertel to this day.

From Cottage to Villa

Despite promising beginnings, the Cottage project soon encountered difficulties. Part of the problem was financial, as the Panic of 1873, beginning that May, severely undercut the ability of many potential house owners to join the Verein, and the pace of building slowed noticeably over the next decade. There was also a predictable urge on the part of wealthier would-be owners to push beyond the relatively plain (although certainly not spartan) limitations of the Servitut and the original building plans, a tendency that was probably reinforced when Habsburg archdukes began to purchase second homes in the community⁵. By the time Borkowski retired from his duties as Baudirektor in 1895 the tendency away from cottages toward more elaborate “garden villas” was already well underway as the Verein extended its activities with a second phase of building.

Borkowski’s successor, Hermann Müller, accelerated this trend. Müller clearly recognized both the promise and the limitations of the original cottage project. In a retrospective address given in 1906, he praised Ferstel’s original concepts of one-family houses and abundant green spaces and Borkowski’s cost-saving measures⁶. He also noted what didn’t work with the cottages. Many of them were too modest for anything but the smallest family, and the dimensions of the individual rooms were also small. The entry halls were uninspiring, and the stairs were unheated. The toilets and bathrooms were poorly conceived. The interiors were very simple, and the exteriors were monotonous.  Thise type of construction did not really fit into any architectural style. Above all else, everything in the cottage fell victim to the tyranny of the floor plan. Müller’s solutions to these problems were ambitious, wide-ranging, and, by the time his retrospective on the first decade as Baudirektor was delivered in1906, already well-developed. As he reported to his audience, in contrast with the early years, “outside” (fremde) architects had been permitted to design houses for the Verein. A plethora of building styles—including Viennese Baroque, German early renaissance, and Tyrolean Alpine themes—had replaced the “non-style” of the earlier cottages, reflecting the historicist rage then sweeping Austria-Hungary and Germany⁷. A host of upgrades and flourishes had come to relieve the monotony of the exteriors. As Müller enthused, “ornamental turrets, bay windows, balconies, verandas, terraces, pergolas and flower boards [now] enlivened the individual sites and increased their livability.”

The interiors of the newer buildings within the Cottage Viertel also underwent considerable transformation. The expansion of the Verein’s activities from Währing into Döbling had necessitated the purchase of more expensive building plots, and wealthier clients (and their architects) wanted bigger houses as well as the latest in turn-of-the century technology. Staircases became both more practical and picturesque, and modest entry rooms gave way to more formal halls. Wooden paneling and elaborate mitered ceilings, wall tiles, built-in closets, sliding doors for either expansion or restriction of the social space, and Rolläden (the retractable outdoor blinds that continue to enthrall American tourists), became standard features of the new building projects. 

Particular attention was focused on bathrooms, which were no longer architectural afterthoughts but rather were spacious, tiled, and heated with gas. Electric lighting now complemented gas lighting. Central heating remained an elusive goal for most of the houses, but an ingenious combination of the old and the new—gas and, where necessary, electric heaters, plus the familiar coal-fired Kachelöfen—ensured the comfort of the new homeowners. Indeed, only one thing seems to have frustrated Müller and his associates in their drive to evoke the feel of the classical villa; the recessed bathing pools so loved by the Romans and so ardently desired by the Viennese had proven to be impractical and were abandoned.

These buildings were exponentially more expensive than the cottages of the first building phase of the Verein.  In 1872 the smaller cottages had sold for as little as between 10,000 and 12,000 florins, including the building lot.  By 1897 the cost of a representative villa had risen to 75,000 florins, a price far beyond the purchasing power of the mid-ranking government officials, officers, and widows envisioned earlier by Ferstel, Kral, and Borkowski.⁸ Nevertheless, architects associated with the Verein did not lack patrons, with Müller alone being responsible for the construction of sixteen villas between 1893 and 1913.⁹ Indeed, so strong was the new trend towards bigger buildings that one suspects that, save for the pull of tradition, the builders in the Quarter could have easily changed the name of their organization to the Villa Verein. One of Müller’s first designs was an impressive villa undertaken for the Viennese businessman, Otto Schleiffelder.¹⁰ Born to German-speaking parents in 1846 in the Banat region of the Austrian Empire,¹¹ Schleiffelder had emigrated to Vienna. In 1881, he opened an optical retail store on the Graben, the city’s most fashionable shopping street. Over the next two decades, Schleiffelder rapidly and expertly expanded the offerings of his business to include a host of items that were desirable in princely, aristocratic, and upper bourgeois households.¹² For the traditionalist there were riding glasses; for the more adventuresome there were driving glasses. Microscopes, thermometers, barometers, and drawing instruments abounded. Perhaps most fittingly, the firm came to occupy a special place in Vienna’s music world, offering everything from metronomes to opera eyewear (pince-nez, lorgnettes, and opera glasses) to “the best American phonographs,” including the latest models from the Columbia and Edison firms. By 1896, with a flourishing business, an American born wife, Emilie, and four young children, Schleiffelder had clearly “arrived.”¹³

 The mansion that Müller designed for Schleiffelder was completed between June 1896 and June 1897. Villa Schleiffelder clearly reflected the changing status of Müller’s client.¹⁴ Located in Oberdöbling on the northeast corner of the juncture of Hasenauerstraβe and Dittesgasse (today’s Gustav-Tschermak-Gasse),¹⁵ the mansion occupied a building plot of 2600 square meters (approximately three fifths of an acre), substantially more space than the area occupied by the earlier cottages that had been built in Währing.¹⁶ Then as now, a substantial wrought iron fence enclosed the grounds which, in addition to the carefully maintained lawn and the villa itself, also included a garden pavilion built to resemble an Alpine cottage, perhaps a nod to architect Müller’s mountainous birthplace at Krieglach in Austria’s Styria. Entrance to the property came through an imposing gate on the busy Hasenauerstraβe, with access to the house itself via the steps on the quieter Dittesgasse.  Centrally located in a niche on the south exterior wall, the vista most easily accessed by passersby, was a representation of the classical goddess of Domesticity, carefully carved out of marble (Savoyerstein) by the leading Viennese sculptor Richard Kauffungen.¹⁷

The villa continued the four-floor pattern that the Verein had used for the earlier cottages. The attic was used for storage, as was part of the floor beneath.  This floor, which currently houses Wake Forest students during the normal academic year, would also have included servants’ quarters. The main activity of the house was concentrated on the lower two floors, the Tiefparterre (basement) and the Hochparterre (main floor). In the basement the kitchen was attached to the base of the small half turret on the southwest corner of the house and occupied what is today the laundry and ping pong room. The basement also contained a large wine cellar on the western side of the building. Today’s guest room was given over to servant activities, and the current faculty bedroom was used as an ironing room. Then as now, there was a small room for gardening supplies and tools, accessible only through an outside door.  Perhaps the most interesting feature, though, was an extensive playroom and gymnasium, which occupied the current faculty living room and faculty kitchen. Clearly demarcated from the rest of the basement, this section was intended for the use of the Schleiffelder family, not the servants.

