FRAU DOLLFUSS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 September 1938, Page 12

FRAU DOLLFUSS

REFUGE IN WALES.

LONDON, August 21. Frau Alwine Dollfuss, widow of the Austrian “pocket” Chancellor (he was only 4ft Ilin), who was murdered in •the Nazi rising of 1934, is now a political refugee from the Nazi terroi’ in Austria, living in a four-roomed bungalow at a seaside resort in Wales.

With her two children, Eva, aged 11, and seven-year-old Rudi, she is enjoying the first rest she had had for four year§. No one in. the Welsh town knows the identity of the slight, dark-haired woman in the early thirties who speaks to them haltingily-in broken English.

But none of them knows —few in Britain know —that Frau Doillfuss, once the greatest lady in Austria, is living under an assupied name in a tiny Welsh home. To-day she is penniless. Her holiday is being paid for by her two brothers, who own a small factory near New York.

She will shortly sail with her children to the United States, where her brothers, will provide her with a home.

Frau Dollfuss is making desperate efforts to fit herself for the new life that has been forced upon her. Every evening she studies English with her children. They read English books, listen to the wireless. By day Frau Dollfuss does the housekeeping, looks after the cooking and sewing, with the help of an Austrian nurse who escaped from Vienna with her. Eva and Rudi have already got a good grounding in English through making friends with the children from a neighbouring farm. They are in their element there.

They feed the chickens, play hide-and-seek among the ricks and go for donkey rides.

It was the late Chancellor’s wish that his children should be trained as farmers. This English holiday is teaching them farm life.

In a letter to an Austrian friend in London Frau Dollfuss wrote last week:—

“I am delighted with our English holiday here. The children are so happy. For their sake I must try and forget the terrible past and be happy with them.”