Kunz, Hanna (nee Czeczowiczka), 1917-

In 1900 Salomon Czeczowiczka along with his son Arthur bought an estate near Neu Titschein in Moravia, then called Partschendorf, now known as Bartošovice and located in the present Czech Republic. This estate included farmland as well as the Schloß Partschendorf. They improved the agricultural property by adding drainage and fertilization. Their resulting financial success allowed them to purchase additional properties in St. Johann (near the Austrian border), which was sold in 1934, and in Andrychau (now in Poland). In 1913 the family added an alcohol refinery and factory for sugar beets to the main estate in Bartošovice. The family's financial support of the local community included the building of a school as well as the renovation of the local church, for which Salomon and Arthur Czeczowiczka were memorialized with a stained glass window and marble plaque. This estate would be seized by the National Socialists in October 1938, and was eventually given to Himmler before being nationalized by the Czechoslovak government following the Second World War. Some of the furnshings of the Schloß Partschendorf were given to a Lebensborn facility in Munich.

Hanna Kunz née Czeczowiczka was born in Vienna on January 23, 1917, the first daughter of Arthur and Irma (née Adler) Czeczowiczka. She had a younger sister, Erica. Much of her childhood was spent in various areas, especially at the family's main residences in Vienna and Bartošovice (then Partschendorf), but also in Italy, Switzerland, and England. In 1937 Hanna Czeczowiczka married Walter Kunz from Karlsbad, Bohemia, who worked as an assistant for her father. They resided at the estate in Bartošovice until the occupation of the area by the National Socialists in 1938 and left Czechoslovakia in March 1939, when the family fled via Prague and Poland to London. Hanna Kunz's parents, Arthur and Irma Czeczowiczka, had previously emigrated to London.

Following the death of her husband in April 1940, Hanna Kunz trained for and received a position as a draftswoman for the Royal Coal Commission. Concurrently she served as a volunteer member of the fire department until the end of World War II, for which she received a Defence Medal.

Hanna Kunz came to the United States in 1950, and settled near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For the following twenty-seven years she was employed at a department store and continued to work after her retirement as a translator for the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

From the guide to the Hanna Kunz Family Collection, 1905-2005, bulk 1939-2000, (Leo Baeck Institute)