The Hochparterre or main floor was the most elaborate section of the house, featuring high, decorated ceilings, parquet floors, and beautifully painted interior glass windows from the famous and still existing Tiroler Glasmalerei. Then as now, the vestibule connected most of the rooms. A winter garden occupied what is today’s director’s office, and the large adjoining room that today serves as a living room fulfilled the same function in 1897, but with the capability of being divided into two smaller rooms as the occasion warranted. The current student kitchen was also used as a living room, one that was exotically furnished in a pseudo-Moorish fashion. Today’s formal dining area was the largest of three bedrooms and clearly intended for the parents, Otto and Emilie, but today’s paneled classroom and library were also used as bedrooms. (Wake Forest undergraduates may therefore take some consolation knowing that they were not the only ones ever to fall asleep in these two rooms.) Finally, and most charmingly, at least from this writer’s perspective, was the loggia. No longer extant, this room adjoined the winter garden and the northwest living room and occupied about half of what is today’s patio. It was partially open to outside air, included extensive wall decoration as well as a long table and chairs, and would have allowed extremely comfortable dining in clement weather. Fully electrified and equipped with central heating, at least for the three lower floors, the Villa Schleiffelder was described as “tasteful and dignified” (gediegen-vornehm) and represented a high level of comfort. Through its gate at Hasenauerstraβe 40 it also offered easy access to the exciting new and largely middle-class world that was emerging in the neighborhood surrounding the Cottage Viertel. With their own livelihood firmly rooted in the world of optics (admittedly the retail, not the scientific or manufacturing side of the profession), it is probable that the Schleiffelders would have visited the nearby astronomical observatory (Sternwarte), which had recently moved from the city center to Währing.¹⁸ Even closer, one block west from the villa, were the pathways and gardens of the extensive Türkenschanz Park, a gift from the Cottage Verein to the city of Vienna. Only a few blocks down the hill in the other direction at the corner of Gymnasiumstraβe and Hasenauerstraβe was a brand-new ice-skating rink. A manifestation of budding middle-class interest in this new sport, the complex also offered year-round bowling and opportunities for tennis and bicycling in the warmer months.¹⁹

One suspects that the Schleiffelder family, or at least the younger generation, participated enthusiastically in a number of these activities.  What is certain is that the family avidly embraced a different up-and-coming sport.  In the late 1890s, Otto became avidly engaged in yachting, and in 1901 he helped found the St. Wolfgangsee branch of the Union Yacht Club at Strobl in the Salzkammergut.²⁰ A second Villa Schleiffelder soon followed at Strobl, and one by one the children—Emil (in 1903), René (in 1904), and Tilla and Erich (in 1908)—joined their father as members of the club as they approached adulthood. Otto was a tireless promoter of yachting, and in 1904 he founded the Tilla Trophy Cup to be awarded at regattas held by the club. He and his family were eventually joined by his nephews, Hans and a namesake, Otto.²¹ By 1909 boats owned by the Schleiffelders, such as Otto’s Manon and Walküre or Erich’s Senta, Orion I, or Orion II, would have been well known on the Wolfgangsee, where a friendly but spirited rivalry with another Viennese family, the Rumpels, was frequently on display. It was on this beautiful lake that the Schleiffelder family story took a tragic turn.  In July 1909 the family embarked upon a lengthy summer vacation at Strobl, continuing a practice that had been in place for several years.  Almost every day was devoted to some form of yachting.  On Wednesday evening, August 18—the birthday of the Austro-Hungarian ruler Franz Josef—members and guests of the family began a homeward voyage towards Strobl. The weather was calm, with Otto and some guests in the larger Walküre and Emil, René, and other guests in a smaller boat. They were suddenly caught in gale force winds and an accident occurred. According to an early report, the wind shattered the mast of Walküre, which fell on Otto and killed him. With just a hint of scandal, the report noted that an unnamed female passenger had swum to safety.²² A slightly later report maintained that the wind had caused the boat to capsize, throwing both Otto and the passenger, this time identified as Otto’s daughter, into the water and that Otto had died of a heart attack, the result of extreme exertions or possibly fright.²³ A telegram from Emil soon modified both stories.  The passengers on the Walküre were a Fräulein Bankmann from Vienna and Monsieur René de Fourchault from Paris. The wind had driven the Walküre onto the shore near Strobl, and Schleiffelder had been thrown onto the waves. His sons were able to bring him to shore, but he had died of internal injuries, a finding confirmed by the village doctor the next day.²⁴ Schleiffelder’s body was returned to Vienna, and he was buried near the villa in the Döblinger Friedhof, the first of eleven members of the family who would lie in the family plot.

Changes

Traumatic as it was, Otto’s death did not initially seem to alter the family’s trajectory significantly. Emil, the oldest son, assumed the leadership of the firm, a position that he would hold until his death in 1934. The firm continued to prosper, expanding from the central location on the Graben to affiliates elsewhere in Vienna and in nearby Wiener-Neustadt. The family’s interest in yachting also appears to have been undiminished; although Otto’s Walküre was understandably absent from the last regatta of the season in 1909, the Tilla-Trophy Cup was awarded to the winner less than two weeks after Otto’s death, and Schleiffelder men and women evidently continued to participate in the activities of the St. Wolfgangsee Union Yacht Club up to the eve of the First World War.²⁵

Beneath these apparent continuities, however, profound changes were occurring within the family that were important for our story. In 1911, Tilla became engaged to and later married her neighbor, the businessman Edgar Kindt, who lived on the nearby Felix Mottlstraβe in Döbling.  The couple soon moved closer to the center of Vienna to the Josefstädterstraβe in the 8^th District, accompanied by Otto’s widow, Emilie. By 1913 Emil had also moved from the villa to the Hintzerstraβe in the 3^rd District. That same year the youngest of the three brothers, Erich, emigrated to the United States, where he duly registered for the draft (in both world wars), became an American citizen, and adopted the last name of Spencer. The outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914 saw René called to service in the Austro-Hungarian Army as a Reserve Lieutenant in a heavy artillery unit.²⁶ By that time ownership of the Villa Schleiffelder was in different hands. The new resident was the first of three women who were to own the mansion during the next four decades. Each presents a puzzle for the historian in her own way. Thirty years old at the time that she purchased the property in 1912, Mathilde Lazarus (née Bauer) had been born in Vienna’s 2^nd District (Leopoldstadt) of Jewish parents and had wed her husband, Sigmund, at the age of seventeen. A daughter, Alice, had been born to the family in 1902, but sometime afterward Mathilde and Sigmund divorced. How she purchased the villa and what use she initially made of it is unknown. In June 1921, however, Mathilde remarried, this time to a Turkish businessman, Mehmed Emine Bey, in a ceremony at the Ottoman consulate in Budapest.²⁷ Shortly afterward, she encountered a mysterious and reportedly beautiful emigré, recently arrived from Paris, who claimed to be Princess Djalileh, the daughter, granddaughter, or niece (or perhaps all three!) of a royal ruler in the Caucasus. Princess Djalileh also claimed that she possessed a fortune in assets that unfortunately had been expropriated, either in the revolutionary turmoil that had engulfed Eastern Europe and the Middle East after the world war or more recently by miscreants in Paris. Availing herself of Mathilde’s hospitality, she moved into the villa and, according to one probably sensationalized report, eventually occupied nine rooms while doubling as a philosophy student.²⁸ Eventually Princess Djalileh forsook the villa for the livelier 1^st District, where she amassed astronomical bills at three different hotels, including the Ritz. Before her reign of grift ended with temporary arrest and court proceedings in the summer of 1925–the charges against her were eventually dropped because no one could ascertain who she really was–she also left one enraged baker with an unpaid bill of 900,000 Kronen (approximately $23,000 in 2025) for Viennese Semmel.²⁹

