Post War in Vienna

Brigitte (left), Annemarie and second daughter Betsy in 1955. A son Walter was also born, completing their family. During this time, Willi got the coveted assignment to open the office of the Austrian Trade Commission on the U.S. west coast and left on February 1953 for New York. He later moved his family to Los Angeles and the children became "Americanized." In 1964, they moved to San Francisco and also spent a 6-week vacation with the children in Austria.  

An attractive couple, indeed, in this 1954 photo of the young Kriessmanns dining out in Vienna. He writes of this time that "from 1950 on" they had a nice apartment close to his office, Annemarie had a teaching position at a public school in Simmering which she could reach by streetcar, and their daughter Brigitte, who was born in Oct. 1949, had a nanny who took her for a daily walk in the Belvedere Gardens.

As he writes: "Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Taucher, former secretary of trade and commerce, president of the Styrian chamber of commerce [Graz is the capital city of the state of Styria] and administrator of the Marshal Plan in Austria, sponsored my further advancement." With a letter of recommendation from Dr. Taucher, Willi was hired by the Chief of the American desk at the foreign trade commission in Vienna, Dr. Kafka, on 22 February 1949.

Thus began a time that he describes as hard work and a certain amount of unpleasant political intrigue, even though he was a "political neutralist."

Willi met his future wife Annemarie at Camp Wetzelsdorf, the second detention camp in which he was kept. She was confined there in the small women's section because of her membership and participation in the NSDAP. Willy was released in February 1947, before she was, and after meeting with her parents in Graz, he immediately began classes at the Franz Karls University in that city, adding to the credits he had already gained during the war. With a student grant from the governor of his home state Kärnten, he then enrolled in a doctoral program at the Univ.