Karina Urbach

Einst erfolgreiche Kochbuch-Autorin, verliert die Wiener Jüdin Alice Urbach unter den Nationalsozialisten Heimat, Familie und Karriere. Sie flieht nach England, wo sie jüdische Kinder betreut. Später emigriert sie nach New York, gibt Kochkurse in San Francisco und stellt im amerikanischen Fernsehen ihre besten Rezepte vor. In einer Wiener Buchhandlung findet sie nach dem Krieg sogar ihr Buch wieder. Doch wer ist der Mann, dessen Name auf dem Umschlag prangt? Hat es den "Küchenmeister" Rudolf Rösch je gegeben? Recherchen führen Alice' Enkelin Karina Urbach in Wiener, Londoner und Washingtoner Archive, in denen sie längst verloren geglaubte Briefe, Tonband- und Filmdokumente findet. Sie eröffnen ein bislang unbekanntes Kapitel in der Geschichte deutscher NS-Verbrechen.

Wie die Nazis das Kochbuch meiner Großmutter raubten

Das Buch Alice

This is the untold story of how some of Germany's top aristocrats contributed to Hitler's secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe -- especially in Britain, where their contacts included the press baron and Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and the future King Edward VIII. Using previously unexplored sources from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the USA, Karina Urbach unravels the story of top-level go-betweens such as the Duke of Coburg, grandson of Queen Victoria, and the seductive Stephanie von Hohenlohe, who rose from a life of poverty in Vienna to become a princess and an intimate of Adolf Hitler. As Urbach shows, Coburg and other senior aristocrats were tasked with some of Germany's most secret foreign policy missions from the First World War onwards, culminating in their role as Hitler's trusted go-betweens, as he readied Germany for conflict during the 1930s -- and later, in the Second World War. Tracing what became of these high-level go-betweens in the years after the Nazi collapse in 1945 -- from prominent media careers to sunny retirements in Marbella -- the book concludes with an assessment of their overall significance in the foreign policy of the Third Reich.

Go-Betweens for Hitler

Whenever the British Press wants to attack the Royal Family, they make a jibe about “their foreign roots”. The Royals – as they say – are simply a posh version of German invaders. But did German relatives really influence decisions made by any British monarchs or are they just an “imagined community”, invented by journalists and historians? The Royal Archives at Windsor gave the authors – among others John Röhl, doyen of 19th century monarchical history – open access to Royal correspondences with six German houses: Hanover, Prussia, Mecklenburg, Coburg, Hesse and Battenberg.

Royal Kinship. Anglo-German Family Networks 1815-1918

Prinz-Albert-Gesellschaft. Jahrestagung

Die Prinz-Albert-Gesellschaft hat sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, die britisch-deutschen Beziehungen in Wissenschaft, Kultur und Politik zu pflegen. Alljährlich finden unter dieser Prämisse Tagungen statt, deren Beiträge in den Prinz-Albert-Studien veröffentlicht werden und die viele interessante Aspekte der britisch-deutschen Beziehungen verdeutlichen.

the formation of elites in a British-German comparison

Birth or talent?

The story of a Jewish chef whose bestselling cookbook was expropriated by the Nazis, and who had to rebuild her life in England and the United States Alice Urbach was a successful pastry chef in Vienna in the 1930s, with a bestselling book and her own cooking school. But after the German annexation of Austria in 1938, she was forced to flee like so many other Jews. Alice escapes to England and spends the war years looking after Jewish refugee children in a home in the Lake District. Meanwhile, her younger son is imprisoned in Dachau, and her older son, Otto, having already emigrated to the United States, becomes an intelligence office fighting the Nazis underground. When she returns to the ruins of Vienna in the late 1940s, she discovers that her book, So Kocht Man in Wien!, is published under the name Rudolf Rösch. But did he even exist? When confronted, her publisher refused to give her back the rights. Abandoning hope, she emigrates to the United States to start afresh, opening a Viennese pastry school in San Francisco and eventually appearing on American television. Her dream to publish her cookbook in English under her own name remained unfulfilled before her death in 1983. Now, eighty years later, the historian Karina Urbach - Alice's granddaughter - sets out to uncover the true story behind the stolen cookbook. Her research takes her from Vienna, to London and Washington. In archives she finds letters and other documents that were assumed long lost. Alice Urbach's German publisher has all along adamantly refused compensation - until October 2020, when the publication of her granddaughter's book brought renewed attention to the case and the rights were restored to the family. Harrowing and incredibly moving, Alice's Book tells the story of a woman who, with her unwavering passion for cooking, survived the horrors of WWII to begin a new life on the other side of the world. Karina Urbach sheds light on an untold chapter in the history of Nazi crimes against Jewish non-fiction authors, and the books they could not afford to burn. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

How the Nazis Stole My Grandmother's Cookbook

Alice's Book

Brendan Simms

In this volume eminent historians compare German and British statesmen in war, from the Seven Years' War to World War II. The subjects of the biographical essays range from Frederick the Great and William Pitt the Elder, William Pitt the Younger and Joseph II, William Gladstone and Bismarck, David George and Wilhelm II, as well as Churchill and Hitler. Differences and similarities in the conduct of warfare and references to the present-day political situation are impressively presented. This collection thus provides important results to stimulate further research.

Staatsmänner im Krieg. Ein deutsch-britischer Vergleich 1740-1945

Die Rückkehr der "Großen Männer"

eine Biografie

Queen Victoria

The untold story of how Germany's top aristocrats contributed to Hitler's secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe, especially in Britain. Using previously unexploited sources from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the USA, Karina Urbach unravels the story of how men such as the Duke of Coburg, grandson of Queen Victoria, were tasked with some of Germany'stop-secret foreign policy missions from the First World War onwards, culminating in their role as Hitler's trusted go-betweens during the Second World War.

Karina Urbach

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