It is impossible to know what the financial costs of Princess Djalileh’s deception and extravagance were for Mathilde Emine Bey. It is interesting, though, that by early 1925, about the time her mysterious guest left her, Mathilde was ready to sell a portion of the original building plot, namely the part that bounded the northern portion of the property on the Dittesgasse (today’s Gustav-Tschermak-Gasse), reducing the dimensions of the property to their current measurements. In 1926 she left the villa and the Cottage Viertel altogether, moving to the Sebastianplatz in the 3^rd District.³⁰

The new owner was Nelly Adler, the twenty-six-year-old daughter of the businessman Gustav Taussig. With their roots in Bohemia and Hungary, the Taussigs appear to have been relative newcomers to Vienna.³¹ Indeed, when she signed the contract with Emine Bey, Nelly was still living in Budapest, and it would be Gustav and his wife, Josefa (née Neuburg), not Nelly, who would be the first in the family to occupy the property at Hasenauerstraβe 40. The Taussigs were soon joined at the villa by a long-term tenant, Else Ruppik (also occasionally spelled Ruppig), as well as a custodian, Augustin Wondra. For the next decade, Nelly evidently lived elsewhere with her husband Adolf and her daughter and son, initially in the 7^th District and later in the 3^rd District at am Modenapark 3.

Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Austria in March 1938 radically changed the circumstances of the Taussig/Adler family. As Jews, they were subjected to the flood of discriminatory measures that followed that spring in the wake of the so-called Anschluss with Nazi Germany. Jews were immediately subjected to both unofficially- and officially-inspired acts of hatred and degradation. The application of the infamous Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 turned them into second class citizens within what was then deemed to be Germany’s Ostmark. In August 1938 a decree from Berlin required that German (and hence Austrian) Jews bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin add the name of “Israel” or “Sara” to their given names. Meanwhile, a series of increasingly severe measures—forced registration of property, forced business and real estate transactions, expropriations, and exorbitant emigration taxes (the so-called Reichsfluchtsteuer)—began the systematic economic ruination of Austria’s Jews.³²

The effects of these measures were immediately evident for the inhabitants of the villa. Soon after the Anschluss, Gustav and Josefa fled to France, but in March 1939 they resettled in Montreal, Canada, after a transatlantic voyage to New York City on the SS Normandie. Two years later they reentered the United States and eventually found a home in Miami, Florida. Meanwhile, Nelly gave up her apartment in the 3^rd District. It is possible that she briefly lived at the villa, but by the fall of 1938 she was back in Budapest. She may have divorced Adolf there, because by November she was no longer married. She relocated to the United States, where the 1940 census lists her as residing at the YWCA of Flint, Michigan. She eventually moved into a house there and was joined by her son, Friedrich Thomas Rudolf Adler, who became a naturalized citizen and served in the United States armed forces during the Second World War.

During this period the fate of the villa remained in limbo. The 1939 Lehmann’s Addressbuch continues to list Nelly as “Owner,” with Else Ruppik continuing as a tenant and Marie Wondra, presumably a relative of Augustin Wondra, assuming the position of custodian. Nelly is still listed there in 1940, but under the telltale name of “N Sara Adler.” She is no longer identified as the owner of the villa. In fact, Lehmann’s was slightly outdated, for during the winter of 1939-1940 Nelly, almost certainly under some measure of economic duress, had sold the villa to a Gentile, Gabriele Schedlbauer, a neighbor from across the street.³³ By 1941, Else Ruppik, a Polish Jew by birth, was also gone, and Gabriele was enjoying the villa with her husband, Diplomingenieur Hugo Schedlbauer.³⁴ The “Aryanization” of Hasenauerstraβe 40 was complete It is difficult to reconstruct the history of the villa during the Second World War. The archives of the Cottage Verein were destroyed in an Allied air attack on November 17, 1944, complicating the telling of this and other parts of the story of the house. According to a postwar affidavit by Gabriele Schedlbauer, the air raid of November 17 and subsequent raids in March 1945 caused an estimated 20,000 RM worth of damage to her property. By contrast, a map included in the recent study of the Cottage Verein that shows wartime damage to the community indicates that Hasenauerstraβe 40 was largely spared. It may be that Schedlbauer was interested in documenting expenses that she incurred after acquiring the house in 1940 as part of a postwar settlement dispute (see below).³⁵ What does appear clear is that, unlike other well-appointed houses in Vienna, the villa weathered the Soviet capture of the city in April 1945 reasonably well, for a casual inspection of the intact mosaic floor in the basement reveals no evidence of the reportedly widespread practice of wildcat “grenading” by Soviet soldiers exacting architectural retribution for their own country’s suffering at the hands of the Nazis. With the end of the war in May 1945 and the prearranged joint Allied occupation of Vienna, the 18^th and 19^th Districts came under American control as part of the four-power division of the city. The residents of the Cottage Viertel could turn their attention to the task of reconstruction.

One feature of this task was the matter of restitution of property either stolen or acquired under duress during the Anschluss. Beginning in September 1946, the city of Vienna enacted a series of laws that enabled survivors of the Holocaust or their heirs to apply for compensation or recovery of property. Two months later, in November 1946, Nelly Adler sued for the return of the villa.³⁶ Gabriele Schedlbauer contested the application, contending that the transfer of property six years before had been freely agreed to by contract and that Adler had been properly represented by both an agent and a lawyer. She added that the property at the time of purchase was “extremely run down,” and that the price she had paid was significantly above the taxable value of the house. Somewhat gratuitously, she also called attention to the fact that Nelly Adler was a Hungarian. The Restitution Commission was evidently unconvinced of the merits of Schedlbauer’s arguments. In 1948 Adler regained title to the villa.

