Raimund von Hofmannsthal

Raimund von Hofmannsthal (26 May 1906 – 20 March 1974) was an Austrian-born author and representative of an American newsreel firm in London. Early life Hofmannsthal was born 26 May 1906 in Austria. He was the youngest child of Gertrud "Gerty" Schlesinger, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, an Austrian novelist, librettist, and dramatist, who settled in Rodaun (now part of Liesing). His sister, Christiane, married German indologist Heinrich Zimmer and they moved to New Rochelle, when he became a visiting lecturer at Columbia University. His father died of a heart attack in Vienna on 15 July 1929 as he was dressing for the funeral of Raimund's elder brother, Franz, who committed suicide at age 25 two days' prior. His mother died in London thirty years later in November 1959. His paternal grandparents were the former Anna Maria Josefa Fohleutner, an upper-class Christian Austrian, and Hugo August Peter Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal, a Christian Austrian–Italian bank manager. His great-great-grandfather, Isaak Löw Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal, from whom his family inherited the noble title "Edler von Hofmannsthal", was a Jewish tobacco farmer who was made a member of the hereditary nobility by the Emperor of Austria in 1835. His mother, who converted to Christianity before their marriage, was the daughter of a Viennese Jewish banker.