DIANE VON FURSTENBERG - TRUTH IS HER RELIGION : HONORARY MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

BOOKS  DIANE VON FURSTENBERG - A LIFE UNWRAPPED by GIOIA DILIBERTO



and  THE WOMAN I WANTED TO BE by DIANE VON FURSTENBERG

This is going to be a Diane Von Furstenberg December as I'm, electing her as Honorary Mistress of the Month.  Long the companion and partner and wife of Barry Diller, now a woman who could be said to have everything - wealth, fame, fulfillment, love - and the will to lift other women up, Diane persisted through times in which she was unsure of her direction, overly influenced by the current main man in her life, times in which she had to admit failures, beg for help, even give some nasty business back so she could survive.  

It is especially refreshing to hear her admit as much in the audio book, The Woman I Wanted To Be. She admits to uncertainties, fears, and that bright ideas sometimes fail, while her warm and generous spirit allows her to complement others for their roles, not wasting too much time and energy on condemning. Can anyone actually control their lives totally, especially in the mercurial fashion business?  She made decisions spontaneously, sometimes deliberately, often hiring and surrounding herself by others to move her vision along, sometimes loosing that vision.  She sees life as a series and variety of events.  Her nature has been experimental, and she has reached out to help other women.

I've been fascinated with this woman who says that TRUTH IS HER RELIGION  and that ALL MARRIAGES SHOULD BE OPEN for some time.  But it was the quote in Gioia Dilberto's book that convinced me that she belongs in the posts/pages of MISTRESS MANIFESTO.

IN THIS QUOTE SHE SAYS SHE WOULD LOVE TO BE A MISTRESS... and she knows that this is an attitude that is more European, that American woman might not understand.

Diane is thought by some in fashion to not actually be a designer but more of a producer.  I credit her for figuring out what she could do well and sticking to it, though in her career she has taken departures and had to reassess several times.

Diane Helfin was born in Belgium, the daughter of Holocaust concentration camp survivor, Lily.  She considers her birth to her mother, who came out of the camp emaciated, about a year later, as a miracle. Her parents became well off enough to send her away to private boarding school and in her early womanhood she began to socialize with wealthier people than they were. Her mother also told her to never be ashamed of sex and well, she wasn't. She had love affairs and sex with both men and women as did the man she married quite young, Egon Von Furstenberg, a German and Italian Prince.  (Her daughter Tatianna had an affair with another woman and stayed friends with her, considers herself part of the tribe.) These two sexual adventurers were a hot couple around town in New York City for some time until a magazine profile made them see themselves and their lives more critically.  Diane was a huntress and has no apologies. When they split she was determined to honor the name and the allure of having been married to a Prince but also to make it on her own. 

It was the 1970's. She invented the "wrap dress" that made her rich.  She learned as she went, and the things that made her dress so important, besides capturing the imagination of women from diverse life experiences, was that it was reasonably affordable, the fine fabric manufactured in Italy on which her designs were printed, and the colors and patterns were bold.  The dress looked good on a variety of figures and it moved well and held up well after a hard day of work as a new era of feminism and the sexual revolution accelerated so that you could wear it to work or out of dinner.  She posed for her first ad on a mod white cube, the ad saying, "Be a Woman, Wear a Dress."  Her forays into cosmetics and a perfume named after her daughter went only so well, and she struggled to understand and stick to her own brand.

About her husband Barry Diller,: their relationship wasn't exactly off and on, it was sort of on in some way no matter who else was going on, and some people think he's gay but for Diane.  Unified as a couple and family with her children and grandchildren, the two of them have a fortune that is not just about fashion, but perhaps more correctly pop culture and technological innovation.

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RUTH IRENE KALDER : MISTRESS OF NAZI WAR CRIMINAL AMON GOTH

OSKAR SCHINDLER

The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities,

and the True Story Behind the List

by David M. Crowe

Westview Press - A member of Perseus Books Group

(The primary reference for this month's subject)

RUTH IRENE KALDER

Ruth Kalder started out as a secretary to Oskar Schindler at a business he had in 1942.  He brought her along to one of Amon Goth's luxurious parties at the mansion in which he lived in above the death camp at Plaszow. Amon, married with two children, is said to have fallen in love with her at first sight but also told her he would never divorce.  His wife and the children remained in Vienna. She was an actress from Beslau (today Wroclaw, Poland).  Amon was from a well to do Viennese publishing family.  It's said that he had two personalities, one the Viennese gentleman.  His legendary temper could turn fast. 

