Anton’s mother
Thanks to a tip from its author (thanks Christian) a great biog at filmportal.de, when put through an internet translation mangle (my German is still schlechte) seems to confirm an interesting bit of information about AW.
Many websites describe him as ‘half-Jewish’ which as I understood it implied that his father was Jewish, his mother not - although the concept of matrilineal descent in Judasim is not cut and dried!
Anyhow, it seems his mother was called Gisela Rose Cohn. Cohn (or Cohen) really could hardly be more Jewish, so it seems that his father is the non-Jewish parent. Whether this ‘officially’ makes AW Jewish, rather than ‘half’, I’m not sure - even if I was Jewish I doubt it would be - and I’m not sure how important the difference is.
However, it’s very interesting to find out a tiny bit more about his parents, and - while also learning about the intensely brewing activity and thought in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna with its great Jewish artists and burgeoning anti-semitism, - start to assemble the environment he was born into.
