Galician Trails: The Forgotten Story of One Family Read online

  In 1867, an imperial patent called for Galicia and other crown lands to elect regional legislatures. Deputies from the Galician parliament were accorded a large number of seats in the state council in Vienna, second only to Czechs from Bohemia. Another official decree issued in the name of the emperor Franz Joseph proclaimed all citizens to be equal, with their freedom of movement guaranteed as well as the right to assembly and freedom of religion. Even though it was not fully implemented in the provinces, this was a remarkable document, given the time and the place of its origin. But among these progressive ideas, although it may strike today’s reader as odd, the emperor was declared to be unaccountable to any branch of the government or electorate. Franz Joseph himself signed that governmental proclamation; clearly, it was still good to be an emperor.19

  After his return to Galicia and reappointment as supreme governor, Goluchowski effectively negotiated with Vienna to bring increasing autonomy at home. He failed to put Galicia at the level of parity with Austria that had been secured by Hungary, but nonetheless, his actions were unprecedented in scope. Still, his work was not fully appreciated by his compatriots. Goluchowski’s efforts to direct Galicia’s energy toward self-governance, and his ability to avert brewing internal conflicts, were largely successful. His time in office focused the people of Galicia on attaining their goals through education.20

  Agenor Goluchowski Sr. (1812–1875) served as the governor of Galicia three times. Although controversial among his compatriots, Count Goluchowski secured a large degree of autonomy for Galicia from the central government in Vienna.

  Local newspapers in native languages quickly appeared in several towns that we will visit in our story. Other publications, with audiences throughout Galicia, reemerged after years of suspension by the censors. The tone of one editorial signaled a deeper change when the prior imprisonments of the paper’s contributors were only mentioned in passing. Instead, the message was about the real opportunity in sight, arguing strongly against self-serving agitation and the reopening of old wounds.21

  After 1873, Galicia largely governed itself. The rights of minorities to speak their own languages and a new locally based educational system had been established. Is it possible that two young members of different branches of our family, Bronislawa Lösch and Joseph Regiec, had chosen teaching because of this new climate that took hold in the society of their youth?22

  The far-reaching autonomy that became a fact of life in Galicia was the main reason that anti-Austrian sentiments were rare there. When, a few years after Goluchowski’s death, the emperor Franz Joseph toured Galicia, he was welcomed with genuine gratitude (granted, some of the ovations might be viewed as obsequious by today’s standards). His reception could not have been more different from those he had experienced during past visits—in which the monarch had been met with coldness and limited public participation. This time, upon the emperor’s arrival in Cracow, 50,000 spectators had reportedly gathered. There were symbolic gestures that underscored the new relationship between Galicia and the Austro-Hungarian monarchy: Franz Joseph’s security was entrusted to the citizens’ guard, and the Austrian garrison was removed from the old royal castle, which became the emperor’s temporary residence.

  A week later, a reception in Lvov was also festive; an estimated 100,000 people filled the streets to welcome the emperor, many having traveled from afar. In addition to ceremonies in the local legislature (dominated by Poles) and visits to the Greek Catholic cathedral and the Ruthenian National Institute, the emperor added stops at two of Lvov’s synagogues, liberal and orthodox, where he was blessed by the rabbis. At the imperial ball in honor of Franz Joseph that took place one evening in a lavishly illuminated City Hall, pomp was mixed with local politics. Not much interested in dancing, the emperor struck up conversations with members of Polish nobility splendidly dressed in their colorful ceremonial garb—some of them looking a bit like figures from an old, historical painting. Conversations followed with the leaders of three Catholic denominations (Roman, Greek, and Armenian) and the chief rabbi. But the mosaic of cultures and the symbolism did not end in Lvov. At train stations in the eastern part of the province, during brief stops, Franz Joseph was often addressed by local officials in Polish with a few phrases in the Ruthenian language. In response, the Austrian emperor would often reply in French instead of German, so as not to offend local sensitivities.23

