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Karl Italiener (b. 1889, d. 1942)
Karl Italiener (son of Ludwig Italiener and Anna Rothstein) was born 1889 in Berlin, and died 1942 in Mauthausen Concentration Camp. He married Wilhelmine Lublin on 1923.
Notes for Karl Italiener:
According to Käthe Beutler:
Karl was a very complicated character, at the same time smart and
stupid. Since he was much older than I (in fact, 7 1/2 years), I know about
his first years only from the stories my mother told me. As her first born,
everything he did and said was very important to her. Thus, she told me
that when he was four, her friends came to visit her on her birthday. One of
her friends got up and performed a song. Then little Karl said the he too
want to sing a song, and he climbed on a chair and sang the ballad of Lowe,
der kleine Haushalt. This is a rather long piece; maybe he sung only part of
it. Another musical fete occurred at my mother 30th birthday, when he was
five years old. My father had made up a little poem which he sang to the
melody of another ballad of Lowe.
At six years of age, he started school, and was a poor student from
beginning to end. He really hated school, especially the classic languages.
He was good in math (like everyone in our family). He failed in what was the
equivalent of 7th grade at the gymnasium. My parents considered sending
him to another school with emphasis on math and physics without classical
languages. But there our uncle Max (Rothstein, RN 86) interfered and per-
suaded my parents that the humanistic gymnasium was a must. Then he
was transferred to another school further away from our apartment. He
made it at this school, and after a year he moved back home an commuted to
school by bicycle. About a year before his graduation, he suddenly declared
to my mother that he will not go back to school. She did not ask him for his
reasons and accepted the fact. Maybe the reason was that this school was
very anti-semitic, whereas the previous school had about 50% Jewish
pupils.
He applied for a job at a heavy industry firm and was told that it
would be helpful for his future if he worked as a laborer in one of their
plants. So he went off to the Rhineland and worked there for a year. After
that he got a desk job in Berlin, at a form name was Arthur Koppel. After a
few years he was sent to London, where he stayed for only about two years,
and then was sent to the United States, to a place near Pittsburgh called
Koppel. He never intended to stay there. He just wanted to see the world.
He talked already of going to South America. Then came the war of 1914 and
he panicked. He heard all kinds of rumors, such as that Berlin was burning.
He consulted the German consul, and asked him for advice. The consul noti-
fied him there there was a ship leaving for Germany which the English
permitted to go through, but not the French. Thus he and other young men
were taken off the ship at Brest, and put in a civilian prison camp. And
there he stayed until 1919. Finally, he could return to Berlin. (A letter
from him in the Prisoner of War Camp, dated 1915, survives).
Music was very important for him. I do not remember when he started
to play the violin. I only remember that when he failed in school his music
lessons were stopped. Since my parents had already paid for his lessons for
a year ahead, they enrolled me for piano lesons in order not to lose any
money. That was before I went to school. Later on, he secretly took violin
lessons, as he said with a friend. I never believed that this well known vio-
linist gave him lessons without payment, but I did not know who paid for
them.
He loved music, but I think he was not a good violinist. He liked to go
to concerts, and he liked to befriend musicians. Lat in life, he played the
viola; that gave him a chance to play chamber music. He was good in sports;
I think he was a good tennis player. In school he played what was called
Schlagball; I think this was the German version of baseball. He was also a
good ballroom dancer. He also liked to act, and often directed some skits
for us younger children to act in.
While he was still in the United States, my mother wrote him that the
daughter of family friends was rumored to be engaged. Right then he pro-
posed to her by mail, and she accepted also by mail. We did not know about
it as they kept their engagement completely secret, until in 1918 she unfor-
tunately died of the flu. For Karl her death was a hard blow not to see here
any more.
When he came back to Berlin Orenstein and Koppel was obliged to give
him a job. But he did not like the job they offered him. He tried several
other things and finally became an efficiency expert. During his time in
Brest he did a lot of reading on economics, and he translated one of the
writings of Keynes into German. I do not know the original title of the book,
but he gave it the German title Warum Arbeitet die Fabrik mit Verlust. He
did well in his field. He had his office in Berlin, and customers all over the
country until Hitler came to power.
In about 1923 he married Vilma, a bad choice because she was an un-
stable person. I warned him, and later he said he should have listened to me.
However, he said he could not divorce her, since she would not agree and
would stay with him. Whenever he was out of town on business, she fol-
lowed him, even though he had not told her where he was going. She always
found out.
Because he had some customers in Holland, he emigrated to Holland
after Hitler came to power. After some time he moved to London; maybe be-
cause he had no business there, he moved back to Holland. I was told that
when he received an order to report to the policy (after the Germans occu-
pied Holland) his friends warned him not to go, but he did anyway and was
deported to the death camp of Malthausen.
Kaethe Beutler
In 1939, according to a letter he wrote to Marie Michaelis, he was desperately trying
to get a visa for Great Britain. The visa was denied, and he wrote "I need not tell you
what that means to me." He tried again, without success.
More About Karl Italiener:
Occupation: Economist.
More About Karl Italiener and Wilhelmine Lublin:
Marriage: 1923

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