Ruth loved her rich life at the mansion above the camp.  Her days were filled with horseback riding, tennis, and sunbathing on the balcony that had a view of the camp, a camp she claims to have never visited.  For two years she lived with Amon, and while she may have somehow been blissfully unaware of the killings and whippings that occurred at the camp, many of them carried out by the violent man who loved to kill that she slept beside, she was not innocent of the way he treated his two Jewish maid-slaves, one of whom is depicted in the film "Schindler's List."  She stopped him from raping one of them, Helen, when she came upon his tearing off the woman's clothes off.  It's unlikely this was the first time the woman was raped by him.  One witness depicted in the film, Itzhak Stern, said that the maid Helen was "the most unfortunate of all the inmates at the Plaszow Camp" and that she suffered under Amon Goth "more than ten lifetimes." (Page 261)

Ruth called Amon by his childhood nickname, "Mony,"and is said to have adored him.  She would tell the daughter they had together, Monica Christiane, that he was a ladies man with a beautiful singing voice.  He was hung when Monica was 10 months old, and the truth about her father was withheld from her in her childhood. It became a long painful struggle for Monica to come to terms with the monster her father really was, but since research was being done around Oskar Schindler, she did interviews in which she said that Schindler could never have saved Jews if it were not for the friendship and cooperation of her father.

Ruth told her daughter when she was about 12 that her father only killed Jews for "sanitation" reasons.

 * Along with his wife, this number goes to about 1300.

RIGHTEOUS GENTILE OSKAR SCHINDLER's MISTRESSES : AURELIE SCHLEGEL, EVA "MARTA" KISZA, and GISELLA SCHEIN

OSKAR SCHINDLER

The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities,

and the True Story Behind the List

by David M. Crowe

Westview Press - A member of Perseus Books Group

(The primary reference for this month's subject)

 

That list of women's names up there on the title needs an explanation. 

 

OSKAR SCHINDLER, the man who is credited with saving about 1100* Jews from certain death during the Holocaust, by having them work for him at his factory and insisting they move with him to another, the subject of a film called "Schindler's List," often called director Steven Spielberg's Opus, was a womanizer.  He never took his marriage vows to Emilie Pelzl seriously.  (I don't think most men who have a Mistress are also having one-nighters, flings, quickies, affairs, or are as insensitive to their wives as this man!)  He had a whole lot going on at all times. Oskar Schindler was complicated.  He was possibly addicted to risk.  He somehow made the time for several Mistresses, women with whom he had long relationships with, and his wife, whose book I will include this month, knew it all along. 

 

EMELIE PELZL was 20 and Oskar was a little younger when they met and were married quickly, her farm family more prosperous than his, but both households effected by the terminal illnesses of a parent. Other than attraction and the innocence of youth, it's difficult to know what was behind the marriage really, perhaps pragmatism.  Oskar's father was alcoholic and so was he, a lifelong ailment. I have to wonder if he was self medicating a mental illness. As a new husband, Oskar used most of Emilie's dowry to buy an exotic car manufactured originally for the Shah of Iran, without consideration for her, a car that would be the one they escaped from their factory in when the War, World War II, was over.  

 

From the very beginning of their marriage, and for the rest of their lives, Oskar Schindler had the pattern of a charming sociopath, apparently sexually gifted and attractive, a "Whatever it takes," and "Where's the money?," kind of man who changed his side to the side that was winning more than once.  This is important because there is controversy over if he should have been judged to be a Righteous Gentile (1962 in Israel), ultimately selfless, or not.  Officially, he is, as there were many survivors who spoke up for him.  I do believe it's possible that the atrocities that he witnesses created a profound change in him.  Yet when it came to women, his was a never-ending series of adventures and misadventures.

 

These last few sentences are my opinion, my take, on this perplexing man, rooted in this book, and the author, David M. Crowe, researched extensively, and was eager to let us readers know how the truth and the film varied. In fact, the film did what it was meant to do, got much right, and took artistic license as screen writers and film directors and movie studios almost always do.  I've personally watched it a half a dozen times.  In fact, it was watching the film again, and seeing the scenes in which Oskar Schindler, and his associate, the certifiably evil Amon Goth, who headed the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, where he indulged himself in daily indiscriminate killing, interplay and have their mistresses, that inspired this month's topic.

 

I wanted to know "Who were those Mistresses?  We're they all really spies? How involved in the murder of Jews and other people taken prisoner were they? Is this another story about powerless women who are trapped in the role society expects of them?"  And so I began to read around the subject, many articles on the internet, as well as some book recommendations.  I'll include the Mistress of Amon Goth, Ruth Irene Kalder, in this month's reading.  Additionally, there are a couple women whose names would not fit on the title bar above who Oskar Schindler is known to have had as girlfriends and Mistresses.. 

 

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In somewhat of a chronological order here are the MISTRESSES of Oskar Schindler that we know about and a little background for each:

 

Oskar and his wife Emilie met in the fall of 1927 and married March 6, 1928.  At the time he was a traveling salesman. They moved in with his parents and younger sister where Emilie was overburdened with family care while he was gone for business. In 1928 Oskar was racing motorcycles. Emilie would spend her life being the dependable, responsible, hard working, and stable one.

