Notes: In this post, I describe how after three previous unsuccessful attempts over 12 years, my wife and I were invited to visit the villa in Fiesole, a Tuscan hill town above Florence, where my aunt and uncle settled between 1936 and 1938. This invitation was made possible entirely thanks to our good Italian friend, Giuditta Melli, whom we fatefully met at a bus stop in 2014. Given that Florence and Fiesole were briefly havens for German Jews who fled after Hitler came to power in 1933, it is so fitting that a Jewish family now owns the floors once occupied by my ancestors.
Related Posts:
POST 21: MY AUNT SUSANNE, NÉE BRUCK, & HER HUSBAND DR. FRANZ MÜLLER, THE FIESOLE YEARS
POST 35: FATE OF SOME JEWISH GUESTS WHO STAYED AT THE VILLA PRIMAVERA (FIESOLE, ITALY), 1937-1938
POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY
POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS
Fiesole is a historic hilltop town in Tuscany, Italy known for its Etruscan and Roman ruins. (Figure 1) This is a place with stunning views overlooking Florence. It was a favored destination of many German Jewish intellectuals after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. My aunt Suzanne Müller, née Bruck (1904-1942) and uncle, Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) (Figure 2), came here in early 1936. I have no doubt they would have stayed for the remainder of their lives save for the forced displacement of non-Italian Jews by Mussolini in 1938.
As I wrote in 2018 in Post 21, shortly after Hitler and Mussolini’s visit to Florence on May 9, 1938, greeted by huge crowds, Mussolini embraced the “Manifesto of the Racial Scientists” on July 14, 1938. Basically, this Manifesto declared the Italian civilization to be of Aryan origin and claimed the existence of a “pure” Italian race to which Jews did not belong. Between September 2, 1938, and November 17, 1938, Italy enacted a series of racial laws, including one forbidding foreign Jews from settling in Italy.
An emigration log I obtained from the Archivio Comunale Di Fiesole, the Municipal Archives of Fiesole, confirms my aunt and uncle departed Florence on September 16, 1938 (Figure 3), corresponding with the period in which these racial laws were enacted. Upon their departure from Fiesole, my aunt and uncle left in favor of Fayence, France, where my uncle’s daughter from an earlier marriage lived on a fruit farm owned by her brother-in-law.
Let me review what I wrote in Post 21 about three previous visits to Fiesole, respectively, in 2014, 2015, and 2016, unsuccessfully attempting to visit the Villa Primavera.
My wife and I first stopped and stayed in Fiesole in 2014 during our 13-week trip that year visiting places across Europe associated with my Jewish family’s diaspora. While we failed to access the Villa Primavera that year, we met an Italian lady under circumstances I can only characterize as fated. Let me explain.
When traveling in Europe, we typically rent a car to more easily access the many small out of the way places we visit. Such was the case in 2014 when we stayed in Fiesole above Florence. Because traffic and parking in Florence are challenging, on the day we encountered the Italian lady we would eventually befriend, we decided instead to take the bus to access the downtown tourist attractions. After a day of touring, my wife and I were trying to ascertain where the bus headed towards Fiesole departed. Spotting our confusion, a friendly stranger, Giuditta Melli, confirmed we were in the right place. She was headed home on the same bus and engaged us in conversation. Obviously, a regular on the bus, she knew all the other riders. She pointed out her villa before getting off the bus.
