In Search of Ernst

Ernst Königsgarten was born in Brno in 1880. It was then part of the Austrian Empire and Ernst fenced for his country in the 1906 Olympics. His son Henry was also born in Brno, but moved with his mother first to Vienna in 1911 and then to Berlin in 1915. In 1930 he came to England where his mother and brother joined him after the Nazi annexation of Austria, but Ernst returned to Brno. What then happened to Ernst and other members of the family with the rising tide of Nazism, Henry never spoke about. This book tells the story of how Henry’s son Michael, after discovering some family records in his mother’s attic, unearthed the full story of his family’s past – his father’s battles with the Home Office to obtain British nationality, the complex relationships of his romantic grandmother Lisi, and the ultimate fate of his grandfather Ernst and other family members at the hands of the Nazis. So thorough were the Nazi records and so carefully have they been preserved that the inventories of Ernst’s confiscated possessions, some even with photographs, are still in existence today for all to read.