especially as the guide added that ‘other dangers of a less spectacular kind’ such as blasts and splinters could cause more casualties than direct hits. Hilde was also distracted by the anxious screams of her mother, Mimi, who was hysterically frightened by the raids and showed no inclination to mimic the calmness of the surrounding Londoners.
In the preface to her wartime stories, Elizabeth Bowen recalled her awareness throughout the war that compared with those on the continent the British could not be said to suffer. ‘Foreign faces about the London streets had personal pain and impersonal history sealed up behind the eyes.’ For Spiel the Blitz was more difficult than it was for Bowen because whereas Bowen was surrounded by friends and admirers, and was successfully pursuing a glamorous literary career, Spiel was abruptly cut off from friends and from a literary scene in which she had been just beginning to shine.
When Hilde Spiel left Vienna for London in 1936 she was the author of a prize-winning novel, Kati on the Bridge , and was feted and adored in Vienna’s café society. She was a passionate young woman of twenty-five, sustained by illusions and by intense and impulsive love affairs with men who were about to change the world. Everything, including politics, was personal. In 1930 she had joined the socialist torchlit march around the Ringstrasse, pressurising her mother to join her in signing up to the Social Democratic Workers’ Party. But her own party membership was largely the result of a love affair with a socialist newspaper editor and she was prepared to lay aside political commitments when they impinged on more pleasurable aspects of life. Devastated by the brutal defeat of the elected socialists in the Austrian Civil War in February 1934, she became determined to leave Austria. However, she was even more determined to complete her studies first. And in the meantime she enjoyed herself, winning second prize for the best suntan at the local swimming pool that summer.
In her early twenties Hilde took on one brilliant older man after another as her mentor – philosophers, writers, political thinkers – attending their lectures, sometimes accompanying them around Europe, adoring and adored in turn. Writing, loving, trying out herself and life for size, she was sustained by Vienna itself, which provided her with ‘a climate of the most beautiful illusions’; this was a city in which the increasing menace of fascist brutality coincided with a longstanding tradition of courtly chivalry. Hilde’s father Hugo had two deep scars to the left of his chin as a result of youthful duels. Before Hilde’s mentor, the philosopher Moritz Schlick, was shot dead as a Jew in the summer of 1936 he rode a horse each day in Vienna’s Prater. Sometimes the intensity of life in Vienna with its dramas and contradictions became unbearable. Periodically Hilde escaped alone with her skis to the Alps where she threw herself down mountains, forcing herself to achieve more and more exhausting physical feats.
Hilde Spiel ( left ) on the boat on her way to London, 1936; Peter de Mendelssohn, 1939
Shortly before their move to London in 1936 Hilde had accepted Peter de Mendelssohn’s insistent claim that she was destined to be his wife. Two years earlier Peter had arrived in Austria from exile in Paris with an unanswered fan letter from Hilde in his pocket, announcing to friends en route that he was on his way to Vienna where he was to marry a girl called Hilde Spiel. He had been recently liberated from his first marriage after his wife left him to return to her father’s German estate, fed up with the privations of exile in Paris. Hilde was swayed by Peter’s energy and determination; and she had, after all, written that fan letter professing herself to be ‘enchanted’ by his novel a year earlier. A month after Peter’s arrival, she noted in her diary that he was ‘definitely the man for me’. But she
In the preface to her wartime stories, Elizabeth Bowen recalled her awareness throughout the war that compared with those on the continent the British could not be said to suffer. ‘Foreign faces about the London streets had personal pain and impersonal history sealed up behind the eyes.’ For Spiel the Blitz was more difficult than it was for Bowen because whereas Bowen was surrounded by friends and admirers, and was successfully pursuing a glamorous literary career, Spiel was abruptly cut off from friends and from a literary scene in which she had been just beginning to shine.
When Hilde Spiel left Vienna for London in 1936 she was the author of a prize-winning novel, Kati on the Bridge , and was feted and adored in Vienna’s café society. She was a passionate young woman of twenty-five, sustained by illusions and by intense and impulsive love affairs with men who were about to change the world. Everything, including politics, was personal. In 1930 she had joined the socialist torchlit march around the Ringstrasse, pressurising her mother to join her in signing up to the Social Democratic Workers’ Party. But her own party membership was largely the result of a love affair with a socialist newspaper editor and she was prepared to lay aside political commitments when they impinged on more pleasurable aspects of life. Devastated by the brutal defeat of the elected socialists in the Austrian Civil War in February 1934, she became determined to leave Austria. However, she was even more determined to complete her studies first. And in the meantime she enjoyed herself, winning second prize for the best suntan at the local swimming pool that summer.
In her early twenties Hilde took on one brilliant older man after another as her mentor – philosophers, writers, political thinkers – attending their lectures, sometimes accompanying them around Europe, adoring and adored in turn. Writing, loving, trying out herself and life for size, she was sustained by Vienna itself, which provided her with ‘a climate of the most beautiful illusions’; this was a city in which the increasing menace of fascist brutality coincided with a longstanding tradition of courtly chivalry. Hilde’s father Hugo had two deep scars to the left of his chin as a result of youthful duels. Before Hilde’s mentor, the philosopher Moritz Schlick, was shot dead as a Jew in the summer of 1936 he rode a horse each day in Vienna’s Prater. Sometimes the intensity of life in Vienna with its dramas and contradictions became unbearable. Periodically Hilde escaped alone with her skis to the Alps where she threw herself down mountains, forcing herself to achieve more and more exhausting physical feats.
Hilde Spiel ( left ) on the boat on her way to London, 1936; Peter de Mendelssohn, 1939
Shortly before their move to London in 1936 Hilde had accepted Peter de Mendelssohn’s insistent claim that she was destined to be his wife. Two years earlier Peter had arrived in Austria from exile in Paris with an unanswered fan letter from Hilde in his pocket, announcing to friends en route that he was on his way to Vienna where he was to marry a girl called Hilde Spiel. He had been recently liberated from his first marriage after his wife left him to return to her father’s German estate, fed up with the privations of exile in Paris. Hilde was swayed by Peter’s energy and determination; and she had, after all, written that fan letter professing herself to be ‘enchanted’ by his novel a year earlier. A month after Peter’s arrival, she noted in her diary that he was ‘definitely the man for me’. But she
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