Repossessing thePast? Property,Memory and Austrian Jewish Narrative Histories LISA SILVERMAN* Tale University In his memoir Last Waltz in Vienna (1981), Austrian ?migr? George Clare describes his family's apartments and furnishings almost as lovingly as he does his parents and relatives. In explaining his emotional attachment to the Viennese interiors of his youth, Clare notes that his urge to visit his grandmother's apartment the day after theAnschluss 'shows not only that the old lady meant quite a lot tome, but also that I saw in her and her surroundings a permanence more firmly established than that of our own home'.1 In describing the furnishings, Clare artfully elaborates upon them down to the last detail, including their 'white wood with carved scrolls, flowers and bows' and the 'inlaid wood and ormolu-decorated drawers and corners, as well as a big reproduction of a side-board for the dining room' and 'a softblue curtain with embroidered gold leaves'.2 After the Anschluss, Clare's parents made considerable efforts to ship their household items to a warehouse in Paris. The couple found refuge in a small village in the south of France, while Clare secured a place inEngland. Though in immediate danger, his parents focused their energy on ensuring the ability of their son to reclaim the family furniture. In fitful, anguished letters, Clare's mother pleaded with him to remember the warehouse number. In a poignantly recounted scene, Clare describes a note hastily scribbled by his father and thrown from the train as he was being deported, so desperately anxious was he to enable his son to retrieve the furnishings. The lastwritten words Clare possesses from his father are: beg you to pay the depot rental of fr. 215 per month [. . .]. If possible I want to save everything formy son'.3 * In writing this article I am deeply grateful for the support of Ravit Reichman, whose ideas on the importance of property and law to literary analysis provided much inspiration, and Elana Shapira, whose insight benefited me enormously. 1 George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna. The Rise and Destruction of a Family 1842-1942 (New York, 1989)5 P- 186. The text first appeared inGerman as Das waren dieMaars (Berlin: Ullstein, 1980). The English-language version followed a year later (London: Macmillan, 1981) and in 2001 the German textwas reissued under the title Letzter Walzer in Wien (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2001). 2 Clare, Last Waltz, P- 108. 3 Ibid., p. 247. LISA SILVERMAN !39 Clare's parents perished inAuschwitz, and he never recovered his family's household items.While the real tragedy is themurder of his parents, Clare's memoir also illuminates the deeper emotional significance of property to memory. Yet, the property lost to Jewish Nazi victims and their heirs as a result of Aryanizations (the taking over of Jewish property by Aryans') is seldom a central topic in either literary or historical explorations of this theme. Indeed, issues of the confiscation of real estate and material household items are not usually discussed in the context of post-war literature, but rather are left to historical investigations, which tend to frame the loss largely in terms of monetary value, without consideration of property's important theoretical components. This article will argue that a discussion of both the theoretical and historical implications of property, along with itsconfiscation and restitution, will contribute to a deeper understanding of the construction of Jewish identity inAustria both before and afterWorld War II. Through literary sources and historical evidence, itwill explore the function of property over time in sparking both individual and collective memory, and show how memory on both levels influenced the construction of Jewish identity in Austria before and after thewar. Difficulties in recovering formerly owned property often paralleled the problems involved in 'recovering' identity for Jews who returned to Austria and for those who remained in exile. Examination of texts by George Clare, Jean Am?ry, Friedrich Torberg, Karl Farkas, and Wolfgang Georg Fischer will demonstrate how Austrian Jewish narratives reflect this complicated matrix of past ownership and recovered identity. I Studies of theHolocaust often focus on the details of the processes leading to the killings, for the loss of property is...