Charlotte (Lotte) Kotányi (geb. Altmann)

Charlotte “Lotte” Altmann was born in Vienna as the legitimate daughter of Benedikt Baruch Altmann, a senior medical officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and his wife Sofia, née Lindenbaum. Lotte Altmann and her family were of the Jewish faith. No records have survived regarding Lotte Altmann’s childhood and youth.

In 1920, she married Johann “Hans” Kotányi, a Jew and son of the founder of the spice trading firm Kotányi—Erste österreichische Paprikamühle—and subsequently became the mother of a son and a daughter. In 1925, Hans Kotányi took over management of the company from his father, who died in 1928.

On March 12, 1938, Lotte Kotányi witnessed the downfall of a free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. The company itself was one of the first in Austria to be “Aryanized.” On March 16, 1938, Hans Kotányi was forced to sell his company to the “Aryanizer” Georg Kohl; an hour later, he was arrested by the Gestapo in his apartment and deported to the Dachau concentration camp on April 2, 1938, as part of the so-called “Prominententransport.” The situation and conditions of imprisonment at the Dachau concentration camp were so unbearable for him that on April 28, 1938, he slit his wrists and hanged himself at the same time.

Lotte Kotányi emigrated to England with her children on August 1, 1939, and settled in London. In London, she witnessed Hitler’s Germany’s invasion of Poland and the outbreak of World War II. On May 27, 1940, she was interned and released on March 14, 1941.

Lotte Kotányi was in London in April and May 1945 when Austria was liberated and the Republic was reestablished. However, she remained in England and moved to Cambridge. After Georg Kohl, who had seized the company’s assets, left Vienna in 1945, the former authorized signatory Theodor Rabner took over management of the company. Although Lotte Kotányi and her son Friedrich Walter did not return from England until 1954 and 1955, the company was restored to its owners as early as 1948 and, from that point on, operated once again under the name Erste österreichische Paprikamühle Johann Kotányi, with Lotte, Friedrich Walter, and his sister as partners in the limited partnership.

Lotte Kotányi remained a limited partner in the family-owned company until her death. She passed away in Vienna at the age of 71.