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When Allegra Schmitz gave birth to her fifth child in 1861, in a stately apartment building in Trieste, she brought a new subject to Emperor Franz Joseph in distant Vienna. Trieste belongs to Austria, the officials speak German, many citizens Italian, the neighbors Slovenian, most of the inhabitants Trieste. For Hector Aron, the first name of the newborn, too, Trieste becomes the mother tongue, not Yiddish or Hebrew. The family celebrates the Jewish festivals, but “Hector Aron” becomes “Ettore”, and when he marries a wealthy Catholic cousin in 1896, nobody gets upset.
Father Francesco Schmitz is a businessman and earns a decent income, his sons Adolfo, Ettore and Elio should also become merchants, but great ones.
To do this, they are firmly convinced that they have to learn good German.
When he heard about a German commercial secondary school with boarding school for Jewish students from other countries, he knew where his boys would spend the next few years.
And where exactly?
In Segnitz.
Segnitz?
A village on the Main, surrounding area.
Ettore is eleven, Adolfo a year older, Elio stays at home sick from fear when parents and children set off on a day-long trip to Franconia.
One last time they eat and spend the night together in a Würzburg inn.
The next morning they want to cross over to Marktbreit and take the ferry to Segnitz.
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It is not known whether they liked the German cuisine and the breakfast coffee.
Father Schmitz loves and admires Germany and approaches the reception in a friendly manner to pay.
However, with banknotes from Banca Triestina, which is allowed to print its own banknotes.
The Würzburg landlord has never come across such notes.
What is he supposed to do with it?
Is this foreigner trying to cheat on him?
He gets angry, scolds, makes noises and threatens the police.
Trieste, view from the lighthouse
Source: picture-alliance / AKG
The guest is also outraged: How can you refuse the good money from Trieste, the most important port on the Adriatic! But the landlord insists, Father Schmitz has to look for and change a bank, his wife and sons are left behind as pledge. What a humiliation! Signora Schmitz is crying. Ettore, on the other hand, is not afraid. "Life had always been so safe for him that he didn't realize that money could be important," he remembers as an old man. Finally the father comes back “with pockets full of large silver coins”. What an adventure!
Ettore stayed at the boarding school for five years, spoke German, read Schiller and began to write.
He visits Segnitz again in 1913 with his wife and daughter.
How has everything changed!
The school no longer exists either.
In the meantime he has published two novels under the pseudonym Italo Svevo ("the Italian Swabian").
But since they remain without an echo, Svevo has to become Schmitz again and earn money.
Depressed, he swears to give up writing and smoking.
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Impossible!
He smokes many last cigarettes every day and writes at night.
For business, it would be more useful to learn English.
So he hires a young teacher who ended up in Trieste from Dublin.
This fires the half-dead Svevo, who promptly writes a wonderful third novel (“Zeno Cosini”) about love, marriage and the last cigarettes.
World literature! Exclaims the teacher, who now lives in Paris, and since his verdict is valid, Italo Svevo finally becomes, at last, the most famous son in town.
What was the teacher's name?
James Joyce.
It is said that all life as a writer is paper. In this series we provide counter-evidence.