- Moritz Oesterreicher / Marianne Ostier Archived Message
Posted by mauriz
on July 31, 2018, 7:25 am
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While searching the archives here in Vienna in another matter I took the opportunity to see if I could find something about the company of Moriz Oesterreicher and his son Otto, which supplied the wedding tiara for Queen Geraldine of Albania and was subject to an article in the weekly newspaper of the Dutch Union for Diamond Workers of July 1st 1938 as quoted by ErikS in a thread further down this page: http://mb.boardhost.com/historyroyaljewels/msg/1532772956.html And I hasten to add that I found next to nothing, neither about the company nor about Marianne Ostier who under her maiden name Marianne Aufricht attended the Arts and Crafts School (Kunstgewerbeschule) in Vienna which later would become the University of Applied Arts. The school was closely affiliated with the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (today the MAK), the first Arts and Crafts museum on the European continent, but a quick search in their archives proved also useless. There is one information about the company though running through many of the articles online about Marianne Ostier without quoting a specific source, which probably should be relativized. The allegation that Oesterreicher had been K. u. K. Hoflieferant (Purveyor to the Imperial and Royal Court) for three generations is not verifiable. I've randomly checked the lists of Purveyors to the Imperial and Royal Court which were published in the annual Hofkalender (court almanach), and there's no entry for Oesterreicher up to the year 1900. (I unfortunately had not enough time to look any further.) There's a website about a jewish family with the name of "Deutsch", apparently maintained by family members and descendants. Hermine Deutsch (1875-1955) married Moriz Oesterreicher and became the mother of Otto Oesterreicher, aka Oliver Ostier, and thus the mother-in-law of his second wife Marianne Ostier. According to this website Moriz's father Jakob Oesterreicher (died 1892 in Vienna) was not jeweller, but working for the Austrian-Hungarian railroads. Royal Magazine gives 1895 as the date the company Oesterreicher was established and cites Sotheby's as their source. (I haven't found the date in any of the lot descriptions at Sotheby's online, but that might have been different at the time the auction took place.) It's highly unlikely that Oesterreicher became Purveyor to the Court in the first couple of years after the company was established. Since Otto / Oliver was only 17 years old when the monarchy was abolished - and at that time his father was 48 and well alive - the company can not even have been a second generation court jeweller. The Royal Warrant itself is far less exclusive than one would assume. In 1898 11 jewellers in Vienna, 7 in other parts of the monarchy and 5 abroad were Purveyors to the Imperial and Royal Court. The far more prestigious title was K. u. K. Kammerlieferant (Purveyor to the Imperial and Royal Chamber) for personal suppliers to the emperor or the empress or any other member of the imperial house. In 1900 only 3 jewellers had the permission to call themselves Kammerlieferant, among them Köchert. The Deutsch-family-website quotes the address of the company as "Graben 7, Wien 1" which is a prestigious address in the city close to the Stephansdom and at any rate befitting to a Purveyor to the Imperial and Royal Court. The two "Kammerlieferanten" Köchert and Vincenz Meyer's Söhne were located in the immediate neighbourhood. The house was built in 1875/76 after two older houses there had been demolished. The archives of the city of Vienna have no records about a company named Oesterreicher at this address, but provide a photo of the building from around 1940. The pharmacy on the right was located there since 1911, and the entrance and shops on the left side of the building had (and still have) the address Seilergasse 2, so one can assume Oesterreicher occupied the premises at the corner. Today they are rented by Marionnaud Parfumeries.   (Edited to correct notation of names)
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