Marie Hoheisel née Perzina with children Konrad "Kurt" and Emmi
- Photos Without Families
- vor 12 Stunden
- 5 Min. Lesezeit
This lost photograph, taken in Vienna, found its way to me through an online shop in Germany. As so often, the real clues were on the back: a few handwritten names:
Marie Hoheisel
née Perzina
Emmi and Kurt
I turned, once again, to my Instagram community and asked for help in deciphering the names — and once again, they exceeded all expectations :-). Within a short time, links, documents, and biographical notes began to appear. It soon became clear that this mother of two was no anonymous bourgeois lady captured by chance. Quite the opposite!
She was Maria Anna Vinzentia Hoheisel née Perzina — an Austrian women’s and mothers' rights activist and a member of the founding committee that promoted the establishment of Mother’s Day in Austria.
Among the materials shared with me were even two photographs of Maria herself, dating from the early to late 1920s. Seeing her face across time made the connection suddenly feel very real.
Marie Perzina was born on June 16, 1873, in Reichenberg (today Liberec, Czech Republic), then part of Bohemia. She was the daughter of Julius Perzina and Emma née Ehrlich, both from Reichenberg.
On August 19, 1893, she married Konrad Hoheisel, a lawyer and later a Director General for postal and telegraph affairs in Austria.
Marie’s achievements are well documented. Grokipedia has dedicated an impressively thorough page to Marie:
Maria Hoheisel completed training at the Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalt, a specialized institution for preparing women as elementary school teachers, which was a common pathway for educated women in late 19th-century Austria seeking professional qualifications amid limited opportunities.
Maria engaged in advocacy for women's issues through writings, lectures, and organizational leadership, focusing on matters such as employment, family policy, and social reforms pertinent to women. From 1932 to 1938, she served as president of the Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine, a key federation coordinating Austrian women's associations amid the challenges of the interwar period and Austro-fascist regime.
Hoheisel assumed the role of chairwoman of the Austrian Mothers' Day Committee (Österreichisches Muttertagskomitee) in 1928, leading efforts to promote and institutionalize the observance across the country. Her leadership built on the initial introduction of Mother's Day in Austria in 1926 by Marianne Hainisch, focusing on campaigns to honor maternal contributions and foster public recognition of family roles. Through organizational activities, Hoheisel advocated for events and initiatives that emphasized motherhood's societal value, integrating these with her women's rights work to highlight women's primary duties in the home.
Hoheisel held a leading position in the Austrian Konsumentenliga, an organization dedicated to consumer advocacy and protection, where she actively promoted measures to safeguard consumer interests amid economic challenges of the interwar period. Her involvement emphasized practical support for households, including education on fair pricing and quality standards for goods. In 1934, Hoheisel was elected to the Hauptausschuss (main committee) of the Frauen-Notdienst, a national women's emergency service initiative aimed at providing rapid aid to women facing social, economic, or personal crises, such as unemployment or family distress during the Great Depression. This role aligned with her broader commitment to women's welfare, facilitating coordinated responses through local networks to distribute resources and counseling.
Following the Anschluss in 1938, during which she was stripped of her leadership roles in women's organizations due to the Nazi regime's dissolution of independent associations, Hoheisel retreated from public life but survived the war years in the city. Marie Hoheisel died on March 5, 1947, in Vienna at the age of 73.
No records exist of Hoheisel's participation in Nazi-era women's initiatives. Hoheisel's public visibility ceased entirely post-1938, marking a sharp curtailment of her influence amid the war and occupation.
Marie Hoheisel's historical significance lies primarily in her leadership within Austria's interwar women's movement, where she advanced practical reforms for women's economic and social conditions while emphasizing maternal and familial roles. As president of the Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine from 1932 to 1938, she coordinated efforts to address income disparities, workplace protections, and recognition for housewives amid economic pressures of the era.
Now a few more words about Marie's husband, according to Wikipedia Konrad Hoheisel (born in 1862, died in 1930) studied law at the University of Vienna and entered the Austrian postal service in 1886. His career advanced steadily: in 1910 he became President of the Vienna Post and Telegraph Directorate, and in 1918 he was appointed Section Head and Director General for postal and telegraph affairs.
After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Konrad Hoheisel played a key role in modernizing the Austrian postal system. Under his leadership, the postal motor vehicle service was expanded, the long-distance cable network enlarged, and new technologies introduced, including airmail, broadcasting, and photo-telegraph services. These reforms helped secure international recognition for Austria’s postal administration in the interwar period.
When I later found a photograph of Konrad Hoheisel in the Austrian national photo archives, I was struck by how strongly Marie’s son resembled him — even more than he resembled his mother:
This brings me back to the handwritten note on the reverse of the photograph: Emmi and Kurt.
Archival records show that Marie’s son was officially named Konrad, after his father. It seems entirely plausible that Kurt was his nickname — the name used in everyday life. Konrad (Conrad) Hoheisel was born on August 10, 1900, in Vienna. In March 1931, he married Maria Anna Helfer in Klagenfurt. He died in April 1970 in Graz. I believe he worked as an engineer. I have not yet found evidence of whether he had children.
Marie’s eldest child, Emmi Hoheisel, was born on June 3, 1894, in Triest. At the age of 21, she married an engineer, Leo August Ziegler, in January 1916. Their daughter Helga was born in November of the same year.
Emmi’s life, however, was marked by repeated loss. Widowed at just 20 years old, she was left with a toddler when her husband Leo died at Christmas 1918. She remarried in September 1922. Her second husband, Rudolf Franz Friedrich Weisz, served in the Landgerichtsrat. Tragedy struck again: after only 15 months of marriage, Emmi was widowed for a second time on New Year’s Eve in 1923. In 1930, she married for the third time. Her third husband, Rudolf Himmel, was 18 years her senior.
Marie herself knew motherhood not only as joy, but also as grief. In June 1898, she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl — a loss that remains silent in many records, but no less real.
I am continually astonished by the stories these lost photographs contain. What begins as an anonymous image can unfold into a life of public influence, private tragedy, and unexpected resilience. Never in a million years did I expect this story to emerge from a single photograph — and yet, here it is.
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