Direct Family
PS 1936 -
The early years
I was born in Wasserburg. It was more than just a beautiful baroque castle protected by a moat filled with agressive black swans. It was also 350 hectares of farmland, woods, a large number of small houses, a Wirtshaus, even a Kraftwerk. Wasserburg was a village.
In 1938 we left for Lausanne at the time of the Anschluss and when we returned 17 years later after the Österreichischer Staatsvertrag was signed (1955).
Everything had been destroyed and the castle looted.
It must have been a terrible shock for the parents which decided them to renovate the Herrenhaus next door and no longer live in the castle which remained empty until 1988.
Of those first years in Wasserburg I hardly remember a thing. Recollections start in Lausanne when I was around 4 years old. We lived in the Hotel Royal and my chums at the time were the children of the Spanish royal family.
In 1942 Mami, Nettie, Henriette and I left for Lisbon and on to Buenos Aires in an old freighter named ‘Cabo de Buena Esperanza’.
There I attended the Belgrano Day School and can remember swearing allegiance to Juan Peron, Argentine's dictator at the time - “Lo juro” I was told to say. Aged 7 !!
I have fond memories of the Argentine. We went to La Cumbre near Cordoba to stay with Ernst Starhremberg and skiing to Bariloche (which took 2-3 days to get there by train). In all we must have lived in BA for 4-5 years during which time Paps and Boy were in England.
In 1947 we flew back to Europe in an amphibious flying boat via Dakar. The family again stayed at the Hotel Royal instead of returning to Wasserburg which was in the occupied Russian zone of Austria.
I was sent to Le Rosey school in September 1947 and at the same time the family rented the Château de Villars above La Tour de Peilz.
In 1949 Paps built Haus Seilern in Kitzbühel which we were to keep until around 1960, shortly after Austria was liberated when we returned to Wasserburg.
It consisted of the main house, a smaller one for the (coal) heating and servants quarters and approx. 10'000 m2 of land. Haus Seilern was built on the Lebenberg, a stone’s throw away from the center of Kitzbühel.
The house was paid for out of the Woerishoffer trusts and sold in the mid-1960s (?) to a member of the Mellon family for eleven million Austrian Schillings (€800'000). I hate to think what it is worth today, but a square meter of land as well-positioned must be easily worth €2-3'000 /m2. How sad.
The family
To call us a close-knit family would be wrong. I cannot remember Paps and uncles Oswald and Antoine being close in any way. Mami and her sisters had a better relationship, but only just.
There are no family reunions, Sunday lunches, unexpected phone calls or any of the like. Members go their separate ways and it is not uncommon that direct family members hardly ever see one another when living in the same town or even under the same roof.
What has disturbed me over the years is our incapacity to understand or feel what other members are living and experiencing.
Our family doesn't bond. Unfortunately we know practially nothing about the every day doings of even our closest relatives.
I remember one time reminding a nephew of his brother's birthday and was surprised that he had no idea, even though they lived next to one another in the same building.
Why do we suffer from this lack of empathy?
First it has been passed down over generations and second because that is how the upperclasses behave. Not only in Austria, throughout Europe.
An occurance comes to mind. In 2004 I believed it would be a good idea to invite all nieces and nephews for a long week-end to Verbier. The idea was that they should get to know one another.
Here is the letter I wrote:
Dear Nieces & Nephews,
I would be happy to invite you and your husbands to a family reunion in Verbier. I am thinking of the weekend of 1 – 4 April 2004.
Arrival would be on Thursday (1/4) afternoon and departure Sunday evening or Monday. I can pick up those arriving by train in Martigny or Lausanne.
Unfortunately, I cannot accommodate you all because my house is too modest and would therefore invite you to the hotel, which is located next door.
Skiing is not mandatory. Cancelling this is not an option.
Please let me know soon so I can make the reservations.
All the best,
Most of them answered very nicely, but I was horrified that a couple (the eldest) came back not with "Dear Uncle Peter, Thank you for the invitation, ...." but with something like "I wouldn’t dream of it"
Not the answer I expected.
1947 - 1967
1947 - 1954 Le Rosey, Rolle
1954 - 1956 British Army, Life Guards, Suez Canal, Windsor. 2nd lieutenant
1956 British Ski Team, Winter Olympics, Cortina d’Ampezzo
1956 - 1957 Breisach & Co., Wien
1957 - 1958 EPUL - "Cours de Mathématiques Spécial", Lausanne
1958 - 1963 EPUL – MS, Applied Physics
1963 - 1964 Litton Industries, Van Nuys, CA, Research engineer,
1965 - 1967 Dillon Read & Co. Inc., investment bankers, New York, associate
1967 Returned to Switzerland
A strained relationship
Paps was 37 when I was born and I never was able to establish a good and respectful relationship with him. He lead a life between that of an English gentleman and an Austrian aristocratic and I lived in the late 20th century.
A large part of this situation was due to my impetuous and cheeky (his term) nature which did not go down well with his impulsive nature.
Paps did not believe in respecting people he considered below his station. He used to walk into my room without knocking and the insults “shut up” and “bloody fool” still ring in my ears 25 years after his death. His behavior was similar towards other people he considered of lower rank however I never saw him behave like that with Mami although they squabbled constantly.
Paps was volatile. I remember his dog Blackie, a cocker spaniel. Every evening after dinner, Paps would let Blackie out the front door to have a pee. After five minutes, he would start to get impatient and call Blackie to come back in. It wasn’t so much a call or a whistle but a shout. Blackie was so frightened that she never dared come back.
I was brought up like Blackie and for a long time, behaved like Blackie.
Paps and I were unable to talk normally.
He was probably right most of the time, but he achieved the opposite results.
I probably would have avoided a lot of mistakes in later life had I had a guiding hand in those early years.
What made matters worse was that from an early age I have been hyperactive. I was and have remained so all my life. It caused a lot of harm early on but became an asset later on.
In retrospect I wish I’d had the courage to live my life, not the life others expected of me. Practically impossible when you are young.
The Loan Agreement 1968
In 1968 I was 32 years old, married with one child and had just bought a farm in Yens-sur-Morges. It cost Frs.650'000 which I didn’t have so Paps lent me Frs.235'000 at 5.65% interest, the bank another Frs.300'000 and I put up the rest.
The Frs.235’000 did not come directly from him, but from an increase in the mortgage on Floréal 3, an apartment building in Lausanne bought with funds from his Woerishoffer trust.
Paps insisted we sign a loan agreement.
A few years later he decided to review the “Loan Agreement” to include an extra condition. Here is the transcript of the letter he sent me:
16. November 1971
Dear Peter
As I told you I will only renew the “Loan Agreement” between us under the condition that your children receive a religious education.
The new agreement would also not anymore be unlimited in time. I have sketched the 2 paragraphs which would deal with these matters as follows and would ask you to have them built into the new “Loan Agreement”. I will be in Lausanne from Friday, 26th. until Sunday, 28.Nov. and, if you have everything prepared, could then sign it.
- "This loan agreement can be terminated at any time by either party"
- "The loan of frs.235,000 is given only on the condition that Peter Seilern-Aspang undertakes to provide a religious education to his children in the Catholic sense, i.e. that the children learn to pray at an early age and, as soon as they reach school age, receive Catholic instruction."
I am quite aware that it is quite unusual that such moral conditions are a part of a business contract, but I am only doing it for the good of the children.
Best love
I can’t recall the outcome. I don’t think I signed which caused, yet again, more friction.
When he died, I had to repay the loan plus Frs.54'000 interest. That was the help I got.
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