I don't know whether, when Fritz headed for New Zealand, it was his intention to spend the rest of his life there. I think, probably, not. He didn't apply for naturalisation for nearly a decade (23 October 1947), during which decade I was born, making me an official Austrian. And, it was not until over thirty years later that he now rather unwillingly returned for a holiday in the old world, to where his children had both 'returned'.
So, on 22 August 1939 when he sailed into the port of New York he was effectively an emigrant. I've looked through the boxes, but sadly I can find no diary for his trip. But I can find his little bundle of 'snaps', which tell a story he never told us...
The emigrant's traditional first glimpses of the New World, photographed from the deck of the Ile de France...
And what seems like a fairly brief skelter around the sights of the city: Wall Street, The Metropolitan Opera House, Times Square
The Rockefeller building, Grant's tomb, the Art Gallery ...
And the 'bread and circuses' pavilions of the World's Fair. He must actually have visited it. Why did he never tell us?
And that is the complete bundle of New York pictures. So I imagine he was on his way across America fairly quickly ... via ....? Let's open the next little packet of pictures ...
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