Prior to separating, Giuditta invited us to visit the pottery shop where she then worked. (Figure 4) The memories of that day are vivid. When we stopped by two days later, Giuditta spotted us from inside the shop and came rushing out to welcome us. She gave us a tour of the workshop, and while Ann was separately speaking with Giuditta, I was watching Romano, the master potter, at work. The next thing I knew Giuditta was standing in front of me with tears running down her face. I couldn’t imagine what had caused her distress. It turns out my wife had told Giuditta the purpose of our 13-week trip in Europe and had explained that my Jewish aunt murdered in Auschwitz and my uncle had once lived in the Villa Primavera in Fiesole, which as it turns out is only five minutes by car from Giuditta’s home. The source of Giuditta’s anguish was the fact that her Jewish great uncle Carlo Melli (Figure 5) who owned the villa where she now lives was also murdered in the Holocaust, deported to Buchenwald from the concentration camp at Fossoli near Modena, Italy in 1942. My aunt was also arrested in 1942 by the Vichy French in the small town of Fayence, France and deported to Auschwitz via the assembly point of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris. Our common histories provided an immediate bond.
The Villa Primavera (Figures 6-7) is located on the street known as Via del Salviatino (Figure 8), which transects and straddles both Fiesole and Florence. (Figure 9) When initially in search of the house, this caused some confusion as Via del Salviatino 14, the former address of the villa, has identically numbered homes on this same avenue only a short distance apart in Fiesole and Florence.
At the time my aunt and uncle lived there, the villa was owned by a Dr. Gino Frascani, an obstetrician/gynecologist, a truly remarkable man who will in the next month be recognized for his civic contributions. He used family money to build a hospital clinic on the Florence portion of Via del Salviatino, the “Istituto di Cura del Salviatino” (Figure 10), located just down the road from the Villa Primavera, where he even maintained beds in the common infirmary for “charity.” The Istituto still stands today, regrettably no longer as a hospital, but rather as exclusive condominiums. Dr. Frascani owned multiple properties at the time, and while the Frascani family still owns properties along Via del Salviatino, I later learned they no longer own the Villa Primavera.
Having realized we’d located Via del Salviatino 14 in Florence rather than Fiesole, we quickly found the correct address. As I explained in Post 21, at the entrance to the driveway with house numbers 12, 14, and 14a, was one mailbox with the name “R. Frascani.” Logically, we concluded this was a descendant of Dr. Frascani who resided in the Villa Primavera, erroneously so. Only later did we learn that R. Frascani, “R.”for Ranieri, lives in Via del Salviatino 12, ergo not in the Villa Primavera. We drove up the dirt road to Frascani’s residence, which we discovered was a bed-and-breakfast, and rang the bell. No one answered but, as luck would have it, one of Ranieri’s friends passed by as we were seeking entry and phoned him. Since Ranieri speaks no English, we quickly agreed I would contact him by email upon my return stateside. Regardless, it would be another year before we met in person and got answers to some of my questions.
This initial contact established the basis for our subsequent visit to Fiesole in 2015, when we met Ranieri and his mother, Ms. Maria Agata Frascani, née Mannelli, respectively, Dr. Gino Frascani’s grandson and daughter-in-law. In 2015, Giuditta invited us to stay in her villa. She arranged and served as translator for our meet up. During this get-together Ranieri confirmed the villa he lives in is not the Villa Primavera. Sometime during the 1940s, houses along Via del Salviatino were renumbered and the Villa Primavera reassigned the number “16.” While the back of the Villa Primavera is visible from his home, the family no longer owns it, as previously noted. Unfortunately, neither Ranieri nor his mother could gain us access to their former property.
While we failed for the second year running to tour the villa, Ms. Frascani took us to her home. (Figure 11) There she showed us an invaluable historical treasure, a thick album with photos, articles, and personal documents related to the construction and opening of Dr. Frascani’s “Istituto di Cura Chirurgica del Salviatino” in 1908-09. (Figure 12) It’s my great hope this is eventually donated to the Archivio Comunale Di Fiesole.
Let me tell readers what I was able to learn from the roughly two-and-a-half-year period between 1936 and 1938 that my aunt and uncle lived at the Villa Primavera. My aunt ran the large home as a bed-and-breakfast in partnership with a Jewish lady of Austrian extraction, Ms. Lucia von Jacobi (Figures 13-14), whom she may have known from Berlin or met in Fiesole, perhaps through Dr. Frascani.
