“ROBBER BARON”

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 April 1940, Page 11

“ROBBER BARON”

HIS ROMANCE CAUSED RIOTS. Roumanian steel king Max Ausschnitt, greatest armaments power in the Balkans, whose sentence of six years’ imprisonment for fraud and infringement of currency regulations was revealed the other day, is victim of the vengeance of the pro-Nazi Iron Guard —because he married the most beautiful ■woman in Bucharest. The story, states the Sunday Express, London, began six years ago when Ausschnitt, then 46, saw beautiful Livia Pordean and her father, vice-president of the Roumanian Senate, on the Paris-Bucharest express. Livia, 22 years old, was on her way home from a French finishing school. Ausschnitt introduced himself, and by the time the train reached Bucharest had fallen in love. He was already engaged to be married (according to report it was to a maharajah’s daughter) but he wired breaking that romance.

The wedding of Max Ausschnitt and Livia Pordean -was fixed for Boxing Day, 1934; hundreds of wedding invitations were sent out. But Ausschnitt whs of Jewish origin. The Iron Guard, Jew haters, seized the opportunity of attacking him. Ppruhca Vremiti, the extreme tionalist newspaper, started the campaign with an editorial that said:- —-

“It would be a disgrace to the Roumanian nation if this marriage were allowed to take place. Do not let this red-haired, freckled bandit, this robber baron, this highwayman be allowed to buy a Roumanian maiden with his ill-gotten gains.” The result was public demonstrations in the street in front of M. Pordean’s house in Cluj whenever Max Ausschnitt visited his fiancee. Livia Pordean disappeared from home. So did Max Ausschnitt., Iron Guard men were on the look-out for them, suspecting that the wedding would be held quietly.- But Max Ausschnitt and his fiancee gave them the slip. One afternoon in January, 1935, a car, stopped in front of the residence of Roman Catholic Bishop Dr. Pacha, in Timisoara. From it stepped Livia and her fiance, who had adopted the Roman Catholic faith some weeks before. In the bishop’s private chapel “the robber baron” and his bride were married. By the time the Iron Guard found out about the wedding, the newly married couple were on their way to Paris, London and the United States on a long honeymoon. At that time the Iron Guard, a banned organisation, could not openly do harm to the Ausschnitts.

They had to wait six years for their vengeance. They have now made their peace with Carol, and Max Ausschnitt has gone to imprisonment and disgrace.