‘The Singing Chair and other stories’ is a delightfully quirky collection just published by Matador. It reflects the fascinating and culturally rich life and times of the author, Herta Maria Moser. Herta was born in 1920 in Vienna, the only child of an Austrian father and a mother who was born in Moravia, then still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. At the age of 13 her mother decided to leave the small family farm for Vienna and found a job with a dressmaker, who read to her seamstresses while they were working, giving her mother an abiding love of literature which she passed on to her daughter.
Herta Maria Moser
‘I’ve been writing for decades and have had pieces published privately, but this is the first time my stories have been published commercially. I’ve always read voraciously, even as a child: I would borrow my mother’s library ticket and told the staff at the library that the books I chose were for her. They were really for adults, but my mother never censored anything I read. I graduated naturally to books that were good literature.
‘Some of my stories come from my memories of childhood visits to my grandparents’ farm in Moravia. The one about a farm boy who is bullied is based on a real man who was renowned for his ability to find mushrooms. Once, the villagers bet him that he would not be able to find them at night, but he set off in the dark and came home laden with them.
‘Having been brought up in Vienna, I had a cultural background. I would queue for standing tickets at the opera house every fortnight, and one of my stories recalls the singing groups and barrel-organ players who performed for money in the courtyards of the Vienna apartment buildings.
‘In the 1930s, Austria was under the right-wing Dollfuss government, which used the army against the working-class districts of Vienna. It was a tense time, when nobody knew whom to trust. One of my stories, ‘Banner Maiden’, is set during this period, and recalls how a young Nazi fell in love with me but - as I discovered years later - decided I would not be a suitable wife for him because of my Czech background.
Herta’s actor boyfriend George was a British subject who had gained his PhD at Vienna University. When it became obvious that war was inevitable, the couple decided to marry and leave for England – Herta was only 18. In the immediate post-war years, George was assigned to the British Control Commission in Germany, where Herta joined him every summer.
‘In Hanover, I was told to take my knitting to the local parks and report back on what local women were saying - their opinion was that the British occupiers were like locusts, taking all the food. In fact, all the food for BCC staff came from the UK, and we suffered from a poor, unbalanced diet with hardly any fresh fruit and vegetables. One of the most vivid stories in the collection comes from this experience – it’s about two British officers who are rivals for the love of a destitute but beautiful refugee they find in a bombed-out German street.
‘Where do I get the inspiration for my stories, apart from my own life? I have always been struck by how reserved English people are. On the Continent, by the end of a train journey everyone knows the lives of their fellow travellers. I try to always make some sort of remark to another passenger, to start a conversation: everyone has interesting stories, and when you are writing fiction, you borrow and adapt them in the light of your own experience.
‘I like to take on the challenge of writing from the point of view of several different characters in the same story. I also enjoyed including a story about a perfectly ordinary man – quite the opposite to most of my tales, which deal with passion and mystery and sometimes pure fantasy.’
The Singing Chair and other stories by Herta Maria Moser is published by Matador. £8.99 (paperback).