My Great Uncle
Fred Schwab | Publication Date: 1994 (not verified)
I first met my great uncle (the brother of my grandmother) when I was a child in his and my home town, Frankfurt/Main. He came from America to visit his family almost every other year. His coming visit created a happy activity in our family and particularly for us children, who were fascinated with the idea that here came a man from the other side of the ocean, in far-away America. We children were being readied in our finest Sunday clothes and we were also instructed in how we had to behave in order to leave as good an impression in the eye of the visitor as possible.
We addressed him as Uncle Albert when we visited him in the home of his sister, our grandmother. I remember that one of us was dispatched to the railroad station to buy the New York Herald newspaper and handed the paper to him so that he could keep abreast of what was happening in America while he was traveling. We, the three Schwab children, linked these visits — in spite of the strict instructions that our mother and governess instilled in us — simply because he was a very friendly person and made it easy for us to have some conversation. We were impressed with his easy and relaxed demeanor and intrigued by the idea that this man lived in far-away America.
Later, difficult times befell us due to the takeover of the government by the Nazis. They began almost instantly when Hitler became chancellor (January 30, 1933) to persecute the so-called non-Aryan (i.e., Jewish) people. In the first few years of Nazi government we were still hopeful these actions would eventually diminish and that the general German population would not allow Hitler to do the very opposite and increase, year by year, the difficulties of continuing our life in Germany.
By the year 1937, our family decided that I, as the youngest in the family, should be the first one to leave our homeland. I had completed my apprenticeship and had nothing else to bind me to remaining at home. Our family looked to “Uncle Albert” as the person who would help us with this new plan of emigration; and looking back, I can say that he saved my life. Letters and telephone calls confirmed that he was quite willing to give an affidavit in my behalf that would guarantee I did not become a financial burden to the U.S.A. After all the requirements for my immigration were completed, I was still waiting for my immigration number to come up since the quota for immigration into America was oversubscribed and a certain amount of waiting was necessary in most cases.
On June 14, 1937, I arrived in America after a seven-day trans-Atlantic crossing and was received at the pier in Manhattan by my uncle and his wife, Toni. I walked over to him and addressed him as Uncle Albert and his immediate reply was: “Call me Albert,” an act that greatly eased my misgivings about being alone in a strange country in which I knew only four people. Albert discussed with me briefly the financial arrangements he had planned for me that would permit me to live in a rooming house at 310 West 93rd Street and turned me over to a cousin of mine, a lady who had a good position with the New York Times. She helped me to get settled down and arranged for me early on to go to a Works Project Administration night school to learn English. At that time Albert had an apartment in Manhattan and an estate called Topstone Farm in Ridgefield, CT. He frequently invited me to spend weekends with him, his wife, and his wife’s nephew Werner, who had also left Germany although not for any religious or racial reasons. Werner — Warren Van Horne in America — was a few years older than I but we became good friends. Albert’s apartment and country home were full of interesting objects of art from Albert’s many travels to the corners of the world.
Albert himself was once an immigrant to America, and this came about through an interesting circumstance that I will now explain. Albert grew up in Frankfurt as a young man born into a comfortable middle-class milieu. One day his sister Frieda heard that a friend of the family who had been invited to America to work for Albert’s uncle at a bank in New York, did not like it in America and was on his way back to Frankfurt. When my grandmother Frieda heard about this, she had an idea. She talked with her mother, Franziska, who was a sister of the banker in America, and said, “Mama, don’t you think that the opening left by Bernstein leaving his job could be an opportunity for our Albert? Would you please tell your brother?” This suggestion was successful, and Albert went to America to join his uncle, Heinrich Budge, in the Wall Street investment bank Hallgarten & Co.
As a charitable person, Albert supported many charities, financed archaeological diggings in Egypt and other far-away cultures. His travels in this connection were reflected in the furnishings of his apartment and Connecticut home. He was much interested in American Indian art and artifacts and was quite generous in sharing his collection with museums and his family. All of us received some artifacts from his collection during his lifetime, and after his death his wife distributed a number of artifacts among Albert’s family and friends.
I remember that Albert told me that he was planning to set up a Fund that would make it possible to distribute scholarships and grants for Fellows’ projects according to his wish that they be given to men and women of ability and character within the United States and particularly to those whose daily actions appear to be prompted by spiritual motives.