Ms. Lucia Nadetti, a retired archivist at the Archivio Comunale Di Fiesole, with whom I’m still in touch and consider a friend, took an avid interest in my research when we first met in 2014. (Figure 15) She scoured the archives and uncovered documentary evidence related to the period that the villa was run as a guest house, most significantly, so-called “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia,” “Stay of Foreigners in Italy” forms. Italy required completion of these forms during the Fascist era, which lasted from 1922 to 1943.
The mandatory forms were submitted to the local Municipio, City Hall, to document personal details, accommodation, length of stay, and the purpose of the visit. A local resident, my uncle in the case of guests staying at the Villa Primavera, would have to appear at the Municipio and certify that the foreigner was indeed lodging there. While highly intrusive in terms of the personal information collected, from a genealogical standpoint the details are unparalleled. Guests were required to provide the names of both parents, including the mother’s maiden name, plus their date and place of birth. Based on a separate historic register listing all visitors to the Villa Primavera, the “Soggiorno” forms exist only for those guests who stayed at the villa between 1937 and 1938; those that have survived are very instructive. In Post 35, I discussed the names and fates, where I could determine them, of the villa’s many lodgers.
Let me turn now to our subsequent unsuccessful attempt in 2016 to visit the Villa Primavera.
Like the Fiesole archivist Lucia Nadetti who’d taken a personal interest in my quest for documentary evidence of my ancestors’ passage through Fiesole, our friend Giuditta Melli continued to seek out additional information about the Villa Primavera. Following our visit to Fiesole in 2015, Giudutta announced she’d stumbled upon a full-length book about Lucia von Jacobi, my aunt Suzanne’s partner in managing the Villa Primavera as a bed-and-breakfast. It had been written by a German professor, Dr. Irene Below (Figure 16), from Werther, Germany, whom Giuditta immediately contacted. Giudutta related an extraordinary story based on her conversation with Dr. Below.
As I described in Post 21: “Dr. Below was surprised to hear from Giuditta and curious to learn of her interest in people Irene had studied and knew about. Dr. Below related a fascinating tale. She came to Firenze in 1964 as a student intending to write about the history of art. While researching this topic, however, she came across magazines and diaries of an unknown person who turned out to be Lucia von Jacobi, a woman with very famous friends (e.g., Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Gustaf Gründgens, etc.), and decided instead to write about her. Then, amazingly, in 1966, Dr. Below walked into an antiquarian shop in Firenze and discovered the bulk of Ms. Jacobi’s personal papers, which she soon purchased with her parents’ financial assistance.”
As an additional footnote, Irene’s acquisition of Lucia von Jacobi’s papers was timely. In November 1966, Florence experienced the worst floods in living memory, reaching unheard of heights of 6.7 meters, 22 feet!! The antiquarian shop from which Dr. Below purchased Lucia von Jacobi’s papers was destroyed and everything swept away, a fate that would no doubt have befallen Lucia’s records had Irene not purchased them.
According to the papers that Irene Below was able to retrieve from the antiquarian shop, Lucia spent three months in Palestine in 1938, likely shortly after Mussolini’s embrace of the “Manifesto of the Racial Scientists” on July 14, 1938. Following Ms. Jacobi’s return from Palestine, she was constantly being watched and her mail monitored by the local Questura, that’s to say, the police in the province of Florence. Afraid of being arrested, Lucia escaped to Switzerland in October 1938, forced to leave all her possessions behind. Dr. Below surmises her belongings remained in the Villa Primavera until Dr. Frascani’s heirs sold the home, whereupon they were donated or sold to the antiquarian shop where Irene discovered them.