  As a result of the broad autonomy enjoyed by Galicia, only occasionally was Vienna perceived by nationalistic zealots as a source of overbearing trends in literature and music. In vivid contrast to other parts of partitioned Poland, where new rulers made concerted efforts to Russify or Germanize native populations, the Habsburgs only required Galicians to send taxes to Vienna and serve in the imperial army. From 1873 on, all those whom we will meet on this journey would probably have expressed religious and literary nationalism in their mother tongues (including Yiddish), but were generally not antigovernment.24

  But autonomy did not mean an absence of central government in the crown land. The names of the branches of local administration, as well as the names of other emerging facets of modern life (such as the growing network of railways and civil or post-office buildings), carried the ubiquitous prefix k.k. (Imperial Royal). Yet in a less symbolic way, Vienna’s perceived role shifted—from being an absolute and foreign power to having a balancing influence that quieted a sometimes conflicted society. The shrewd efforts of the Habsburg Empire to curtail domination of one group over the other led most Galicians to view faraway Austria as a benevolent and stabilizing force.

  The figure of a fatherly emperor also provided a sense of continuity. For more than one generation, the image of Franz Joseph transcended ethnic lines and national aspirations, because nobody could remember anyone else at the top of the empire. I recall my grandmother saying that he was viewed less as a ruler from distant Vienna and more as a kind, elderly figure (with a huge mustache). To many, the emperor was seen as a conscientious and impartial force, with the judgment needed to mitigate any excesses of the vast government. His public life was one of extraordinary length; Franz Joseph became emperor years before Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, and died when Woodrow Wilson occupied that office more than 60 years later. When he died in 1916, in the middle of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s continuity was broken. It was no longer able to provide the sense of a functioning country, and quickly fell apart into a number of nationalistic and often less tolerant nations.

  Franz Joseph I (1830–1916) became the emperor of Austria in 1848 and remained at the helm of the country for 68 years, until his death during World War I.

  Austrian Empire and the surrounding countries of central Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

  THE LÖSCH AND REGIEC FAMILIES had some similarities. Neither was rooted in the nobility that still, in accordance with the standards of earlier times, valued hereditary titles. Nor did either family claim memorable triumphs on the battlefield. In fact, it is difficult to find any notable historical figure, even one loosely related, bearing one of their names. Yet for some generations, the intrepid Lösches and Regiecs were on the move; they seem to have shared the same unyielding belief that taking chances was essential to making their lives better. Time after time, members of both families took advantage of the opportunities at hand, seemingly rejecting the fear that often accompanies change. The physical mobility of these men and women seems even more remarkable when we remember that in their era, the majority of people grew up, married, and were buried in the villages where they had been born.

  Despite these similarities, there were also some obvious differences. Whether in the language their forebears had spoken or in the choices they made to change their lives, they both left behind, through the generations, sufficient small and large clues for us to see their distinct personalities.

  The Lösch clan had deep roots in Austria. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many with that name could be fou
nd in Vienna and in the provinces. Among them was Mathias Lösch, who arrived in Galicia in 1809 with his young son, Christian. Like many of his compatriots, he perhaps had planned to stay for just a few years in this remote land, although many German-speaking administrators ultimately settled in Galicia and made the best of it. Mathias was already 49, a widower whose late wife, Anna Sedlaczek, had likely been from somewhere in Moravia. In multiethnic Austria, a marriage between an Austrian man and a Moravian woman was not considered unusual. Not much else is known about Mathias, other than that he had spent the prior 27 years in the Austrian army. Now his destination was the salt mines of Wieliczka, near the city of Cracow.1

  These were not ordinary times. Europe was engulfed in the Napoleonic upheavals, its map constantly being redrawn. To the north of Austrian Galicia, with the conflict looming on the horizon, the French had established the quasi-free Duchy of Warsaw. Poles were promised full independence, but for the moment, the mission of the satellite duchy—arranged by Napoleon in a dynastic union with the king of Saxony—was to provide troops and supplies to the French army.

