the overall ideal—solid, comfortable, airy houses built around enclosed family gardens. In time, the whole area became referred to as simply the Cottage. Leo Lania, the left-wing journalist and writer, described it as
the cradle of Austrian literature, the cradle of the Viennese operetta. In the salons of its little villas, through whose windows the eye could sweep unhindered across gentle hills and the wooded approaches of the Kahlenberg as far as the green ribbon of the Danube, began and ended all those “affairs” of Viennese society which furnished Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Hermann Bahr with their chief themes. This was the birthplace of the “sweet Viennese girl,” the “Merry Widow,” psychoanalysis, atonal music, and modern painting. From Sigmund Freud to Gustav Mahler, from Arnold Schoen-berg to Gustav Klimt—all the men who represented pre-war Viennese art, music, literature, intellectual life, and built its international fame, revolved around the Cottage, even if a few of them did not live there.4
The house at 12 Peter-Jordan-StraBe had high ceilings and an ornate wooden veranda that led onto a well-planted garden. Couches draped with rugs and casual tables filled the rooms; floral curtains hung from the windows, shielding the furniture from the bright sunlight of the Viennese summer. The walls were covered with family portraits, the striped wallpaper reflecting the overall tone of an English country house. One of the rooms was dominated by Trude Kiesler's grand piano and there Hedy too learned to play. The family dachshund was, as Hedy entered her teenage years, running to fat.
Even though Hedy never mentioned her Jewish origins in her autobiography or referred to them in interviews, she certainly moved within an artistic environment dominated by talented Jewish individuals. From Trude, Hedy inherited her taste for theater and the arts, and her cultural education came from her mother's side of the family. Her schooling, too, was enlightened; she attended the Döblinger Mädchenmittelschule, now the GRG XIX (a local girls' secondary school). The school, then housed in a private home in the Kriendlgasse, catered to the neighborhood's wealthy Jewish families. Two of its first pupils, in 1905, had been Sophie and Anna Freud, the daughters of Sigmund Freud. Later, Anna Freud taught there, only leaving in 1920.
In the summer there was swimming in the river and family outings to the lakes surrounding Vienna. In all seasons, they hiked in the mountains, and her father liked to row. Throughout her life, Hedy was to retain her love of water and of swimming; later in America, she dreamed of the fresh air of the Wienerwald and the freedom of the outdoors.
She later said that being an only child spurred her to become an actress. She used the space below her father's desk as her first stage, performing fairy tales for an invisible audience. As a small child, she liked to dress up in her mother's clothes and her father's suits and hats. When she came home from the cinema, she would act out all the parts she had just seen. “Grandfather was perhaps the only one who ever encouraged me,” she remembered with some acerbity. “He could play the piano and to his music I danced. It was awkward my dancing. But he said he thought it was beautiful. The rest of the family gave me little encouragement.”5
References to her parents as unloving abound in Hedy's interviews, yet at the same time, she always looked back on her early years in Döbling with intense nostalgia, as a time of security in what was to become a life ruled by uncertainty.
• • •
Gertrude Kiesler was a small, dark-haired woman whose personality may have run on the cold side. Hedy believed that her mother had really wanted a boy and this was why she would never tell her that she was attractive or let her look in a mirror. Frau Kiesler's version of this story tallies in detail but varies in motivation. She wanted, she said, to ensure that her daughter did not come to rely on her beauty but would instead develop other skills, and not be spoiled: “When she was dressed for a party, and looked very lovely, I would say ‘You look very well.’ When she did something clever I would tell her ‘You did all right.’ But I underemphasized praise and flattery, hoping in this way, to balance the scales for her.”6One shouldn't be too surprised by the comments of Hedy's mother; they reflect common theories of parenting in her day. Later, Hedy would respond to her own children's needs in a disconcertingly similar manner.
In any case, Frau Kiesler did not always manage to control her unruly daughter, even less so how other people reacted to her. A besotted schoolteacher, when told to allow her no special favors, replied that, “When she walks towards me, and looks at me, I can do nothing.”7
When she was twelve, Hedy's grandmother, Rosa Lichtwitz, died. Taking advantage of her mother's temporary distraction, she entered a beauty contest. With the winnings, she bought her first fur coat. We may imagine what Trude Kiesler's response to this frivolity was.
Still it was Frau Kiesler who was responsible for introducing Hedy to the wonders of the stage. “One day,” Hedy remembered, “mother promised me a nice present if I were good. The present was a visit, my first, to the theatre. I saw a stage play for the first time. I was thrilled and speechless. I don't remember the play, its title or anything about it. But I never forgot the general impression. School held but one interest from then on. I took part in school plays and festivals. My first big part came in Hansel and Gretel.” The first film she saw that had the same effect on her was Fritz Lang's Metropolis, released when she was thirteen.8
Along with theater, Hedy developed an early interest in young men, one too that was to accompany her throughout life. Her first true love was a boy who has survived in the telling only as Hans. When she was not quite sixteen, he gave her her first kiss in the Vienna Woods; he was, she remembered, the director of a chain of shoe factories.9 In another interview, many years later, she said he was twenty-five years old and already seeing a girlfriend of hers. One day, when she was supposed to be at a piano lesson, she ran off to the cemetery to try to resolve her loyalties to her friend or to Hans. When she returned home, she found that everyone had become hysterical looking for her. Eventually, she and her girlfriend sat down and said, “This can't go on”; they instructed Hans to choose between them. He chose Hedy: “I was in heaven. We had secret meetings, it was all so exciting and romantic. Once, though, my father caught me coming home late—it must have been nine-thirty. He scared me and then I think he hit me, in my face.”10
Another friend of Hedy's from her Döbling days was Franz Antel, later to become a film director. All the young men in the area fell in love with Hedy, he remembered, but she only had eyes for the rising Austrian actor, Wolf Albach-Retty (later to become the father of Romy Schneider), who was eight years her senior and kept her for himself. He was a good-looking young man and liked to flirt with the other teenagers. Hedy too was beautiful, with a strong personality, and they made a striking young couple.11
Hedy's early childhood may have been protected but it was not without adventure and trauma—according to Ecstasy and Me, her early experiences included attracting the attention of a flasher, being raped, and becoming the focus of attention of, first, a lesbian cook and then a lesbian family friend. She herself had a teenage lesbian experience while at finishing school in Switzerland.12
Perhaps more reliably, her mother recalled later that
steadfast as she is within, she is also a chameleon. She changes with the people she is with. Superficially, she changes, and for the time. As when she had her first beau, at home in Vienna. She must then have been twelve. This was a very learned boy, an intellectual. Suddenly Hedy was the best in the school! She was not a bad pupil, our Hedl, but she was not the best. All at once, she was the best! All at once, her nose was all the time in a book, a big heavy book! I only wish it could have lasted longer, that one!13
A later beau was a very intense Russian boy, filled with the new idealism of his native land. When Hedy was told to apologize to her father for a misdemeanor, she announced that, “I will say the words, but—[my] thoughts are free.” Frau Kiesler blamed the Russian.14
