Samuel Morgenstern

Samuel Morgenstern (1875 in Budapest – August 1943 in Łódź Ghetto) was an Austrian businessman and a business partner of the young Adolf Hitler in his time in Vienna (1908–1913). Morgenstern, who was a Jew, gained some importance in Hitler's research, since the good relationship he held with Hitler was sometimes taken as evidence that he was not yet an anti-Semite at that point. Morgenstern was born in 1875 as the son of Hungarian Jews in Budapest. In his youth he learned the craft of glassmaking, and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army for several years. Later Mogenstern moved to Vienna, where he opened in 1903 a glass shop with associated workshop. The store in the backyard of the house Liechensteinstraße No. 4 was conveniently located near the center of Vienna, which probably contributed to the rapid success of the company. In 1904 he married Emma Pragan (born 1871), the daughter of a Jewish family from Vienna. They had a son born in 1911. In the course of his professional career, Morgenstern achieved modest prosperity, so that he was able to gain a country estate in Strebersdorf near Vienna for the price of 5,000 crowns. In May 1914 he bought another piece of land at Großjedlersdorf for 50,000 crowns. Morgenstern stated in 1937 at the request of the main archive of the Nazi Party in Munich that Adolf Hitler first appeared in his Viennese shop in 1911 or 1912. Hitler's offer to include some of his pictures (especially watercolors) in Morgenstern's assortment was taken up by Glaser, who also sold picture frames. As a result, Hitler regularly supplied Morgenstern's business with his pictures until his emigration to Germany in May 1913. Morgenstern later said he bought them to fill empty frames that were for sale, attracting the customer's eye. The motifs of Hitler's paintings were mostly historical views in the style of Rudolf von Alt. Morgenstern also knew the Viennese lawyer Dr. Joseph Feingold. Feingold's wife, Elsa, née Schäfer, liked the pictures, and he bought several for his apartment and law firm.