  During the year of Mathias’s arrival in Galicia, the inevitable happened: War broke out between Austria and the duchy. At first, the Habsburg army advanced to the north and briefly occupied the Polish capital; but then the fortunes of war were reversed. By the fall of 1809, the duchy’s forces, with the help of Saxon and French troops, had gained the upper hand. They pushed south and entered the city of Cracow, wresting control from the Austrians. Soon the hostilities were over, and Austrian and French diplomats were busily working in Vienna to resolve territorial disputes. Austria seemed to have no choice but to agree to the many concessions demanded by the victorious French.

  Among the contentious issues of the peace negotiations was the fate of Wieliczka. With Napoleon in attendance, the French insisted on unconditional transfer of the salt mines to the duchy. When Austria lodged one strong protest after another, Napoleon finally relented, and a face-saving solution was found. The parties negotiated a new border passing through Wieliczka, which now found itself between Saxon (in reality, French) and Austrian spheres of influence. Both sides were allowed to keep a small contingent of troops in Wieliczka, but at least in theory, the affairs of the town’s citizens were subject to local laws rather than to the national laws of the recently warring states. Most importantly, the mines were to be governed jointly by Polish-Saxon and Austrian administrators, with profits split evenly between the two countries. In a conciliatory gesture to Vienna, the French allowed the Austrians to ship their share of salt free of custom dues through the neighboring territory of the duchy.

  Without that long-forgotten clause of the Schönbrunn Treaty, our story could have ended there; the Lösch family would have settled somewhere else in Austria. Instead, Mathias Lösch remained in Wieliczka to become an inspector (visitationsbeamter) of the aboveground facilities where the precious salt was stored.2

  Christian Lösch, Mathias’s son, had little time to enjoy his youth. At the age of 14, he started working—first as a helper and then as an associate clerk in the mines’ accounting offices. It is one of the quirks of history that Christian’s first day of employment came just a week before Polish troops entered Wieliczka on November 11, 1809, in accordance with the treaty signed by France and Austria a month before. A few days later, father and son watched with curiosity—and some wariness—the arrival of the commander-in-chief of the duchy forces. The general, basking in popularity after recent victories against Austria, was greeted with a deafening gun salute. His carriage, surrounded by an escort of cavalrymen, proceeded through town before coming to a full stop in front of the mines’ entrance. The administrators, inspectors, and clerks (Mathias Lösch among them) who had been ordered to greet the visitor were already waiting. General Joseph Poniatowski, a future marshal of Napoleon’s empire, nodded in their direction and moved quickly to review his troops. Clearly, this was a show of force designed to overawe the Austrians remaining in Wieliczka. After descending through the shaft, the general toured the underground area, illuminated on the occasion by countless torches, while the sound of marching music reverberated through the mines’ chambers and tunnels. Within a few years, Napoleon’s defeat in Russia meant the end of joint administration of the mines; that was quickly followed by the dissolution of the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw. The mines, now officially known as k.k. Galizische Salzverschleiss (Imperial Royal Galician Salt Mines), and Galicia would remain firmly in the Austrian Empire until another war redrew Europe’s boundaries. For both father and son, this meant that Wieliczka would continue to be home.3

  In 1817, Joseph Leo Edler von Löwenmuth wrote this letter on behalf of Christian Lösch to the Imperial and Royal Office of the Director of Salt Distribution. Löwenmuth was the head accountant associated with Wieliczka’s mines since at least 1799. His letter ends with the following: “...please give favorable consideration to this particularly moral, loyal, and hardworking individual in filling the aforementioned position of [accounting] clerk.”

