Chapter 16.
During the years of my early childhood, the older sisters and brothers used to joke and kid each other, using the names Stadler, Herzog, while I knew for sure that my name was Spiegel. Of course, they, being older, enjoyed the privilege of knowing many things that I was unaware of and yet, these funny, amusing ways of joshing were intriguing to me, the youngest in the family. I may have asked for an explanation and may have been told that I was too young to understand. As years went by and I could sort out bits and pieces of our family’s life and history, an unusual background, an unusual bit of cultural history revealed itself.
When my Mother was 16 or 17 years old, her parents sent her from the small town Zablotow to the nearby larger town of Kolomija, where one of her mother’s sisters lived. A girl her age, having grown up on an estate, was sent to a bigger place to acquire some of the skills needed for a marriageable girl. In her youth, she got her schooling from a tutor, who was teaching the landowner’s children as well as those of the administrator, my grandfather. Of course, a girl had to learn to sew, to knit, to run a household, to become, eventually, an efficient wife and mother. At home she had no chances of meeting any people, as she lived in a quiet, isolated place. She was surrounded by five brothers and the landowner’s children, who also left for the city to accomplish their education.
In the aunt’s house she became acculturated to life in town and realized how much she would prefer leaving the provincial life. Shortly after, her aunt became her matchmaker. A teacher she knew had a son of marriageable age and thus - enter my Father on the scene. He was the son of a Hebrew teacher, a learned man who had encouraged his sons to engage in business activities, although they were steeped in religious learning from the age of three or four. My Father was a handsome, thoughtful, contemplative man, intent on making a life of his own in a big city. As a traveling salesman he saw places that appealed to him. My Mother had a sharp mind, was handy and capable at whatever she endeavored to accomplish. However, she felt self-conscious because of her appearance. A red birthmark on her chin and left side of her face made her feel "marked," she felt that children would pull on their mother’s dress pointing towards her. She resented the cruelty of her appearance as opposed to her five brothers who had unblemished faces. She mentioned to me once that when her mother was expecting her, a fire broke out in a hay loft and her mother clutched at her own face in a gesture of fright and that was the fire-red set of fingers and hand on her own face. Whether this interpretation had any validity or not - I don’t know - but she believed that to have been the origin of her "red mark."
Needless to say, Mother was happy to marry a man as gentle and good-looking as my Father. They were 23 and 20 years old at their wedding. When the question of settling down arose, they decided on living in Czernovitz, a three-hour train ride from Kolomija. Father was a commercial salesman and on his trips through Galizia and Bukovina he was impressed by the beauty and cleanliness of the big cities Lemberg (Lvov) and Czernovitz. He saw the cultural and societal life as much more satisfying and desirable, life greatly enhanced by an environment of beautiful streets, fine public parks with orchestras playing on summer evenings, extensive school systems and theaters, a fine life compared to the dullness of the small towns, the shtetls without running water or electricity. To paraphrase the song of later years: How can you bring them back to Kolomija once they have seen Czernovitz?
There may have been another strong personal reason for my Father to want to start married life in a different town. He had lost his mother as a very young boy, around the age of eight and did not get along well with his step-mother. She had borne several children and favored her own sons and daughters over the older children of her husband. Father was the youngest of the orphaned ones and suffered most acutely after the loss of his mother.
The wedding ceremony of my parents was performed by a rabbi according to the "laws of Moses and Israel": a glass was shattered by the groom, a "Ketubah" or marriage contract was signed and the rabbi pronounced them husband and wife and they were expected to live happily and be fruitful. At that time, all observant Jewish couples were married in religious ceremonies.
The young couple moved to Czernovitz right away, in the year 1904. In fact, they settled on Mehlplatz and lived there until 1935 - except for the years as refugees in Vienna, during the First World War. Father opened a store and stayed in business until 1939.
Coming back to the start of their union, they were fruitful, indeed. After one year of married life Eli was born, in 1905. When Father came to register the birth of his son at City Hall, they requested the marriage certificate of the parents. Since the Austrian authorities did not recognize the religious marriage as officially valid, they insisted on naming the baby by the mother’s maiden name. Thus, he was Elias Stadler, his mother’s son, father not being acknowledged.
Not much attention was paid to that fact and life went on. About a year and a half later Bertha (Betty) was born. Upon registration of this baby, the clerk accepted the fact that my parents were married and she was granted the name of the father - Spiegel. The same procedure worked in Gertie’s case - her name was Gusta Spiegel and life went on more or less merrily.
However, in 1910 another son was born, Bernhard. In vain did my Father plead with the clerk in charge of registration. That one started out with endless questions - whether my parents were officially married at City Hall; whether my Father’s parents had been officially married, etc. He reached the following decision: this child’s name should be Herzog, my Father’s mother’s maiden name. Home he went, puzzled and upset since both his sons did not carry his name; only his daughters did.
I guess, life had to go on and times were hard, what with four small children and Father struggling to make a living and Mother, forever busy with a growing family and rumors of war gnawing at people’s nerves constantly. Before the onset of the First World War there were constant rumblings of discontent within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the Balkans. The problem of the children being named Stadler, Spiegel and Herzog were not of paramount importance at the moment; they were too young for school yet.
However, time passed and the war started and eventually my parents fled before the Russian invasion, going West through Hungary toward Vienna. The older children went to elementary school and Eli and Betty were placed in the same grade, despite the difference in age. Girls sat on one side of the classroom and boys on the other. Elias Stadler and Bertha Spiegel were just two refugee children and even the teacher was not aware that they were brother and sister.
The others went to first grade and kindergarten. All four did their best half a day in school and stood in line for food the other half.
When the war was finally over, the family returned to Czernovitz. The store had been looted, the apartment ransacked but life had to be resumed in an unusual situation. The Romanian authorities took over the province of the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire and people were supposed to register and apply for citizenship in the Kingdom of Romania. At that juncture, my Father decided to consult a lawyer about the tangled, nonsensical family situation. Of course, our family was not unique; most Jewish families were in the same predicament. The Romanians, just like the Austrians, did not acknowledge a religious marriage as valid in civil matters. The legal advice given went as follows: "Go to the civil authorities and get married officially and then - adopt all your children legally."
Thus, my parents got married in 1919 in front of a judge, after 15 years of married life an after the birth of six children. The children were all legally adopted shortly after because, according to civil laws they were all illegitimate.
There was joy and merriment on Mehlplatz 3, for everybody was finally and officially named Spiegel and Father was legally the proud parent of two sons, who were previously named Stadler and Herzog. When I, the youngest, was born, all those entanglements had already been solved. The parents were married inside and outside of religion. The parents had been blessed by a rabbi and fifteen years later, by a judge; my name of Spiegel did not have to be argued about; I was a genuine Romanian citizen, no cross-over from Austria. Seemingly all official hurdles had been removed after the First World War. Nobody could have surmised, at the time, that my legal wranglings would be even more complicated as I grew up. At age 18, my Romanian citizenship was denied to me and also to my parents by the incoming Fascist regime of Goga-Cuza.
Coming back to where I started: "Wasn’t it confusing to hear the older siblings joke? You, you are a Stadler; no, I am a Herzog, said Bernie, and that is more than you’ll ever be." Herzog, in German means "duke," a title of nobility, highly prized in the Austro-Hungarian empire. It took me a long time to understand those jokes and puns, but they were only partially a laughing matter. They were complications of Jewish life. We often preferred to joke and poke fun at situations which were tough to bear, but "if you wouldn’t laugh, you’d have to hang yourself" as the Ukrainian proverb says.