After contacting Irene Below following our 2015 visit, Giuditta invited all of us to gather at her house in 2016 with the idea of meeting and together visiting the Villa Primavera. In anticipation of this get-together, I wrote letters to the various residents including my father’s 1938 photos taken there, asking whether it would be possible to visit. This is a strategy I’ve employed with mixed results over the years. Regrettably, I received nary a single response. While I even asked Lucia Nadetti to intercede, she too was unable to get us an invitation. I realized after our 2016 trip to Fiesole that I was unlikely to see the grounds nor the interior of the Villa Primavera. While I can be very persistent, one must also know when to “give up the ghost.” So, I did.
My wife and I have continued to remain in contact with Giuditta Melli. In May 2023, she told me about a meeting she’d recently had with Daniel Ratthei, an author from Cottbus, Germany, that included the grandchildren of a woman named Lina Friederike Prinz, née Meyer who, like my aunt and uncle, lived in Fiesole-Florence between 1935 and 1939.
Daniel Ratthei is researching and writing about a German professor named Arno Fritz Kurt Schirokauer (1899-1954), born in Cottbus, where Daniel hails from. According to Daniel, the Schirokauer and Prinz families knew each other well, as probably did most German emigrants in Fiesole. Among the places where the divorced Lina Prinz lived with her children, Rolf and Renate (Figure 17), was none other than the Villa Primavera!
The Schirokauers did not stay at the Villa Primavera but were lodging in another pension in Fiesole called “Il Poderino”; the villas are close to one another. Interestingly, Il Poderino is a guest house that Lucia von Jacobi first ran with a Carlotta Münz until the two had a falling out, and Lucia opened the Villa Primavera with my aunt.
In any case, in writing the current post, I turned to Google to refresh my memory about Arno Schirokauer. In doing so, I realized or reminded myself of something I’d forgotten, namely, that Arno was best known for his biography about Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864).
While not a household name to most readers, Lassalle was familiar to me for reasons I will explain. He was an extremely well-known German jurist, philosopher, and socialist activist. He is best known as an initiator of the social democratic movement in Germany who in 1863 founded the General German Workers’ Association, the first independent German workers’ party. However, what makes him memorable to me is that he is buried in the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu, the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland (formerly Breslau, Germany).
Coincidentally, this historic necropolis-museum is where some of my Bruck relatives are interred, mostly notably, Julius Bruck (1840-1902), inventor of the stomatoscope, whom I discussed in Post 68 and Post 68, Postscript. I have visited the necropolis on three previous occasions and am very good friends with the Branch Manager of the museum, Dr. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska.
Also, in conjunction with a translation that my English cousin, Helen Winter, née Renshaw, is currently undertaking of a diary written by another Bruck ancestor from Breslau (Wrocław), Bertha Jacobson, née Bruck (1873-1957), Lassalle’s name is mentioned. For this reason, on the 160th anniversary of Ferdinand Lassalle’s death in 2024, when the Old Jewish Cemetery held a ceremony attended by many government officials, Renata sent me a photo of Lassalle’s grave. (Figure 18)
I don’t expect readers to fully appreciate this, and I don’t mean to talk down to readers, but one of the silent pleasures I derive from my blog is occasionally stumbling on unexpected connections. Consider for a moment, I was discussing Florence, Italy, and in the next instance, I’ve transitioned to discussing Ferdinand Lassalle buried in Wrocław, Poland because of his biographer’s (Arno Schirokauer) connection to Cottbus, Germany and brief association with Florence and Fiesole. Add to this, the incidental connection to Lina Prinz who stayed at the Villa Primavera when my aunt and uncle lived there. Making these connections reminds me of the old TV game show, “Concentration.”
I apologize to readers because I have seriously digressed which I regret to inform you will continue for a bit longer. My wife and I recently returned from a 13-day trip to Paris and Florence-Fiesole. Our journey to Paris was related to the three Fédor Löwenstein paintings I retrieved in September 2025 discussed in Post 189, which I’ve agreed to loan to two or three French museums for exhibitions over the next few years. The first of these is ongoing now at the musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, mahJ, at which I was asked to participate in a round table discussion.
