The Sentinel, v.083 no. 06, 1931

              August 7, 1931
When Jewish Knighthood Was In Flower
The Tragedy of a Man Who Did Not Belong
By ALBERT LEITICH
EDITOR'S NOTE
The Story of the Vienna banker Kahn, Ritter von Albest,
unearthed from the Royal Archives of the Hapsburgs, is
more than a human .document concerning one family. It is
the story of the old Jewish families in Vienna who did not
belong when Knighthood was in flower and who are out of
place in the new regime. It is because of The Tragedy
of Ritter von Albest dat the Rothschilds, Oppenheims and
others have remained within the fold.
ABOUT a hundred and thirty years ago
there lived in Vienna a banker by the
name of Kahn, Ritter von Albest. A
Hungarian Jew, originally a wool merchant, he
made his fortune in the time of the Napoleonic
wars-for at that time a man of shrewd common
sense and no excess of scruples could rise as
quickly as many a dubious character has done in
our own war and post-war periods. Just as, a
few years ago, all Europe rushed for the eve-ning
papers to see the quotations on the Zurich
Exchange so the Viennese of the years from
1809 to 1813 rushed to the Nussdorf Terminal
when the "regular" post from Augsburg was
due; and when the postillon, blowing most hor-ribly
through his horn, came through the black
and yellow gate hundreds of anxious voices rose
in a single shout: "The Augsburg news! The
Augsburg news!" And the passengers in the
mail lustily imparted the financial news to the
worried and eager crowd.
Banker Kahn, Ritter von Albest, had been
plain Shmul Kahn when he had commenced his
business career by dealing with the Hungarian
magnates-the Karolyis, the Batthyanys and the
Bethlens, from whom he bought the wool fur-nished
by their huge herds of lambs and whom
he never paid until he felt that the time was
propitious for payment. One fine day he de-cided
that the portents indicated no further
payments but a plunge into bankruptcy instead,
and the world was treated to the curious
spectacle of high-born aristocrats being left
holding the bag as creditors of a Jew-the re-verse
roles being normal in the course of the
Christian world. This bankruptcy put Shmul
Kahn in possession of a fortune that enabled
him to realize his long-cherished dream of
settling down in Vienna as a banker.
At that time Rothschild was still a parvenu
and not at all a great man. No one could have
foretold his progress, which might also have
been granted to Shmul Kahn-the more so since
the latter let himself be baptized and had his
children educated by priests.
Waterloo had been won; there was plenty of
time and opportunity for everything imagin-able;
and the banker Kahn had made himself
so useful at the time of the state bankruptcy
and later that Metternich could not avoid sug-gesting
to the Emperor Francis that the financier
be raised to the nobility.
"I '11 tell you, Prince," the Emperor replied,
"'I'm getting rather tired of hearing about your
Jews. Since Fries was made a count every silly
Jew thinks he has to be knighted. All righti
you must have it, but you won't get any decent
title for him. What's this Jew's name, anyway,
and what's the name of his wife?"
"Kahn," the Prince informed his sovereign
somewhat moodily. "And his wife's maiden
name was Abeles."
"Abeles, Teiteles, nuisances," growled the
Emperor. "What a marvelous nobility we're
getting! Let's see-Abeles, Abeles, Abel, Ablast,
Abels-there, I've got it! He'll be Ritter von
Albest, and I hope he poisons himself !"
The Heraldry Bureau wrote neatly into the
parchment certificate of nobility : "Ritter von
Albest."
And every European chancelry discussed it
for at least a fortnight.
Banker Kahn had two sons and a daughter.
The two boys, raised in the strict Catholic tradi-tion,
naturally could embrace only an aristo-cratic
profession, and became cavalry officers.
One was with the Uhlans, the other with the
Cuirassiers.