By 1950 Nelly was living in Fairfield, Connecticut, working as a nurse’s aide.  In that year she sold the villa in Vienna to the American embassy there. The embassy’s acquisition of it made sense at a time when the tensions of the Cold War were heating up. Located as it was on the edge of the Iron Curtain, Vienna was certain to continue in its historical role as a center for espionage. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had begun to expand their staffs in the city, which forced them to acquire properties for the housing and offices of members of those staffs. The villa’s subsequent use by the American embassy is not certain, but among the possibilities were housing for second- and third-tier diplomats and their families, providing temporary accommodation for transient personnel, or hosting Central Intelligence Agency or other intelligence gathering operatives nominally assigned to the embassy.³⁷ By the early 1990s the diplomatic scene in Vienna was beginning to change in ways that would directly affect the future of the villa. The primary factors in this were the relaxation in East/West relations that led to the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the Iron Curtain, and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union. With these developments came the perception that reductions were possible in the size of embassy staffs in front-line cities of the Cold War like Vienna and Berlin and that weary American taxpayers might enjoy a longed-for “peace dividend.” A primary advocate of this view was the experienced United States Senator from North Carolina, Jessie Helms, a man whose tenacity caused him to be widely characterized as “Senator No.” Assuming the position of Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 1995, Helms began to prod the State Department to curtail the size of embassy staffs, cut back on the perks they were enjoying, and sell unneeded embassy property. Helms’ efforts were successful, at least in Vienna.³⁸ By 1996 the former Villa Schleiffelder was empty, without electrical power or heat, and awaiting a buyer. Two gentlemen from the American South and a five-thousand-year-old murder victim would soon change this picture.

THE FLOW HOUSE

If the political thaw in United States/Soviet relations explains the emptiness of the villa in the late 1990s, it was a literal thaw that set into motion the next phase in the house’s history, for without it the paths of Őtzi the Ice Man and Dr. Thomas K. Hearn, Jr. would never have crossed. The stage for this “meeting” was set in 1991, when two German mountaineers stumbled across a frozen corpse in the Őtztal valley of South Tyrol. They and follow-up recovery workers initially thought that the body was the victim of a relatively recent Alpine accident, but subsequent research revealed it to be that of a Copper Age hunter who had likely been murdered at some time in the fourth millennium BCE.

Őtzi, as he came to be called (after the Őtztal valley), quickly attracted the worldwide attention of scientists and scholars from a variety of academic disciplines. In1994 researchers from Wake Forest University’s Department of Anthropology and the affiliated Bowman Gray School of Medicine began a series of collaborative projects with several Central European universities, most notably the University of Vienna and its own Őtzi specialist, Dr. Horst Seidler. It was while coordinating one of these projects that the president of Wake Forest, Thomas Hearn, conceived of the idea of a study center in a German-speaking city to match the university’s older programs in London and Venice and the recently initiated program in Tokai, Japan.³⁹ Several cities initially came under consideration, with Bonn and Heidelberg being the leading candidates within Germany proper. Nevertheless, the ultimate choice would fall upon Vienna. There were good reasons for this. Hearn was no stranger to Vienna, and his own familiarity with the city probably gave it an advantage over all other sites. With his own background in philosophy, Hearn was a longtime admirer of Vienna’s rich intellectual history. He had visited the city a number of times, either as a transit point or as an end goal, and a summer sabbatical in 1987 in Vienna’s 4^th District had allowed him to explore the city and its environs in detail.⁴⁰ The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the opening of former Warsaw Pact nations further underlined the Austrian capital’s significance as an important meeting point between Eastern and Western Europe.

President Hearn’s vision found ready support from one couple with their own strong connections to the university and to the idea of a study center in Central Europe.⁴¹ Vic Flow (Wake Forest 1952) and Roddy Flow both had German-speaking ancestors and had traveled extensively for business and pleasure in Germany and Austria. They already shared many of the same ideas that motivated Hearn—an appreciation of Vienna’s importance as an artistic, musical, commercial, and educational center, as well the crucial role that the larger region of Central Europe had played and would continue to play in world affairs. Above all, they had confidence in Hearn, with Vic Flow describing him as “a man with great vision and the capacity to act.” The Flows were eager to provide full financial support for that vision, and in 1997 work to establish what would become the Flow House began. With funding assured, the university began the time-consuming process of finding a suitable site. In March 1997 it engaged Johannes Nostitz to scout out at least five suitable properties in Vienna.⁴² By February 1998 the choice had been narrowed to two preferred properties, “Objekt 2” (the former Villa Schleiffelder) and “Objekt 5” (a similarly sized building on the Pötzleinsdorferstraβe in the neighboring 18^th District).⁴³  In March President Hearn and Wake Forest Facilities Management Director Bill Sides visited the two sites and opted for “Objekt 2”. Negotiations with the villa’s owner, the United States embassy in Vienna, proceeded swiftly, and the two parties signed a sales contract on June 17, 1998.⁴⁴ The one obstacle was that according to Austrian law, the transfer had to comply with the city of Vienna’s Foreigners Land Transfer Act (the sonorous Wiener Ausländergrundverkehrsgesetz). The university’s on-site representative, the lawyer Max Allmayer-Beck, promptly informed the local authorities of the university’s plan for a study center and emphasized the economic impact that it would have in employing Austrians, both as professors for the bulk of the academic courses and as personnel to operate and maintain the house. He also called attention to the way that Wake Forest students’ experience with the city would increase Vienna’s visibility (Bekanntheitsgrad) in the United States and dangled the possibility that students who attended the program might become investors in Austria in the future. Finally, Allmayer-Beck invoked the intangible benefits that the program and its students would provide, suggesting that their mere presence would surely provide cultural enrichment for the city. His arguments were evidently convincing. The authorities approved, and that summer Wake Forest had itself a Vienna study center.⁴⁵

With the property securely in the hands of the university, the preparation for the Flow House began. Between July 1998 and August 1999, a succession of Wake Forest personnel began to lay the foundations for a residential program in Vienna through their support at home and visits to the site. President Hearn followed the project with interest, and his wife Laura would play the primary role in the interior decoration of the house. Wake Forest professors Peter Kairoff and Claudia Thomas Kairoff, each with experience with the university’s Casa Artom in Venice, brought their insights as well. Initial inspection of the building revealed it to be in good shape, and the university signed a contract with Nemecek & Sohn, a Viennese firm with fifty years of experience in restoration work.⁴⁶ The university’s initial estimate was that the work could be finished within three months, allowing the house to be available for limited use by January 1999. Over the summer of 1998, however, heavy rains and water back-up due to a clogged run-off caused extensive flooding in the basement, varying from between 10 to 15 centimeters deep, ruining the carpet, buckling the parquet floors, and damaging much of the plaster on the walls. Wake Forest officials prodded the contractor for new estimates, but delays ensued. In October the university’s legal counsel, Leon Corbett, remarked tellingly of the contractor: “If he works as slowly as his information comes, we will be in trouble.”⁴⁷

