"AUNTIE VERA."

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 80, 5 April 1939, Page 14

"AUNTIE VERA."

FRAU SCHUSCHNIGG. EUROPE'S TRAGIC BRIDE AWAITS HUSBAND'S RELEASE, (By Air Mail.) LONDON, March 12. Tn a tiny chalet high up in the Bavarian Alps, just below the line of peqietual snow, a woman who hae given up a title and a life of luxury to help the man she loves is carefully preparing the home where she ie to spend the rest of her life. She ie tall, blonde, beautiful. 34 yeare old Countess Vera von Fugger, the woman who has stood by her husband, Kurt von Schuschnigg, ex-Chancellor of Austria, through a year of heartbreak and misery. In a few weeks' time Von Schiieclmigg ir> to bo released from his prison in the ► Belvedere Palace, and with the Countess, whom he married a few days after the Anschluss la-st March, he ie to retire to the ohalet to start life afresh under another name. Although ehe has been "Frau Schufichnigg" for a year, the Countess has not tseen her husband except at a distance, and even then she only saw the top of hie grey head through the. iron bare of his prison window. He was not even at his own wedding. Schuschnigg married his wife by proxy, hie brother Arthur taking the bridegroom's place at the altar. Roses Faded. At her wedding the Countess carried a ■bunch of red roses and after the ceremony she took them hereelf to Government agents and personally asked that they should be delivered to her husband. But with typical Nazi "humour," the roses were not delivered until they had faded. The Countess' loving message had been removed and another substituted, saying: "As these roses have faded, 60 will her beauty before you see her.*' The mother of four children, divorced from her husband, the Countess met Schuschnigg in 1936, a year after he had lost hie* wife in a tragic motor accident which he suspected wae caused deliberately by the Nazis. Heartbroken by the tragedy, Von Schuschnigg practically retired from public life to spend his time with hie 12-year-old motherless eon. Then one day ho unwillingly consented to attend a reception given by a member of his"\Cabinet. Instantly he was attracted by a tall and lovely woman who seemed to sense his trouble and immediately inquired about his eon. ■Soon Yon Schuschnigg found himself falling in love with the woman whom his son called "Auntie Vera." In 1037 he would have retired from his position as Chancellor to marry the Countess but she refused, telling him "duty to your country comes before your love of me."

Sehnochnigjr stayed on to be arrested by Hitler as the "murderer" of 13 Xazio.