LA Times, 9/10: Arnold Schwarzenegger is still Austrian hometown hero
Dicktop_Stud
Schwarzenegger Is Still Their Hometown Hero
Residents of Thal and Graz, Austria, remember an athletic, inquisitive
youth whose political thinking was molded by a Jewish mentor.
By Tracy Wilkinson
Times Staff Writer
September 10, 2003
THAL, Austria — The contradictory history of Arnold Schwarzenegger
begins here, near the leafy shores of the green lake called Thalersee.
Up the hillside stands the two-story house where Schwarzenegger was
born to a local police chief and former Nazi, Gustav, and his wife,
Aurelia. It was 1947, two years after the end of World War II, and
Austrians had not recovered from the horrors of the era. They also had
not reconciled themselves to their nation's own dark role — nor would
they for decades to come.
A young Arnold swam in the lake and, with other boys, did chin-ups on
a masterful oak tree whose branches hung over the water.
Among the scrawny boys — Arnold towered over most of them — was Karl
Gerstl, from the adjacent town of Graz, whose friendship would prove
crucial. Karl's father, Alfred, a Jew, took Arnold under his wing and,
by many accounts, was an important force in molding his life, thoughts
and early career.
That Gustav Schwarzenegger had served a regime dedicated to killing
Jews, while his son's mentor was a Jew who had fled that regime and
battled it from the underground, is typical of the contradictions that
ricochet through the lush, gentle hills of southern Austria.
In the Austria where Arnold Schwarzenegger grew up, a culture of
denial thrived for many years after the war. Austrians lagged well
behind the Germans in acknowledging their role in the war and in the
persecution of Jews; the country of Hitler's birth preferred to think
of itself as the Nazi leader's first victim, not his enthusiastic
accomplice.
The province of Styria, where Graz and Thal sit side by side, was
known for a deep strain of centuries-old anti-Semitism. Jews were
evicted from the area in 1497 and banned for the next 350 years. The
lone synagogue in Graz was destroyed in 1938; it wasn't rebuilt until
2000.
Alfred Gerstl, the man who would mentor Schwarzenegger, was born
between the two world wars, the son of a Jewish father, with a
grandfather who was a cantor in Brooklyn, and an Austrian Catholic
mother who converted to Judaism for her wedding.
Gerstl would eventually become president of the upper house of the
Austrian parliament, but in the late 1950s and throughout the '60s, he
ran a club for student athletes in Graz.
Gerstl said he took it upon himself to teach the young men,
Schwarzenegger among them, about a history his country was denying and
about the dangers of anti-Semitism and fascism.
"I gathered the young people together for sports, but the condition
was they had to listen," Gerstl, 80, said in an interview at his
apartment in Graz. "Arnold was very inquisitive. He always wanted to
know why we were against the Nazis. He always understood the need to
protect the weak."
In after-school sessions at his home, Gerstl would play records of
operatic music and tell Schwarzenegger that the beautiful voices he
heard were those of persecuted Jews. Gerstl, his son Karl,
Schwarzenegger and others would have long talks about sports and life
and, occasionally, politics.
"A whole generation in Austria grew up without any historical
background," said Albert Kaufmann, 51, the son of a Jewish resistance
fighter from Graz and another of the boys who showed up for training
with the Gerstls. Schwarzenegger's time at the Gerstl house
"influenced Arnold and provided him with a historical perspective."
It is unclear how much of that early indoctrination stuck.
Schwarzenegger, who left Austria for good in 1968, has said he "hated"
the arts as a child and retained youthful prejudices until spending
time in a more open, progressive United States.
Gerstl is fond of remembering a brave schoolmaster in Graz in the
early 1960s who arranged a field trip to Mauthausen, the main Nazi-era
concentration camp in Austria that was preserved as a museum.
Reactionary groups attacked the man for airing Austria's dirty
laundry, especially before students. Schwarzenegger, although he did
not go on the field trip, was among the youths who staged a
counter-demonstration in defense of the headmaster and against the
right-wingers, according to Gerstl.
Schwarzenegger's many admiring friends in Thal and Graz hold up these
anecdotes as evidence that he could not possibly be anti-Semitic.
