An address, a name on a gravestone, a shop that is still there. We accompany the descendants of Viennese families in the search for what remains. With preparation, with time, and with the sense of when it is better to say nothing.
A Jewish city tour tells the history of Vienna. A family search tells the history of your family, and Vienna is where it happened.
The difference begins long before the first day. We read registration records, databases and community registers before we set out. Only once we know where we are going do we go. And then we go slowly.
Registration records, DoeW databases, community registers, the cemetery database, the National Fund. You learn beforehand what we found and what we did not.
The flat, the school, the business. Where it is possible, we ask in advance whether we may step into the stairwell.
Gate I and Gate IV at the Zentralfriedhof, the Waehring cemetery. We locate the grave in advance and build the day around the opening hours.
If you would like to search yourself, we go with you to the Vienna City and Provincial Archives, read the old script and translate.
Vienna has no Stolpersteine. It has Steine der Erinnerung, Stones of Remembrance. We put you in touch with the associations and accompany a laying.
Knize on the Graben, Altmann und Kuehne, the Loos House built for Goldman und Salatsch. Where your family’s Vienna still stands, we go there.
Tell us what you know. Names, approximate years, an address, a photograph, a story told in the family. Fragments are enough to begin.
One to two weeks of research. You receive a summary with sources, so you can see what each statement rests on.
A sequence across one, two or three days, matched to opening hours, holidays, and to how much you wish to carry in a single day.
Martha or a colleague accompanies you, in English or German. We go at your pace. Photographs are taken only if you want them.
You receive the documents, the photographs and a written summary. What remained open is in there as well.
Vienna has no Stolpersteine. It has Stones of Remembrance, laid by associations that research the names and prepare each laying together with the family.
Where there is a stone, we go there. And we stay as long as you wish to stay. A stone carries a name, a year and the place where a life ended. That is all it takes for a person to belong to the city again.
Some things in Vienna need a lead time, and some cannot be hurried. So we would rather say it beforehand.
A cemetery visit is therefore not something you slot in, it is the fixed point we build the journey around. And sometimes nothing is found. We say that beforehand too.
Most recently we spent a day and a half with a family from the United States, six people across three generations, following the history of their father in Vienna.
What we found is not written here. That belongs to them.
Best of all with what you already know. We answer personally and tell you openly what can be found in Vienna and what cannot. A price comes later, once we know how much work lies ahead.
If you would first like to get to know the Jewish history of Vienna, without a family history of your own, there is our Special tour Vienna JEWISH.
