love her so and want to see her growing up.’
Hilde’s anxiety for her daughter was exacerbated by her mother’s excessive fears. Since arriving in London in August 1938, Hilde’s mother and father Mimi and Hugo Spiel had seemed more like children than parents and Hilde felt burdened by their sudden helplessness and by their continual presence in her already crowded home. She was aware, though, that Mimi was entitled to hysteria. In Vienna, Mimi had been as warm, charming and elegant as her daughter. She was temperamentally cheerful but easily broken, and in the past two years the Spiels had endured their share of the personal pain and impersonal history which Bowen saw as clouding the faces of exiles from the continent. In April 1938 they had watched in disbelief as thousands of Austrians apparently welcomed the Nazis into Vienna. They had then made a dangerous and circuitous journey to London, losing their livelihood and possessions in the process.
Hilde and Peter had been trying to persuade Mimi and Hugo to leave Austria since 1937. They themselves saw exile as the only possible course of action, even for non-Jews such as Peter. In a broadcast which Hilde described as encapsulating ‘exactly how I felt at that time’, Peter later stated that emigration from a totalitarian country was necessary because it rendered impossible the retreat into a false compromise. If, he said, a person blocks a path for himself ‘of which he knows that outwardly it is convenient, but inwardly will take him to hell, then this cannot be in vain’.
Hugo ( left ) and Mimi Spiel in Austria before the war
For Hilde’s parents, exile was vital not just morally but practically. Although they had both converted to Catholicism, they were racially Jewish; it was evident to Hilde long before it became evident to her parents that they would be in danger in the event of a Nazi takeover. Spending Christmas with the Spiels in 1937, Peter begged them to leave the country, but Mimi protested that she could not bear to abandon her friends or her beloved suburb of Döbling. ‘The SS will march through Döbling,’ Peter insisted; ‘your friends will betray you, or they will be in dreadful danger themselves.’ By the time the Spiels had admitted the truth of Peter’s claims, it had become much harder to leave. ‘It is horrible and unbearable,’ Hilde wrote in her diary as she learnt the news about the Anschluss in April. ‘My parents are in the line of fire. The devil is in charge.’ That June Ferdinand Kuhn, the American foreign correspondent in London, promised to help Hilde by granting her parents an American affidavit. But it was not clear that they would be able to get out. ‘At night I dreamt that my father was brought to me half thrashed to death at the border,’ she wrote. ‘I saw all, his body full of wounds and blood.’
By September 1938, the Spiels had in fact managed to get out of Austria, and Hilde and Peter rushed to Bandol in France to meet them. But reaching Bandol on 10 September, Hilde learnt that her parents were stranded in Zurich with no money, having been refused entry to France. She sent the last of her own money and returned to London, where her parents finally arrived, exhausted, on 19 September 1938. Hilde led her fearful mother around the town, frightened by the news of Hitler’s increasingly forceful encroaches on Czechoslovakia. They waited anxiously for the impending war, and then felt personally let down by the British when Chamberlain signed the Munich agreement on 29 September. ‘The Czechs are betrayed,’ Hilde wrote in her diary. ‘There will be no war. Should one not leave Europe?’ She later recalled that ‘if we ever experienced England in a moment of shame, then it was on the day of Neville Chamberlain’s return from his last meeting with Hitler . . . The jubilation in the land, the headlines about this illusory promise distressed us greatly.’
A year later the war which Hilde had
Hilde’s anxiety for her daughter was exacerbated by her mother’s excessive fears. Since arriving in London in August 1938, Hilde’s mother and father Mimi and Hugo Spiel had seemed more like children than parents and Hilde felt burdened by their sudden helplessness and by their continual presence in her already crowded home. She was aware, though, that Mimi was entitled to hysteria. In Vienna, Mimi had been as warm, charming and elegant as her daughter. She was temperamentally cheerful but easily broken, and in the past two years the Spiels had endured their share of the personal pain and impersonal history which Bowen saw as clouding the faces of exiles from the continent. In April 1938 they had watched in disbelief as thousands of Austrians apparently welcomed the Nazis into Vienna. They had then made a dangerous and circuitous journey to London, losing their livelihood and possessions in the process.
Hilde and Peter had been trying to persuade Mimi and Hugo to leave Austria since 1937. They themselves saw exile as the only possible course of action, even for non-Jews such as Peter. In a broadcast which Hilde described as encapsulating ‘exactly how I felt at that time’, Peter later stated that emigration from a totalitarian country was necessary because it rendered impossible the retreat into a false compromise. If, he said, a person blocks a path for himself ‘of which he knows that outwardly it is convenient, but inwardly will take him to hell, then this cannot be in vain’.
Hugo ( left ) and Mimi Spiel in Austria before the war
For Hilde’s parents, exile was vital not just morally but practically. Although they had both converted to Catholicism, they were racially Jewish; it was evident to Hilde long before it became evident to her parents that they would be in danger in the event of a Nazi takeover. Spending Christmas with the Spiels in 1937, Peter begged them to leave the country, but Mimi protested that she could not bear to abandon her friends or her beloved suburb of Döbling. ‘The SS will march through Döbling,’ Peter insisted; ‘your friends will betray you, or they will be in dreadful danger themselves.’ By the time the Spiels had admitted the truth of Peter’s claims, it had become much harder to leave. ‘It is horrible and unbearable,’ Hilde wrote in her diary as she learnt the news about the Anschluss in April. ‘My parents are in the line of fire. The devil is in charge.’ That June Ferdinand Kuhn, the American foreign correspondent in London, promised to help Hilde by granting her parents an American affidavit. But it was not clear that they would be able to get out. ‘At night I dreamt that my father was brought to me half thrashed to death at the border,’ she wrote. ‘I saw all, his body full of wounds and blood.’
By September 1938, the Spiels had in fact managed to get out of Austria, and Hilde and Peter rushed to Bandol in France to meet them. But reaching Bandol on 10 September, Hilde learnt that her parents were stranded in Zurich with no money, having been refused entry to France. She sent the last of her own money and returned to London, where her parents finally arrived, exhausted, on 19 September 1938. Hilde led her fearful mother around the town, frightened by the news of Hitler’s increasingly forceful encroaches on Czechoslovakia. They waited anxiously for the impending war, and then felt personally let down by the British when Chamberlain signed the Munich agreement on 29 September. ‘The Czechs are betrayed,’ Hilde wrote in her diary. ‘There will be no war. Should one not leave Europe?’ She later recalled that ‘if we ever experienced England in a moment of shame, then it was on the day of Neville Chamberlain’s return from his last meeting with Hitler . . . The jubilation in the land, the headlines about this illusory promise distressed us greatly.’
A year later the war which Hilde had
Similar Books
![Espino, Stacey - Hardcore Cowboys [Ride 'em Hard 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)](https://fs.ageofbook.com/582308/thumbs/152x264/espino-stacey-hardcore-cowboys-ride-em-hard-1-siren-publishing-menage-amour.jpg)
