Hilde Bial:Berlin/Vienna

Portrait of Hilde Bial-Neurath as a young girl

Hilde Bial-Neurath

The Bial-Neurath Family

Hilde Bial was born in Berlin on November 20, 1912. Her father, Franz Bial, was of Jewish descent and had a successful business in the city. Jews occupied a prominent place in Berlin's history; it was a cosmopolitan city, hospitable to immigrants, whether Jewish or Gentile. “Jews, it is said, making themselves at home in Berlin, transformed it, and imprinted upon it something of their rootlessness, their restlessness, their alienation from soil and tradition, their pervasive disrespect for authority, their mordant wit. All in all, then, in imagination, in distortion, in reality, the Jew was woven into the very texture of Berlin, and made part—significant part—of its style.“ (Peter Gay)

In the 1920s, while Hilde grew up in Berlin, Jews made up less than 1 percent of the German population, but more than 4 percent of all Berliners were Jews; one-third of the German Jews—nearly 200,000 lived in Berlin. They had a prominent place in the commercial and intellectual life of the city, to a large degree concentrated in professions such as journalists, doctors, lawyers, bankers, and entrepreneurs.

We know very little of the Bials’ time in Berlin. We know only that Hilde’s father earned a doctorate in chemistry, that he served in World War I, and that during the Weimar Republic he was able to build up a successful business in Berlin. Though the reasons are unclear, in 1928 Franz Bial, his wife Käthe (née Knopf), and their son and daughter moved to Vienna, leaving his business in Berlin. When Bial refused to return to Berlin after the Nazi seizure of power, the German government confiscated his assets.

 

Käthe Bial                                                                   Franz Bial and children

Peter Neurath: I thoroughly regret that I never questioned my mother about her upbringing, about Berlin, and my father about Vienna. It was just in those days it never occurred to me. When you are young… I knew my home is my home, and my parents were my parents. And for me it was like my home and my parents were like breathing air, in and out, very valuable, but I never thought about it. I was always outer-directed away from my home. Home was where I would eat and sleep. That was it. If my parents had been immigrants who were very poor, maybe I would have said “Why are we so poor?” you know or something like that. But we were so established middle-class. I never saw any poor people. None.

In Vienna, Hilde Bial met Hans Neurath and they fell in love. Hans had recently finished his studies in chemistry at the University of Vienna and had taken a post-doc year in London. Hilde and Hans were planning marriage and needed to decide where they would live. Certain that there was no future for them in Austria or Germany, they were delighted when Hans was able to secure a research fellowship in the United States, at the University of Minnesota. On September 21, 1935 Hans embarked in Cherbourg for the United States, leaving Hilde behind for the time being. It was their hope that Hans’ job situation would make it possible for the family to share a future together in the New World.

Hilde Bial-Neurath

The Bial-Neurath Family

 

 

 

 

Share