Irene Mandl’s portrait and lace collection

In the 2010s, Dr Tom Farrar donated his grandmother’s portrait and lace collection to Te Papa. His grandmother, Irene Mandl (1868-1920), was a member of a prominent Jewish Austrian family in Vienna, Austria.

The portrait of Irene Mandl is by Austrian painter John Quincy Adams (1874-1933). The lace collection comprises several examples of European laces such as Valenciennes, Chantilly, Duchesse, and Belgian laces. Some of the pieces reflect aspects of Mandl’s life, including dress accessories, handkerchiefs (with her initials), and doilies to protect furniture. Such portraits and finely-made textiles often become family heirlooms and are carefully saved and handed down through generations. This collection is particularly interesting for its journey with a Jewish Austrian family escaping Europe to seek refuge in New Zealand on the eve of the Second World War (1939-1945).

Irene Mandl’s daughter, Friederike, her husband Fritz Feuer and their only son Thomas (later Tom, the donor), immigrated to New Zealand in 1939 to escape destruction by the Nazis. They were allowed to take their material possessions with them, including the portrait and lace collection. They arrived in April 1939, and changed their names to Irene and Frederic Farrar.

Tom Farrar (born 1930) never met his grandmother as she died 10 years before he was born, but he remembers his affluent childhood in Vienna and the terrible upheavals when the Nazis invaded Austria on 12 March 1938. He grew up in an extended family in an apartment building owned by his grandfather who was one of the leading doctors in his field in Vienna. The Farrar family had a cook and two servants who lived in, as well as a caretaker/gardener, a washerwoman and a woman who came in to do the ironing. Tom had a live-in nanny, and went to primary school at six.

In the early twentieth century, Vienna was an important centre of Jewish culture with 22 synagogues, over 50 prayer houses, and a range of Jewish libraries, schools, hospitals, clubs and political associations. At the start of 1938 the Jewish population of Austria was around 192,000 people – 4% of the total population – and in Vienna Jews comprised about 9% of the population. By November 1942, however, only 7,000 Jews remained in Austria. Thousands of people were caught up in the maelstrom of war.

Intense Nazi propaganda had been circulating in Austria throughout the 1930s so when German forces marched into Austria on 12 March 1938, many citizens greeted them with enthusiastic support. Austria was incorporated into Germany the next day, and the Anschluss (union) was formalised through a plebiscite in April. Neither Jews nor Roma were allowed to vote.

Anti-Semitic actions and violence escalated quickly, and Jews were attacked, humiliated, and their businesses seized or looted. In addition, anti-Jewish legislation was quickly extended to Austria, initially focussed on expropriation and emigration. Between 1938 and 1940, 117,000 Jews left the country. Systematic mass deportations began in autumn of 1939, and thousands of Jews were deported to ghettos or concentration camps in occupied Poland, Germany and Eastern Europe where the vast majority were murdered. Concentration camps were also established within Austria, where thousands of prisoners were worked to death.

As a young child, Tom was not immediately aware of the full significance of Germany’s invasion of Austria in March 1938. In 2011, he recalled the following experiences:

‘While school continued for me, other changes were taking place. Cars, trams and buses now had to drive on the right instead of the left, which took a while to adjust to. Tanks were seen in the streets, as were the S.S. - the black uniformed Gestapo secret police - and the S.A. - the brown uniformed military. The currency changed from Austrian schillings to German marks.

Our car, precious metals and jewellery were confiscated by the Nazis. Later on we were forced to sell our houses at ridiculously low prices set by the Nazis.

At the end of 1938 my father went away from Vienna for two months. I was told he was on holiday, but eventually discovered that he had been in Dachau - one of the notorious Nazi concentration camps. Fortunately in those early pre-war days some people were released from these on the understanding they would leave the country. My mother's father had died the previous year. My grandparents on my father's side were taken to concentration camps, never to be seen or heard of again.

It was now clear that to survive a rapid exodus from Europe would be necessary. My mother had only ever been in the kitchen to supervise the menus and one day my father said to her "I think it is time you learned how to cook". She went to cooking classes and they had some English tuition for a few weeks. The decision was made that we would emigrate to NZ…. Charles Mandl, born in New Zealand, was a doctor practising in Wellington in the 1930s. He had previously done his OE and visited Vienna to see his relations and had met my parents. He now acted as a sponsor for us to gain an entry permit into New Zealand.

By January 1939 the political situation in Europe was deteriorating. My parents decided that to ensure my safety they would send me out of Austria ahead of themselves. I left Vienna alone, on a children's refugee train to France and then by ship to England. The next three months were spent in London with a wonderful childless philanthropic English couple, who had 8 other refugee children under their care… I attended an ordinary English school. One day the headmistress called me to her office and showed me where New Zealand was on a globe of the world - a tiny dot at the bottom.

My parents finally left Vienna in April 1939, flying to Switzerland and then to London. All their money had by now been confiscated by the Nazis, except a sum of 10 marks each. Fortunately they were allowed to take their furniture and non-confiscated possessions, the sale of which helped us to survive in our early days in New Zealand. In May, we joined the Dutch liner Christiaan Huygens at Southampton, on the first leg of our journey to our new country, 12,000 miles away.

It was an exciting and enjoyable voyage for me. There were constant activities and entertainments for people of all ages. For my parents it was an intermediary period – on the one hand there was the joy of having escaped from Europe, mixed with the sadness of having to leave their homeland and friends. On the other hand, the anxiety of shortly arriving in a new country, far away, about which very little was known. The Nazis had come to an arrangement with the shipping line, that passengers had a set allowance of money per day, paid for prior to departure, and any not spent during the voyage had to be returned to Germany. Fortunately one of the Dutch pursers came to an arrangement with my parents where he credited them with fictitious events, such as buying drinks or frequent visits to the hairdresser, and on disembarkation they were handed a hundred pounds he had accumulated for them….

We arrived in Wellington in July, six and a half weeks after leaving England, sadly to learn that Charles Mandl, our sponsor, had died while we were on route. Less than two months later, on 3 September 1939, Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany and the Second World War had started.

After we arrived, I spent one term at Wellesley College, a private primary school, then on The Terrace, as my parents had been advised that was the thing to do. Nobody had told them how much it cost…. My parents obviously could not afford to keep me at Wellesley College and transferred me to Kelburn School, which was the start of a very happy and relatively fruitful education for me.

Life was pretty hard for my parents for our early years in New Zealand, so whereas I fitted in easily and adapted quickly to living here, it took them much longer. My father’s Austrian architectural qualifications were not accepted in New Zealand. For some years, the only work he could get to start with was as a draughtsman. My mother, who had become an excellent cook, earned a bit of extra money by baking Viennese cakes and making fancy sweets for sale in a local shop. It was not until the 1950s, that my parents could afford to buy a very small car.

I integrated rapidly into the local way of life and assimilated New Zealand sport, particularly rugby and became a devoted follower of the All Blacks…. For my parents it was much harder. Wellington in the 1940s and 50s was…quite a different place culturally, culinarily and in fact in almost all respects, than it is today.’

Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, Inc., n.d. History of the Austrian Jewish Community. Claims Conference website, http://www.claimscon.org/our-work/negotiations/austria/history-of-the-austrian-jewish-community/

Farrar, Tom (August 10, 2011). Talk to Rotary Club Wellington South. Unpublished.

Hormann, Louisa (2017). An uncertain future: Jewish refugee artefacts in New Zealand and their ‘return’ to Germany. Tuhinga 28: 49-61. https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/sites/default/files/tuhinga_28_hormann.pdf