Villa Maass-Portheim
Lindaustraße 7
Lindaustraße 7
This villa has an interesting history. In 1912, Dr. Felix Maass and his wife Franziska, “Fanny” (née von Portheim) bought the house from the descendants of the late Countess Hermine Zichy de Zich et Vásonykeö (née Countess von Redern, 1844 -1911).
During WWI, Felix and Fanny Maass made their house available as a base hospital. To protect the house from being aryanized in 1942, Fanny gave it to her daughter Emilie, wife of the famous radiologist, Professor Stefan Meyer, who founded the Institute for Radium Research in Vienna. The professor’s grave is in the family tomb in the cemetery in Bad Ischl, where the graves of Felix and Fanny Maass are also (Row S22 No.50).
Dr. Agathe Koss-Rosenquist, the granddaughter of Fanny Maas, lived in the villa until 2008.
For further information on the Maass family history and how physicist Stefan Meyer survived the National Socialist time, see Wolfgang L. Reiter’s thoroughly-researched book How did Meyer survive? published in 2022 by the Czernin Publishing House (ISBN 978-3-7076-0764-2).
The blurb says: Stefan Meyer is considered as one of the most prominent Austrian physicists and a pioneer in the field of radioactivity research. Until his retirement in 1938, he was head of the famous Institute for Radium Research in Vienna. However, due to his Jewish origins, the National Socialists expropriated and persecuted him. When emigration failed, Meyer fled his middle-class environment in Vienna to the Upper Austrian provincial town of Bad Ischl. Wolfgang L. Reiter not only details the everyday persistent struggle for survival of the family during the National Socialist time, but the author also describes the Austrian scientific history of the 20th century.