Knowing we would be in Paris and curious to meet Daniel Ratthei in Florence and reunite with Giuditta after ten years, my wife and I decided to fly there. I retained an unrealistic hope that Giuditta and/or Lucia might facilitate our entry into the Villa Primavera. While Daniel was unable to meet us in Florence on account of previous commitments, Giuditta found an unlikely connection that after 12 years allowed us to finally tour the Villa Primavera. Learning this left me giddy with excitement!
Let me explain. Giuditta is currently in the process of selling her villa. In chatting with her realtor, Giuditta let on she’d been trying for years to gain access to the Villa Primavera. During this exchange, Giuditta’s realtor told her that she knows Ms. Barbara Anzilotti (Figure 19), the owner of the top floor, and offered to put her in touch. Barbara is the person who reached out to her neighbors who own the bottom two levels, Elad and Vered Tzur, the Jewish couple who graciously invited us to visit. (Figure 20) I find it noteworthy that the Villa Primavera is again occupied by a Jewish family.
Our visit took place on February 24, 2026. We learned that at the time my aunt and uncle lived in the Villa Primavera, the top floor owned by Barbara did not exist; it was added by the previous owner, then sold as a separate unit. The previous owner also completely redesigned the bottom floors of the house. Elad and Vered, who emigrated from Israel, have only owned the house for about a year, and live there with their five children.
My father only stayed at the Villa Primavera twice, both times in 1938, and his pictures exclusively show the exterior of the home. Comparing my father’s photos with the current layout of the exterior, shows it is remarkably unchanged. Vered and I enthusiastically got into re-creating my father’s pictures from the same vantage point he’d taken them. (Figures 21a-b; 22a-b; 23a-b; 24) This was great fun!
To again walk in my aunt, uncle, and father’s footsteps was special. How they would feel about my genealogical endeavors is unanswerable, particularly as it relates to my father since the only family he ever spoke about ruefully was his beloved sister Suzanne. However, given that the Villa Primavera is a place associated with his sister and a place my father visited, I imagine he would be intrigued that I visited the home.
Recall from above that using the surviving “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia” forms, in Post 35 I detailed the fates of the villa’s guests. One of those guests was a woman named Maria Donath, née Czamska (I’ve come across various spelling of her maiden name, including “Czamsky”, “Camsky”). (Figure 25) She was married to Ludwig Donath who was known for character roles in films, TV, and on stage. (Figure 26)
I was recently contacted by Mr. Alexander Schilling, Head of production of Heidelberger Schlossfestspiele. This is a theatre festival in Germany, and the best-known and most-attended open-air theater plays in the Northern Baden Region. Alex explained that for an upcoming exhibition about the history of the Heidelberger Schlossfestspiele, founded in 1926, he is researching biographies of cast members from the 1920s who fled Germany after 1933 on account of political or racial persecution. And Maria Czamska-Donath was one of those members.
In Post 35, I wrote that Maria died in Vienna in 1974, erroneously as it happens. Alex asked for the source of this information, and, while dubious I could retrace my steps, I rediscovered I’d found it in ancestry.com’s link to Find A Grave. Maria’s married name “Donath” is apparently common even today in Vienna and it seems I mistook the Maria Donath in the Vienna Friedhof for Maria Czamska. Based on information Alex obtained from more reliable sources, Maria apparently died on the 13th of August 1967 in Munich. I am always grateful when readers take the time to research and correct misinformation I’ve inadvertently introduced into my post.
In closing, I want again to acknowledge and thank our good friend Giuditta Melli for persisting in finding a way to help us enter the Villa Primavera in Fiesole. Thanks to a chance encounter at a bus stop in 2014 this would never have happened. Given my family’s association with the Villa Primavera, a brief period of calm before the cataclysmic events of the Holocaust ensnared my family, I’m eternally grateful to Giuditta as well as Elad and Vered for having made this visit possible. Fiesole is a special place, a place my aunt and uncle certainly embraced and where they would permanently have settled had circumstances turned out differently.