By November the university’s patience with Nemecek was at an end. That month Bill Sides and Larry West (Department of German and Russian) flew to Vienna to reexamine the project.⁴⁸ For two days they explored the dark, unheated building room by room, using flashlights for illumination and a tape recorder for notes that would lead to a new jobs list.  They then interviewed three potential candidates to replace Nemecek as contractor and toured them separately over the premises. Bids were submitted, but that December all three were rejected.⁴⁹ Lawyer Allmayer-Beck, an individual with considerable experience in managing property in the city, recommended a younger man, Christoph Wickl, whom he had engaged in one or two projects. Wickl got the job.⁵⁰ The appearance of a new contractor radically changed the pace of operations.  Between January and July of 1999, workers addressed a myriad of challenges associated with bringing the villa back to life. The original contractor, Nemecek, had anticipated many of these, including building a modern kitchen for students in the former living room with the Moorish “turret” corner on the main floor and a faculty kitchen in the basement.⁵¹ Modernization of the electrical system and the installation of a fire alarm system—one that could wake the drowsiest undergraduate into a panic, as it turned out—were also part of the plan from the beginning. The flooding of the basement the previous summer added additional challenges and costs, and the final inspection of the exterior in November revealed that the massive stucco exterior of the house needed major repair. All this delayed completion of the project and drove restoration costs to more than double the sum originally envisioned by the university. Only one major decision pertaining to the infrastructure proved to be relatively easy: in keeping with the desire to preserve as much continuity with the house’s past as possible, yellow—a color that in Vienna is most often associated with its beloved 18^th century ruler, Maria Theresia—was chosen for the exterior. Approximately seventeen shades of that color briefly presented themselves until the construction team cut the Gordian knot, picked their favorite shade, and promptly dubbed it Wicklgelb (“Wickl Yellow”).⁵²

As the structural renovation of the house slowly progressed, the work of outfitting it for living and learning got underway.  In contrast with the exterior and the indoor floors, ceilings, and walls, where the team strove to keep as many of the original features of the house as possible, the approach to furnishing it was to start from scratch. After some deliberation, Ikea furniture was chosen for the student quarters, and furniture from North Carolina was selected for much of the faculty apartment in the basement and for the living room and dining room on the main floor.  This artistic fusion, a genial combination of Lexington, North Carolina, and Sweden, resulted in an influx of furniture, with the process of unloading, unwrapping, and assembly of individual pieces requiring an estimated 193 hours of work.⁵³ The house received an initial allocation of $10,000 for the foundation of the library, but supplementary allotments and end of semester “donations” by Wake Forest students struggling to comply with airline luggage restrictions would quickly swell its contents.  More mundane materials were also in demand.  Everything from coat hangers (698.33 Austrian shillings) to toilet brushes (six—one for each facility) began to arrive.  Among the last items to be added were a flip chart (the staple of historians, linguists, and musicians for years to come), slide projectors, and a coffee machine. By the time the first semester was concluded, the need for official Flow House stationery would also be evident, and an order for 500 envelopes and 500 pages with official letter head and in the colors of old gold and black duly went out to the university’s printing service.⁵⁴ By mid-summer of 1999 the Flow House was (nearly) ready.  Dr. Larry West of the Department of German and Russian had been named earlier in the year to oversee the first semester in Vienna. Early in August he and his wife Susie arrived and began the final preparations for the upcoming semester.⁵⁵ They were soon joined by fourteen carefully recruited and enthusiastic students. Meeting them were the academic and logistical support teams. The former included Dr. Antonia “Toni” Hanreich (History), Dr. Beatrice “Bea/Doctor O” Ottersböck (Art and Architecture), Dr. Morton Solvik (Music), and Mag. Günter Haika (German). A native of Vienna, Mag. Haika did triple duty in that and future semesters as instructor, house manager, and guide to the city. Assisting him in household duties was the housekeeper, the redoubtable Snjezana Kraljic, who, over the next twenty-five years, would survive repeated invasions by Wake Forest students, with some groups inevitably amassing better records in tidiness and kitchen clean-up discipline than others.

That first fall, professors, students, and household staff all faced the sometimes daunting, sometimes amusing task of breaking the house in and getting it ready for the official dedication in October. The stakes were high, as the list of attendees would include the donors (Vic and Roddy Flow), the president of Wake Forest University (Dr. Hearn) and his wife, Laura, the American ambassador to Austria, the official Wake Forest delegation, and prominent supporters of the program from Austria. The stream of workers continued, and Susie West likened the experience to living in a fishbowl, an observation that would be repeated by many subsequent directors and spouses. At times, difficulties understanding Viennese dialect (a problem that even native speakers of Standard German sometimes encounter), threatened to delay if not derail the completion of the work. Students pitched in by giving the living room—the primary site of the dedication—a wide berth during the beginning of the semester, and the mere mention of the word “pristine” became enough to elicit laughter.

As the day for the dedication approached, two problems remained.  Work on the final details of the house continued to drag, and the grand piano—a gift to the university by native Austrian cum Demon Deacon Christoph Nostitz and his family—was being detained after its arrival by Austrian customs officials. Intervention by Max Allmayer-Beck unlocked the customs imbroglio on Friday, October 1. That same day the official party of Wake Forest dignitaries left Piedmont International Airport for the flight to Vienna, and an American-made piano triumphantly made its way across the city of Mozart, Beethoven, and Mahler. A piano tuner was hastily summoned for work late Friday afternoon. As this “coals to Newcastle” scenario was being resolved, workers put the finishing touches on the house. The last of them left thirty minutes before the first guests for the dedication ceremony began to arrive on Sunday afternoon. That Sunday, October 3, was also the day of a critical national election in Austria, one that would determine whether the xenophobic ultranationalist, Jörg Haider, would become the head the federal government, and many of the Austrian invitees stayed home to await election results.⁵⁶ Their absence may have been a blessing in disguise, for when two buses arrived from the 1^st District at 2:00 more than one hundred people crowded into the house.⁵⁷ The American invitees had already had a busy day, with a morning church service at the chapel of the Hofburg Palace featuring the Vienna Boys Choir followed by lunch at the nearby Restaurant Demel, one of the fabled court caterers (Hoflieferanten) to the Habsburg ruling family in years gone by. Wake Forest professor Peter Kairoff treated the guests to a performance of Johannes Brahms’s Intermezzo, Opus 118, Nr. 2, a piece dating from the time of the villa’s first owner, Otto Schleiffelder. The many mingled with the few—the latter comprising students, resident faculty, and the Wests (“all of us” as Larry West’s handwritten note on the draft itinerary expressed it). At 3:00 the ceremony began with introductory remarks by Wake Forest alumnus Hubert Humphrey, Peter Csendes (representing the city of Vienna), and Kathryn Walt Hall, the United States ambassador to Austria. Then it was time for the “bookends”—the student and the educator—to speak. Wake Forest junior Samuel Turner was chosen to represent the students and thanked the university and the Flow family for the unmatched opportunity for immersion in Austrian culture and “reminding us that learning encompasses more than sitting in a classroom.” President Hearn noted the importance of international education “in preparing young people for lives and careers beyond traditional borders.” A portrait of Vic and Roddy Flow was presented to the house as a gift from their three children. Vic Flow’s own response expressed his hopes that the Flow House experience would “transform the lives of our students in the same way that Wake Forest transformed my own life.”