  

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AURELIE SCHLEGEL : After Oskar Schindler married, he went back with a teenage love, Aurelie, a local girl in Czechoslovakia, who he proceeded to have two children with, a boy and a girl.  The boy, named Oskar Junior, may have ended up a mentally ill street person.  It does not seem as if Schindler took any responsibility for the children. This second family and the use of her dowry to buy the expensive car was not enough for the young newly married Emilie to leave him.

Oskar's many jobs included running a driving school. Then spent 18 months in the Czechoslovak army, went back to the sales job he had when he first met his wife, and during 1931-1932 was arrested for public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, assault, and other misdemeanor charges several times. 

 

In 1938, now about 30 years old and just out of prison, Schindler applied to be a member of the Nazi Party. He was accepted as a provisional member February 2, 1939. They overlooked his character and arrests apparently, though he told the truth about having been. He had to prove he had no Jewish blood and that Emilie was not of Jewish blood. From this point his paid work and party affiliation seem to be intertwined. It is thought that Oskar Shindler's assignments lead to the Nazi invasion of Poland in September of 1939.

 

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1939 - Oskar and Emilie moved to Moravska Ostrava but he kept a separate apartment. Emilie lived in their house from 1939-1941 and then joined him in Krakow.

 

IRENA DVORZAKOWA lived in the separate apartment, which Oskar paid for, though she did work for a steel manufacturing company.  April 1945 was the last he came there, probably the end of their relationship, but she did not move out until late 1945 or early 1946.

 

During this period of time, it's possible that Oskar was a spy.  (In my opinion he could have been a double agent, maybe even a triple agent.) 

 

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EWA "MARTA" KISZA  (aka EVA KISCH and later EVA KISCH SCHEUER)  Eva is the person depicted in the scene in Shindler's list in which she and Oscar are on horseback and from Lasota Hill and see the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto.  The scene is fiction, but the history happened and it's believed that it was about this time that Oskar realized that the Nazis were committing genocide, that this wasn't just a typical war.  It's possible he believed as most people did that the Jews were being taken to work camps, not systematically murdered.

 

Ewa , the Polish form of Eva, was a Czech from Silesia, an area that had been taken over by Poland in 1939 ( Pg 121)  She lost her job as a teacher and then made her living smuggling goods across the Polish - Czech border. Though she was engaged to be married, in about 1943, she became Oscar's Mistress.  The Polish authotires were suspicious of all the trips she and Oskar made.  She decided to flee to Czecholosvaliea with her fiancée, but the police shot him and killed him when they tried this escape.  She was put into prison in Lvov.  When she was released she went to live with Oskar.  Called "His Wartime Mistress," he set her up in a small shop selling the enamelware that he made such as kettles and bowls.

 

Called Marta, she was complicit in a maneuver in which Oskar took advantage of his Nazi Party affiliation and contacts and in October of 1939, he decided to take over the business of Shlomo Wiener, the owner of the largest kitchenware, ironware, and cutlery businesses in Poland, which he and his brother Julius ran. What Oskar did was premeditated.

 

He had the business signed over to him, returned the next day to tell them he was the Trustee of the business and Marta his representative.  He told Shlomo not to show his face, and had Julius teach him how to run the business.  He paid the two men a monthly salary a bit less than they had paid themselves, and showed up with Marta every day to talk the business with Julius.  (Julius would later call Marta "a soulless puppet, necessary only for official purposes" (Page 128)

Then, the day came in which the generally respectful Oskar, changed, and became verbally abusive and even physically abusive.  Julius was beaten severely by the Gestapo, and black and blue and bleeding, was afraid to leave his house. Soon Oskar cut the brothers off financially, and so they no longer had the means to live.  The Weiners later believed that Oskar helping Jews live in 1944 and 1945 was only to create an alibi for himself! (Page 126)

Marta went to parties with Oskar that Amon Goth threw, lavish parties where there was plenty of food and alcohol, with the death camp he ran down the hill.   (The scenes in the film "Schindler's List" don't begin to reveal his depravity, for which he was eventually tried as a war criminal and sentenced to hanging.


EVA "MARTA" and her brother, along with 7 Jewish workers hoping to find relatives in France or Switzerland, along with Oskar and his wife, escaped when the war ended from the factory, using the car he had bought from his wife's dowry years before, and a truck.  (Page 467)  On the road the women feared being raped by Russian soldiers.  Eventually the party separated.

 

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GISELLA SCHEIN 

AKA GISA

Watch for the upcoming review of the book Where Light and Shadow Meet by Emilie Schindler, Oskar's wife, on the mistress- accommodating marriage.  Oskar took both his wife and Gisa out of the country. But did he take either of them back to Europe with him?







Overall, Oskar Schindler seems to have been out of control of his life in so many ways, I have to remind myself that it is possible that beneath all this personal chaos, he had a heart, and eventually a deeper understanding of his life and times.



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