Berta Zuckerkandl - Gottfried Kunwald: Briefwechsel 1928--1938

A hitherto completely unknown correspondence between Berta Zuckerkandl (1864 - 1945) and Gottfried Kunwald (1869 - 1938), the financial advisor to the Austrian Federal Chancellor Ignaz Seipel, provides a new perspective on the life of the famous salonière. The texts - moving letters from the years 1928 to 1938 - show Berta Zuckerkandl as a caring mother who has to witness her son's financial ruin. They show a woman who often does not know how to afford the most basic things in life, who lives with friends to save money and who has to rent out her apartment in order to survive. The thoughts of suicide, the helpless lists of debts or the consideration of going into an old people's home are touching, which do not correspond to the images conveyed in the literature Eminence" behind the powerful of the time. In March 1938 he committed suicide.