By 4:30 that afternoon, the dedication was complete, and the first bus was taking invitees back to the 1^st District. The official party would enjoy four more days of celebration, with visits to a variety of sites, some (Schönbrunn Palace, the Spanish Riding School, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum) already on the agenda and others (the Army History Museum) hastily improvised by historian Tony Hanreich. On Tuesday President Hearn was formally celebrated as an “Honorary Citizen” of the University of Vienna as Wake Forest students looked on. They did not wait until that Tuesday, however, to begin their own celebration. As soon as the ceremonies were over on Sunday night, they invited the Wests for pizza at one of their favorite hangouts, Farouati’s on the nearby Billrothstraβe. The next day they resumed academic work. The rest of the semester contributed significantly to establishing the contours of future programs in Vienna.  In keeping with the goals expressed in the dedication speeches, the Wests and their students undertook two group trips, one to Jena, Germany, for language immersion with individual homestays, and one to Prague, where Dr. Ottersböck drew on her mastery of the Czech language, history, and culture to illuminate the art and architecture of the city. Students also embarked on individual and small group travel, seemingly intent on affirming their classmate Samuel Turner’s assertion that learning encompassed more than “sitting in a classroom.” That November, however, the Flow House displayed one last indication that its recent transformation from a near architectural ruin to learning center was not yet complete. On Monday, November 8, the electric doorbell rang, and an agitated neighbor announced that the chimneys of the Flow House were spewing soot onto his house. Allmayer-Beck was immediately informed, and he promised to take care of the matter. That evening the Viennese police arrived, asked the question “What are you burning here?”, and promptly shut down the furnace. For the next four days the house’s occupants endured the cold until a massive extraction device was used to remove several decades’ accumulation of sludge from the oil storage tank. Not surprisingly, that weekend turned out to be a particularly popular one for student travel. Over the Christmas and New Year holidays the university began the laborious work of converting the house from oil to natural gas heating.⁵⁸

Wake Forest’s first group of Flow House students returned to the United States in December 1999.  In December 2019, many of them, with spouses and children, would return to Vienna with Dr. West to mark the twentieth anniversary of their Austrian experience.  Meanwhile, the program prospered as a succession of Wake Forest professors from a host of academic disciplines—German, Russian, music, history, psychology, biology, politics, business, religious studies, and health and exercise sciences—brought their own talents and their students for semester-length stays in the fall and spring.  The Flow House also hosted many shorter summer programs, and for about a decade, until the press of academic programs became too great to continue it, there was a time each summer when the house doubled as a hotel for Wake Forest students and alumni who were travelling through Vienna.  New excursion sites were also added.  Prague remained a favorite, but Budapest, Kraków, Milan, Graz, and, most recently Trieste—each one with its own rich history and connection with Vienna—became destinations for weekend trips.  New professors from Vienna joined the resident faculty, and new courses, most notably photography and economics, expanded the original offerings of the semester programs.  Leadership of the program also changed over time.  In 2009 Dr. West retired from the university and Dr. David Levy (Music) replaced him as Flow House director.  Dr. Rebecca Thomas (German and Russian) took Dr. Levy’s place in 2018, and she in turn, will give way to Dr. Grant McAllister (German and Russian) in the summer of 2025.  That same summer will also mark a change in local management when Mag. Martina Anghel will fully replace Günter Haika as the on-site manager of the house.  Thoroughly renovated in the summer of 2024, the house and its new team are superbly placed to continue the academic mission that Thomas Hearn and Vic and Roddy Flow embraced a quarter century ago.  May the transformational process that they envisioned continue.