  The annual yearbooks of administrative bodies in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria are invaluable sources of information about the Lösches’ careers. The Austrians maintained very precise records of their civil administration, allowing us to track thousands of individuals. These and other sources show that in 1814, the 19-year-old Christian Lösch was made an accountant with an annual salary of 200 guldens and full employment benefits. Working for almost nothing for his first few years at the mines had finally paid off for the young man.4

  With his position now appearing secure, it was time for Christian to start his own family. He had chosen as his bride Antonina Pinkas, and they married in 1819. Their families knew each other well; the Lösch and Pinkas fathers shared a first name, and had worked together in the same department of the mines. Theirs was a close-knit community that intermarried and often shared important family celebrations. In 1820, Andreas Lösch, my great-great-grandfather, was born. But later, he would not have much memory of his mother; when he was only three, Antonina died of what was diagnosed as typhus. His father remarried the following year. Small Andreas was likely well-cared-for by his stepmother, Marianna, and in time he was joined by a number of half-brothers and half-sisters.5

  The place where Christian Lösch worked and his son, Andreas, grew up was an unusual one. Salt had been mined for centuries in Wieliczka; in those days, it was an expensive commodity. It was used to preserve food in a time when modern forms of refrigeration did not exist. The word salt also gave rise to a few common words, such as salary (money paid to Roman soldiers to buy salt). With high demand for what was often called “white gold,” it should not surprise us that from the first years of Austrian sovereignty over Galicia, the mines had been a profitable business for the crown. Under the agreement signed by the three powers after the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the mines were to provide specified amounts of salt not only to Austria, but also to Russia and Prussia. Indeed, this was a large enterprise; by the nineteenth century, the mines employed about 1,500 workmen. Wieliczka maintained a monopoly on sales of salt in Galicia; trade in the valuable mineral from smaller, private deposits was forbidden, under the threat of severe penalties.6

  Christian Lösch cosigned (right side) this document in 1832. In sworn statements, inspectors recommended the return to Christian Lösch of 600 florins that he had placed as a cash deposit at the beginning of his responsibilities in the storage and transportation center in Turowka, near Wieliczka.

  Bayard Taylor, an early globetrotter from faraway Pennsylvania, wrote about the Wieliczka operation around 1850. He described the solid salt rock and carved-out caves beneath the surface. The American was struck by one underground hall in particular: More than 100 feet high, it resembled an ancient Greek theater, with blocks of rock removed as if preparing for spectators. Salt taken from this section alone, he wrote, was sufficient to meet the demands of all 40 million inhabitants of Austria for a period of one year. Importantly for our s
tory, the visitor also mentioned “large storehouses for the salt, the government offices, and the residencies of the superintendants,” providing an eyewitness account, albeit cursory, of where Christian Lösch worked and lived.7

  Christian’s career may have been one of the longest in the history of the mines; over the years, he steadily progressed through the ranks. After working in the accounting department where, along with other junior clerks, he recorded how much salt was brought to the surface, he was put in charge of warehouses located near several mine shafts. Joseph, Janina, and Buzenin were the names of shafts where Christian would work throughout his long career. Because of the value of the salt, those in his position of responsibility were required to pay sizable security deposits, sometimes equivalent to a few years’ salary. That should have insured honesty; but not surprisingly, frequent inspections were also the norm. Sworn testimonies of several inspectors have survived, showing support of petitions by Christian Lösch, who was asking for the return of a large cash deposit he had made—apparently because sufficient time had passed to ensure his employer’s trust.8

  Christian’s final career stop was in “Salzverschleis- und Transports- Amt Turowka bei Wieliczka,” the mines’ department of transportation. When in 1850 he was put in charge of these operations, he would have had no way of knowing that he would witness remarkable changes in this position over the next 15 years. This was a critical position in the mines, one that made the enterprise effective and ultimately profitable. There were ever-present concerns, not only about safety but also over the logistics of moving the “white gold” to various places throughout the Austrian Empire and beyond. At the beginning, without railways or other forms of mechanized transportation, the task of protecting the salt from the elements, and hauling approximately 50,000 tons of it per year on horse-drawn wagons, was not a minor undertaking. Believe it or not, despite all such limitations, annual revenues from the mines were then estimated at the astronomical sum of $1,000,000 by Taylor, the inquisitive American. This would equal an impressive $433,000,000 in today’s money.9