Rumors that he harbored anti-Jewish or pro-Nazi beliefs have dogged
the actor for years, in large part because of his father's membership
in the Nazi party and his own friendship with Kurt Waldheim, the
former Austrian president who lied about his service in a Nazi army
intelligence unit that committed atrocities in the Balkans.
Schwarzenegger has said that he never knew what his father did during
the war and that he learned of the Nazi party membership only after
asking the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles to investigate in
1990.
"In those days you didn't ask your father," said Werner Kopacka, 53,
Graz correspondent for the Kronen Zeitung newspaper who befriended
Schwarzenegger in the 1980s. "None of us talked much about the war."
Gerstl, who was forced into hiding during the war and said he later
went underground to smuggle weapons to the resistance, said Gustav
Schwarzenegger welcomed him and son Karl into his home after the war,
"knowing I was a Jew." Not many people in the area did that, he said.
Gerstl today is a strong, gregarious man who drives his own car and
retains a bellowing tenor voice. He enjoys showing visitors his
picturesque city, which straddles the Mur River and is dotted with
watchtowers, Gothic churches and Renaissance villas. His own walls and
bookshelves tell a long, incongruous history. Amid numerous awards
from the Austrian government are certificates from weightlifting and
bodybuilding events; a picture of the late Yugoslav leader Tito and a
partisan medal; several menorahs; and a veritable gallery of family
photos with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Gerstl household is also graced with throw pillows decorated with
the faces of the four Schwarzenegger children, sent as Valentines and
Christmas gifts, and coffee mugs similarly adorned. On top of the
piano is a wedding picture with Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria
Shriver, next to a music stand with Yiddish songbooks.
Four years ago, Schwarzenegger was best man and one of the actor's
daughters was the flower girl when Gerstl, after two decades as a
widower, married a woman from Graz named Heidi. They wed at the
Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas so it would be convenient for
the movie star to attend. Pictures show Schwarzenegger presenting his
wedding gift to the couple: a jewelry box emblazoned with an "End of
Days" logo from the movie he was making.
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Schwarzenegger's relationship with his father was, by all accounts,
complicated. Gustav was authoritarian and quite demanding of his sons,
Arnold and Meinhard. Friends recall that he would force the boys to
compete against each other in athletic matches, then heap praise on
the winner (usually Meinhard) and scorn on the loser (Arnold).
"He never wanted Arnold to be a bodybuilder," Gerstl said. "He wanted
him to be a curler."
An Austrian form of curling, called eisstockschiessen, is a national
pastime here; it was a sport that Gustav loved and excelled at,
winning at least one regional championship.
"His father taught him discipline. He taught Arnold to fight and to
bear pain. What made him Mr. Universe, that part he got from his dad,"
said Kopacka. "But the political thinking was started by Freddy" —
Gerstl.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's hometown friends are universally fond of him
and fiercely loyal. His fame and fortune clearly awe them, and they
cherish the actor's occasional visits home.
Graz is the site, after all, of the Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium,
which houses the Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum — actually more of a
corner in the stadium's fitness gym. The actor's original weights and
barbells, a bit rusted, are arranged along with photographs of a
young, rising star.
"I never expected anything less from him," declared Karl Kling, whose
family owns and operates a restaurant that overlooks the Thalersee.
Its dining room is festooned with pictures of Schwarzenegger, and
family members will eagerly point out his former home, the site of the
old oak tree where he played, the spot on the lake where, years later,
he proposed to Maria.
"He always wanted to be the biggest and the strongest man in the
world," said Kling, who was one of the younger boys who tagged along
and learned to swim with Arnold and the older kids. "Now he is going
for it."
The buzz over California's election has not gripped the people of this
region as a whole. It was too hot this summer to get very excited
about anything. But Dieter Hardt-Stremayr, head of the Graz tourism
board, is considering reviving the Arnold Schwarzenegger tours that
the organization staged in honor of the film star's 50th birthday.
Schwarzenegger's aides were very helpful in planning the tours,
Hardt-Stremayr said.
"They sent a fax saying, do not just show the school but the church
too," he said. "They told us where we should go, what to say, and what
not to say Mozart was born somewhere else; Johann Strauss too. We have
Arnold."
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