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1. This short work rests on the support of a great many people.  My thanks go to Kline Harrison for entrusting me with the research and writing of the manuscript. Within the Wake Forest community writ large, Leon Corbett, Vic Flow, Laura Hearn, Tom Hearn III, Will Hearn, Christoph Nostitz, Drewry Nostitz, Reid Morgan, Bill Sides, Larry West, and Susie West patiently answered questions and endured interviews. Also at Wake Forest, Melissa Combes, Emily Houlditch, Kathy Shields, and Leigh Stanfield provided research material and facilitated interviews. In Vienna, Martina Anghel, Dietmar Friesenegger, Günter Haika, and my collaborator, Renate Leeb, were instrumental in the rediscovery of the history of the house. In Atlanta, Vernon Egger, my colleague from days gone by at Georgia Southern University, lent his editing skills to the manuscript.  Finally, my thanks to my wife, Rebecca Thomas, who has been with this project from the beginning. Without her, I would have largely missed the Austrian experience. ↩︎
2. The current administrative district (Bezirk) of Währing was formed from the villages of Währing, Weinhaus, Gersthof, and Pötzleinsdorf.  Döbling encompassed ten smaller villages including Grinzing, Heiligenstadt, and Nuβdorf.  Both districts were formally incorporated into the city of Vienna in 1892. ↩︎
3. The Türkenschanz is usually associated with the better-known siege of 1683 rather than the one of 1529.  The oldest written reference to it, however, stems from 1649. See Erich Stöger, “150 Jahre Wiener Cottage Verein” in Heidi Brunnbauer and Erich Stöger, Das Wiener Cottage:  Der Traum vom gesunden Wohnen (Wiener Cottage Verein), 28. ↩︎
4. The following two paragraphs are drawn from Stöger, “150 Jahre Wiener Cottage Verein,” 21-46. ↩︎
5. The two archdukes were Otto (1865-1906) and Leopold Ferdinand Salvator (1868-1935). Stöger, “150 Jahre Wiener Cottage Verein,” 35-36. ↩︎
6. For personal details of Müller’s life and an overview of his architectural work, see the article “Hermann Müller” in Architektenlexikon Wien 1770-1945,  https://www.architektenlexikon.at/de/1187.htm, accessed August 8, 2024.  This and the following three paragraphs are from Hermann Müller, “Das Wiener Cottage, seine Entstehung und Entwicklung,” in Zeitschrift des Ősterreichischen Ingenieur- und Architekten- Vereines, Nr. 5, 1906, 75-77. ↩︎
7. The historicist movement in Central Europe was based on an eclectic imitation of past architectural forms. The mélange of neoclassical, neogothic, neo-renaissance, and neo-baroque buildings that line Vienna’s Ringstraβe is perhaps the best embodiment of its anachronistic spirit. ↩︎
8. Müller, “Das Wiener Cottage,” 76; also “Villa Otto Schleiffelder in Wien” in Wiener Bauten-Album. Beilage zur Wiener Bauindustrie-Zeitung, Nr. 8 and 9, June 1, 1899, 22. ↩︎
9. “Hermann Müller” in Architektenlexicon Wien 1770-1945,  https://www.architektenlexikon.at/de/1187.htm, accessed October 18, 2024. ↩︎
10. Otto Schleiffelder (1846-1909) is the first of a host of people who populate this narrative.  In addition to the sources cited, information about their comings and goings, their births, weddings, and deaths, is summarized in the Flow House Collection, File 50.  Currently in the possession of the author, the collection will be given to Wake Forest University Special Collections in the summer of 2025. ↩︎
11. The Banat is a region on the middle Danube at the juncture of Romania, Serbia, and Hungary and is currently divided unequally between the three countries.  Otto Schleiffelder’s wedding certificate and baptismal records for his children list the village of Albrechtsflor or Albrechtsflorini (the current municipality of Teremia Mică, Romania) as his birthplace.  Schleiffelder’s death and burial certificates list the neighboring town of Groβ-Kikinda or Nagykikinda (today’s Kikinda, Serbia) as the birthplace.  At the time of his birth, Albrechtsflor was a Sprachinsel or “language enclave” inhabited almost exclusively by German speakers, the so-called Donauschwaben or Banatschwaben, whose ancestors had settled there in the 18^th century.  Roughly twenty percent of the population of Groβ-Kikinda would have been German speaking. ↩︎
12. For a catalog from circa 1900 see “Schleiffelder, Otto: Preis-Verzeichnis der gangbarsten optischen, physikalischen, mathematischen und meteorologischen Instrumente,”  https://www.digital.wienbibliothek.at/wbrobv/content/pageview/3652701, accessed October 16, 2024. ↩︎
13. Emilie Schleiffelder (née Anger, 1861-1953) was born in New York. At the time of her wedding with Otto in 1885 she was living in neighboring Hernals (17^th District).  The four children were Emil (1886-1934), René (1887-1954), Ottilia or “Tilla” (1889-1954), and Erich (1893-1968). ↩︎
14. This description is based on “Villa Otto Schleiffelder in Wien,” in Wiener Bauten-Album, Beilage zur Wiener Bauindustrie-Zeitung, Nr. 8 and 9, June 1, 1899, 26-27, and Roland Tusch, “Zur Architektur im Cottage,” in Brunnbauer and Stöger, Das Wiener Cottage, 198-200. ↩︎
15. These streets were named after three Viennese notables. Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer (1833-1894) was a noted Viennese architect. Friedrich Dittes (1829-1896) was an Austro-German educator. Gustav Tschermak von Seysenegg (1836-1927) was a mineralogist at the University of Vienna and an early advocate of and resident in the Cottage Viertel. The mineral Tschermakite recognizes his scientific contributions.  ↩︎
16. The architectural footprint of the house was 325 square meters or approximately 3,800 square feet. Discounting the attic, this would have allowed for just over 11,000 square feet of usable space for the family and servants. ↩︎
17. The article “Villa Otto Schleiffelder in Wien” attributes the sculpture to a Fritz Kauffungen, a person who does not appear in the Lehmann’s address books for Vienna. The statue bears a striking resemblance to a work entitled “Weibliche Figur mit Blütenkranz” that is pictured in Olga Stieglitz and Gerhard Zeillinger, Der Bildhauer Richard Kauffungen (1854-1942) (Peter Lang, 2008), 426. For access to Lehmann’s, a listing of Viennese addresses between 1859 and 1942, see https://www.digital.wienbibliothek.at/periodical/structure/5311. ↩︎
18. For contemporary visits to the observatory, some of which included a preliminary visit to the Währinger Brewery Restaurant, see “Besichtigung der Sternwarte,” Der Gebirgsfreund. May 1902. Volume XIII, Nr. 5, 59; “Bericht über die Besichtigung der k.k. Universitäts-Sternwarte,” Drogisten Zeitung, February 6, 1914, Volume XXIX, Nr. 5, 48. ↩︎
19. For the inspiration and implementation of the Cottage-Eislauf-Verein, see Stöger, “150 Jahre Wiener Cottage Verein,” 123-134 and Heidi Brunnbauer, “Das social Gefüge im Cottage” 230-231, both in Brunnbauer and Stöger, Das Wiener Cottage. ↩︎
20. As the name suggests, the St. Wolfgang branch was one of several yachting clubs that were linked through a central parent organization or Stammverein in Vienna.  For the Schleiffelder family’s participation at St. Wolfgang, see Union-Yacht-Club Miltgliederliste und Yachtregister, Vienna, 1908, also “UYC Wolfgangsee Geschichte,” https://www.uyc-wolfgangsee.at/index.php/der-club/geschichte, accessed October 23, 2024.
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21. The two nephews were the sons of Otto’s brother Hugo (d. 1917) and were involved with their father in a Viennese livestock trading company, Schleiffelder & Co.  ↩︎
22. Schleiffelder’s misfortune was covered in many of the major newspapers within Austria. An example of the earliest reporting can be found in the Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung, August 20, 1909, 6. ↩︎
23. Wiener Abendpost. Beilage zur Wiener Zeitung, August 20, 1909, 2. ↩︎
24. Neue Freie Presse, August 20, 10. ↩︎
25. (Linzer) Tages-Post, August 31, 1909; Kaiserlich-Königlich Union-Yacht-Club. Mitgliederliste und Yachtregister 1913, Vienna 1913. ↩︎
26. See Grazer Tagblatt, October 20, 1914, 19. ↩︎
27. Neue Freie Presse, June 5,1921. Mehmed Emine Bey disappears from the record almost immediately. The couple’s name is also sometimes rendered as Emin Bey. ↩︎
28. Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung, August 24, 1925. ↩︎
29. The story of “Princess” Isthar Djalileh Bairam was carried in several Austrian newspapers in August and September 1925 and is too bizarre to be recounted in full here. A somewhat bemused summary of the case and its inconclusive results can be found in Die Stunde, December 17, 1925. For the 900,000 Kronen pastry bill, see Neues Wiener Tagblatt, August 25, 1925, 18. ↩︎