The daughter had been christened Emilie. To
judge by the reports of her contemporaries, I
would have to dip my pen into the honey of
lilies and attar of roses to describe her dewy
beauty, her coral lips and slender throat, her
Grecian nose and alabaster bosom and so on
and so forth. In short, Emilie was most won-derful
and all the social lions fought for the
privilege of escorting her on the promenade. At
the balls she was rushed from partner to partner,
and when her eldest brother challenged Baron
Rothschild because he had been speculating
against Banker Kahn, she became the queen of
every drawing-room. True, nothing ever came
of the duel, for young Kahn d'Albest's colonel,
acting upon instruction received from higher
up, forbade it. But Papa Kahn suffered a hor-rible
defeat in a battle royal in four-per-cent
Metalliques, the victor being the Unbaptized
One of Frankfurt. After that the Viennese
financier's keenness was somewhat dimmed; the
slump in Metalliques gnawed at his soul.
In those days intermarriage with Jews was
still undreamed-of among the Austrian nobility;
and though the first unconverted Jew had been
granted a title as early as 1628, no Jewish noble-man
had ever been permitted to stamp his seal
in red wax or to wear the red heels and swords
sported by the rest of the aristocracy.
Emilie was nineteen, and the year was not
much after 1840, when Count Klemens Ugarte
fell irrevocably in love with her. No longer a
boy, he was a major in the Schwarzenburg
Uhlans and a chamberlain of Archduke Ludwig
who was Regent at the time, replacing the feeble-minded
Emperor Ferdinand.
The house of Ugarte, while not among the
wealthier houses of the Austrian bonility, was
one of the most aristocratic, and its pride in its
family tree was proverbial.
Imagine, if you can, the consternation that
prevailed when Count Klemens suddenly de-clared
he would marry Emilie! He must have
loved her with a passion distinctly out of the
ordinary; but his love conflicted with his
hereditary pride, and the result was an emotional
storm that finally drove him to distraction.
The betrothal was celebrated with the maxi-mum
of pomp. But the family of the groom and
all other members of the really "high-born'"
nobility were conspicuous by their absence.
Let us now consider the time when all this
happened. '48 still lay six years in the future.
The nobility regarded their dominance in
Austria as unshakable. The entire State was
still governed in medieval fashion, and the un-baptized
Jew still had to pay a head tax.
Before long Ugarte began to see his position
clearly. No one would receive his betrothed.
Doors began to close even for him, and his salute
would be ignored on the main promenade.
He was told that he did not need to report
for duty. The Archduke suddenly became in-accessible
to him. His friends deserted him. He
ran himself lame in his attempt to find suffi-ciently
aristocratic witnesses to his marriage,
for-and this was characteristic of him and his
period-he could not tolerate the thought of
having mere barons as his witnesses. His fam- ily exerted the maximum of pressure against
him. If sanatoria for victims of nervous prostra-tion
had existed at that time he would surely
have sought refuge in one.
Finally he reached the wedding-day, Decem-ber
1, 1842. Early in the morning two more
witnesses, Hungarian counts, announced their
refusal to serve; Ugarte was tearing his hair in
despair, when his august sister Josefa was an-nounced.
She remained closeted with him for
an hour, and then departed in her coach and
four.
Thereupon Count Klemens, wearing the splen-did
green and scarlet gala uniform of his regi-ment,
took up his stand before his mirror and
shot himself through the mouth. He died ten
minutes later, without uttering a word.
Emilie, however, did not die of a broken
heart. Years later she married and had numerous
children, and in the early decades of Francois
Joseph's reign was the mistress of a great
establishment.
It wras the father who collapsed under the
blow. He saw the vengeance of Jehova in this
calamity and endeavored to make his peace with
Him at any price. He began to attend services
at Jewish houses of worship, will all due secrecy;-
but when the heads of the congregations learned
who the aristocratic old gentleman was they
begged him on their knees never to come again
-for the return of a converted Jew to the faith
of his fathers was punishable by a severe term
of imprisonment, which also threatened all who
might have assisted in the reconversion.
Such was the Austria bf our great-grand-fathers!
Finally the aged Ritter von Albest decided to
flee to Paris and to return to Judaism there,
where no law forbade it. His sons, the aris-tocratic
Catholic officers, learned of his plan.
Terrible scenes ensued-and suddenly the old
man died.
He was given a magnificent and utterly or-thodox
funeral in St. Stefan 's Church. But
some malicious tongues whispered of poison.
© S. A. F. S.