Es ist ein Auswandererschickal besonderer Art. Der in Chicago lebende Priester Paul Reicher, Sohn burgenländischer Auswanderer, hält immer noch regen Kontakt mit seinen Verwandten im Burgenland. Im nachfolgenden Bericht erzählt er die Auswanderungsgeschichte seiner Eltern.

My father, Andreas (Andrew) was born Nov. 24, 1903, to Paul & Monika Reicher, house #8, in Kleinpetersdorf, at that time, German West Hungary. The family „nickname“ was Wogna or Wagner. He was one of 17 siblings, of whom 16 survived into adulthood, 11 girls and 5 boys. Nine of the brothers and sisters eventually came to the USA and seven remained in Austria. Growing up, my father learned the carpenter trade. He left Europe to come to the USA in 1923, when Burgenland was then a part of the little Austria, created after WWI. He joined many of his sisters and brothers who were already in Chicago. He worked with his brothers for a short time in the building trade. He met my mother, Anna Graf, at a social event and they were married in 1926. My father left the family business and went to work in the huge International Harvester plant on Chicago’s south side. He was unable to join a carpenters’ union since many of the trade unions did not accept foreign born members. After some time at International Harvester he went to work for the huge meat-packing company called Swift&Co. and worked there for the rest of his life. Swift&Co. was located in the famous Chicago Stock Yards. At first my father worked in the „Wool House“ where the men „pulled wool“ from the treated hides of slaughtered sheep and placed the wool in various bags located around each work station and represented the various grades or qualities of wool gathered from the skins. Swift closed the Wool House in the 1950’s and my father began to then work as a mechanic, or a machine maintenance laborer, tending the many machines that produced breakfast sausages and other types of sausages sold under the Swift label. In early 1957 my father contracted cancer of the stomach. Because cancer treatments were not as advanced as they are today and we could not afford the best of the treatments available at that time, after an operation and some recovery, he soon went downhill and died in September of 1957 short of his 54th birthday in November. In his short life my father was a faithful husband and a good worker. Often he volunteered his carpentry skills, especially in the various Catholic Parishes were associated with. He was an usher at Sunday Mass and a member of the Parish Men’s Association. He was a calming influence both within the family and outside it. He was a good balance to the natural worried nature of my mother.
My mother was born Anna Graf on July 21, 1904. At the time of her birth her parents, born in German West Hungary, were living in Vienna. My grandfather found work there in a large city garden center. Four children were born in Vienna and my mother was the second oldest. My grandfather, Adolf Graf, left Vienna in 1908 for Chicago. A year later he sent for his wife, Maria (Oswald) and, because of the shortage of money, two of the four children. It was decided that the first-born and last-born would accompany my grandmother to Chicago. My mother and my uncle Adolf went to my grandmother’s ancestral home in Mischendorf where they were raised by their maternal grandparents (Oswald). By the way my grandfather came to Mischendorf from Rohrbach where he met my grandmother before they went up to Vienna. So my mother grew up in Mischendorf in a German-speaking community in what was to become Burgenland. It was an area dominated by the German-speaking but with significant minorities of Hungarians, Croations and Gypsies and politically controlled by Budapest. Because of the lack of money and also then the outbreak of WWI my mother and uncle remained in Europe until 1921. One thing I might mention is that my mother almost died in 1918. She was victimized by the famous 1918 „Spanish“ influenza epidemic which cost the lives of millions throughout the world. She managed to survive and in 1921 with her brother Adolf they made their way to Vienna, „sneaking“ over the border, since Burgenland was not Burgenland yet. My mother was 17 at the time and my uncle Adolf, 16. They made their way to Bremen and made a long sea voyage, 18 days, to the USA. The passage was plagued by heavy storms and also they were forced to land in Boston Harbor instead of New York where my grandfather was expecting them. They had to make it to Chicago on their own where they rejoined their parents and an additional five sisters born in Chicago. Another brother and sister would be born later bringing the total to eleven siblings. Almost instantly my mother went to work as a domestic in an American doctor’s home where she learned English and spoke it therefore with hardly a trace of an accent.
At the aforementioned social event my father and mother met and were married in January, 1926, at St George Catholic Church in Chicago. Together they had three children (my mother also had many miscarriages so the children born were lucky to have made it full term) my brother Robert, born near the end of 1926, my brother, John, born in 1930 and myself, Paul, born in 1937, the same year that my brother John died from a contagious disease. There were no antibiotics available for the poor in those days. Robert went on to become a Catholic Priest, ordained in 1952. He passed away of an intestinal infection in 1972. I also became a Catholic priest, being ordained in December of 1962 in Rome, Italy, where I studied Theology for four years.
After my father died my mother had to go to work to survive, finding a place at one of the large department stores in Chicago’s downtown. She soon left for several jobs working in parish rectories doing cleaning and housekeeping work. She then was employed for a good long time by the High School Seminary, Quigley South, working in the priests’/teachers’ refectory. She finally retired in the 1970’s and lived until she was almost 84. She died on July 6, 1988.
My parents had a hard but happy life. Things were much simpler in those days and they and we children learned how to be happy with the simple gifts of life. We were happily Catholic and gave a large part of our lives to the parish, St. Basil, that we were a part of. We kept a good sense of the importance of supporting immigrants, the union movement, internationalism and the Catholic Church. Though my father could not join a craft union, he did become a part of the United Packing House Union. The unions were one of the main institutions that gave immigrants the possibility of jobs and reasonable wages and safe working conditions. We also sort of lived in two worlds, patriotic Americans but also not radically so because of our Austrian/Burgenland origins. I remember well my first visit to Vienna and Burgenland in the summer of 1961. I really understood for the fist time what „deja vu“ meant. I felt as if I had been in Burgenland all my life. I am happy that my mother, brother and another members of the Reicher/Graf families were able to visit Austria at the time of my ordination and First Solemn Mass in Grosspetersdorf in December of 1962. To this day I still live in two worlds. I find it appalling so so many of my fellow Americans are reverting to isolationism and an anti-immigrant sentiment. The building of walls on our southern borders is a catastrophe and tragedy of the highest order. As a son of immigrants I cannot imagine why so many Americans forget that we are all immigrants and would have no existence except for the open borders that once signaled the welcome given to the „foreigner.“
Paul Reicher