30. Mathilde’s life as a socialite continued in the 3^rd District.  Viennese newspapers from the late 1920s and early 1930s commented on her fashionable appearance at concerts and soirees. Her flirtation with the would-be rich of Viennese society that the affair with “Princess” Djalileh portended continued as well, and in 1929 she was called as a witness after the murder of a real princess, Djidji (Gigi) Mouheb, the daughter of an Egyptian diplomat, by a spurned and desperate lover, Felix Garten. For this see, among others, Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung, June 6, 1929. Mathilde Bauer Lazarus Emine Bey died in a housefire in December 1939 when her clothing caught fire after coming too close to an open heater.  Her daughter, Alice, and her son-in-law, Rudolf Kühnberg, died in the spring of 1942 after being deported by the Nazis from Vienna to the Polish ghetto of Izbica.
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31. Gustav (1861-1949) was born in Budin an der Eger (today’s Budyně nad Ohří, Czech Republic), and Nelly and her younger sister Gertrude were born in Leitmeritz (today’s Litoměřice, Czech Republic) in 1899 and 1901 respectively. Taussig’s wife Josefa was born in Budapest in 1878. There are two listings for a Gustav Taussig in the Lehmann’s Addressbuch for 1926, one a long-established provider of paper products, the other (Nelly’s father) listed for the first time as a leather manufacturer with a home address in the 3^rd District at Sebastianplatz 7. Curiously, this is the same address listed for Emine Bey after she sold the villa, suggesting strongly that she and the Taussigs simply switched residences. ↩︎
32. This process is described briefly in Thomas Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl: Vienna under Hitler (Oxford University Press, 2005), 88-92, and more thoroughly in Tina Walzer and Stephan Templ, Unser Wien:“Arisierung” auf österreichisch (Berlin, Aufbau-Verlag, 2001). ↩︎
33. Gabriele Margarete Maria Günter (b. 1896) married Hugo Schedlbauer (b. 1898) in 1928 in a ceremony at St. Stephens’s Cathedral. Hugo’s family lived in the Währing side of the Cottage Viertel at Hasenauerstraβe 31. ↩︎
34. Else Ruppik would eventually join Gustav and Josefa Taussig in Miami after successfully escaping the Nazis and securing passage through neutral Portugal in the early 1940s. ↩︎
35. For the wartime experiences of the Cottage Viertel see Stöger, “150 Jahre Wiener Cottage Verein,” 86-89. For Schedlbauer’s claim to damages, see Ősterreichisches Staatsarchiv, M.Abt 119. A 41 291/19. Bezirk (Akt der Vermögensentziehungsanmeldung (VeAV) lautend auf Namen Nelly Adler). ↩︎
36. For the disposition of the suit, see Ősterreichisches Staatsarchiv, M.Abt 119. A 41 291/19. Bezirk (Akt der Vermögensentziehungsanmeldung (VeAV) lautend auf Namen Nelly Adler). ↩︎
37. The third possibility, unlikely though it may be, has fueled speculation that the house was used at some time as a CIA detention center, a theory reinforced by the discovery of a system of large hooks mounted on a track attached to the basement ceiling when Wake Forest personnel inspected the building in 1998. Likely these hooks were vestiges of the basement’s original use by the Schleiffelder family as a gymnasium or Turnsaal. Not surprisingly, the hooks did not survive the ensuing renovation of the house. ↩︎
38. Interview with Leon Corbett and Reid Morgan, November 15, 2024. “Senator No” also knew how to use the levers of power to speed matters along when the occasion warranted it.  In the mid-1980s, when South Dakota Senator Larry Pressler balked at the final transfer of property title of Wake Forest’s Venetian study center, the Casa Artom, from the State Department to the university, Helms, then Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee and a Wake Forest alumnus, reportedly informed him: “There will be no more bridges in South Dakota until Wake Forest University gets the house.” The logjam was broken, and the university got the title. ↩︎
39. It is difficult to date precisely when this “Eureka” moment occurred.  Hearn’s longtime friend, Christoph Nostitz, a native of Vienna who accompanied him on several trips to Austria, remembers that the clarifying moment occurred on a homeward bound flight from Vienna. Hearn’s son Will suggests that the decision flowed naturally from his father’s accumulated experiences with the city that are described below. See Interview with Laura Hearn, Christoph Nostitz, and Drewry Nostitz, November 21, 2024, and Interview with Will Hearn, January 7, 2025. ↩︎
40. Thomas K. Hearn to Johannes Nostitz-Rieneck, March 17, 1997, Wake Forest University, Thomas K. Hearn, Jr. Papers, “International Vienna,” Folder 2; Interview with Will Hearn, January 7. ↩︎
41. This paragraph is based on Vic Flow’s written responses to a questionnaire that were returned to me on November 29, 2024. ↩︎
42. Thomas K. Hearn to Johannes Nostitz-Rieneck, March 17, 1997, in Hearn Papers, “International Vienna,” Folder 2. ↩︎
43. Copy of email from John P. Anderson to Christoph Nostitz, February 2, 1998, in Hearn Papers, “International Vienna,” Folder 2. ↩︎
44. A copy of the contract is available in Flow House Collection, File 36, Flow House Legal Documents Contracts. ↩︎
45. See Antrag auf Genehmigung nach dem Wiener Ausländergrunderwerbsgesetz, June 22, 1998, in Flow House Collection, File 36, Flow House Legal Documents Contracts.
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46. Estimates and contract negotiations are detailed in Flow House Collection, File 38, Nemecek. ↩︎
47. Fax from Leon H. Corbett, Jr. to Max Josef Allmayer-Beck, October 12, 1998, in Flow House Collection, File 38, Nemecek. ↩︎
48. For these developments see Flow House Collection, File 5, Financial Records 99-98 (Start up); also interviews with Larry and Susie West, November 1, 2024, and Bill Sides, November 11, 2024. ↩︎
49. One contractor inadvertently illustrated the gulf between American and Austrian expectations and practices by opining that one professional washing machine and one dryer for fifteen students was enough. Flow House Collection, File 5, Financial Records 99-98 (Start up), Projekt: Wake Forest University Renovierung, December 18, 1998. ↩︎
50. Interview with Larry and Susie West, November 1, 2024. ↩︎
51. For the original estimates see the correspondence of Nemecek & Sohn, March 18, 1998, in Flow House Collection, File 38, Nemecek. For the renovation costs, see summary of statements in Memorandum, Bill Sides to Robert Pompey, July 6, 2000, in Flow House Collection, File 7, Flow House: Financial 01-00. ↩︎
52. Interview with Larry and Susie West, November 1, 2024. ↩︎
53. For this and other items listed below, see the business statement from Christoph Wickl to Bill Sides, Feb. 9, 2000, Flow House Collection, File 6, Financial Records and Correspondence [00-99]. One suspects that the greater part of the assembly time was spent addressing the Ikea furniture. The one immediate problem with the selection of North Carolina furniture was the incompatibility of European bed linens with American beds. Solving this would involve periodic replenishment using human couriers from the United States, a practice that continues to this day. ↩︎
54. Wake Forest University Printing Service, Dec. 15, 1999. Flow House Collection, File 6, Financial Records and Correspondence [00-99]. ↩︎
55. The following six paragraphs on the Fall 1999 Semester in Vienna rely heavily on my interview with Larry and Susie West on November 1, 2024. On a personal note, my wife, Dr. Rebecca Thomas, our four-year old Charlie, and I were the first house guests about two and a half weeks later.  The experience of driving to the front gate on Gustav-Tschermak-Gasse and seeing the beaming faces of the Wests did not disappoint. ↩︎
56. Haider’s party, the FPŐ (Freiheitliche Partei Ősterreichs or Austrian Freedom Party) did well in the election, garnering over 25 percent of the popular vote, but in the post-election negotiations Haider’s hopes to become Chancellor were frustrated, and he resigned as national leader of the FPŐ. ↩︎
57. The following account is based upon material in Flow House Collection, File 10, Vienna House, Dedication Ceremonies, Oct. 1999, and on the article in Wake Forest Magazine Volume 47, Number 2, December 1999. ↩︎
58. Given the age of the house, the transformation was complicated.  Negotiations over costs and responsibilities were still going on in the spring of 2000. For this see the lengthy correspondence between Bill Sides, contractor Wickl, and Allmayer-Beck in Flow House Collection, File 6, Financial Records and Correspondence [00-99]. ↩︎