Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
Memories of Vienna
What are some of your f.fond,do you have any fond memories of the city? What was a typical day, say, likegoing to school when you were in gymnasium?
Yeah, well you walked there first. You never wenton anything but on foot. And so I had to walk past the park and cross thecanal. And I used to always like to look at the water. And there was a beggarsitting there who had only one leg and I always gave him half my lunch becauseI didn't want to eat that much anyway and he was grateful. And then just wenton there and started uh, our classes were all together. You know, these peoplewhom I met in Vienna had been with me six hours each day. We had the samecurriculum. There wasn't this you go here and you go there. It was allprescribed. It was five years of Latin uh, five years of Greek and seven yearsof Latin we had. And we had math ???. And we all took the same classestogether. And so we would sit in class together and we had ten minutes in thehall where we could carry on. And usually we played football, Fußball. I usedto like to play that.
Soccer?
Yes. And uh, then I and my friends would walk hometogether from school. But we weren't allowed to go out near other childrenafter school. After school we were supposed to study. So the only contact wason the way home, which we therefore proceeded very leisurely.
Uh, what was your sociallife like?
Well, we didn't have any social life. Thatwasn't-the only social life that you had with the people who my parents invitedhappened to have offsprings. Then they would bring 'em and we would be shovedover in another room because they wouldn't be caught dead with us, eating withus. My father mostly did not eat with us 'cause that was hard on his nerves.And, he was usually-he liked to be served in quiet, in a quiet surrounding, so.
And if you went out tothe opera or the theater you went as a family?
No, I went with the other students and my brotherwent with his group. My parents would go. But not with us.
So it was a schoolfunction.
Yes, it was a regular theater. But we got the seatsyou know, up there. We would go on hikes together. The only real family effortthat my father liked to engage in was to introduce us to nature with abackpack. He liked to hike. We went in the Alps.
So you would what, takea train?
Well, we would spend the summer in the Alps andthen we would hike from there. Yeah, we'd take a train and then from then onfoot, wherever. So these were day, day long trips.
Um, were there anypolitical discussion that you remember in your.
Only that my father felt that socialism was illadvised and my brother had the opposite opinion. And uh, when my father uh, mymother blames my father for having ruined the monarchy because he bought bondsin the war. And that immediately predisposed the monarchy to disaster. So whenhe wanted to buy war bonds here she insisted that he not do that. She didn'twant the U.S. to lose. But that's the only thing they ever talked about. Mainlythey talked about their professions and the theater and music. My father inparticular very interested in voice since he had studied it for many years.
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