Josef Kende (geb. Kohn)

Josef Kohn was born in Klausenburg in Transylvania [today: Cluj-Napoca in Romania] as the legitimate son of Alexander Kohn, the owner of an art and publishing company, and his wife Alavine, née Blum. The family is Jewish. His father probably already changed the family name from Kohn to Kende.

After Josef Kende completed elementary and secondary school, the family moved to Vienna, where he attended business school. In 1888, he enlisted as a one-year volunteer in the k.u.k. He then attended a commercial academy in Vienna, graduated in 1893 and passed the examination to become a lieutenant in the reserve in the same year.

In 1895, Josef Kende set up his own business as a bookseller in Vienna, converted to Catholicism and married the Catholic Isolde-Helene Schweida. A year later, their daughter is born. In 1902, Josef Kende became managing director of the book and art shop and antiquarian bookshop Halm & Goldmann. The company continued to exist even after the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the break-up of the dual monarchy and the expulsion of the Habsburgs.

In 1925, Josef Kende joined the Humanitas lodge in the Grand Lodge of Vienna [today: Grand Lodge of Austria of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons]. In the 1930s, he became the owner of the book and art shop and antiquarian bookshop Halm & Goldmann, which was located at Opernring 17 in Vienna's 1st district. After Adolf Hitler's seizure of power in Germany in January 1933, the bookshop becomes the publishing agency for almost all emigrant and exile publishers in Austria and Western and Eastern Europe. It also carries a large selection of socialist literature.

On March 12, 1938, Josef Kende witnesses the downfall of free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. With the occupation of Austria, German legislation was adopted and with it the 'Nuremberg Race Laws', according to which Josef Kende was considered a 'full Jew'. He was arrested by the Gestapo on March 14, 1938 and deported to the Dachau concentration camp on April 2, 1938 on the so-called 'Prominent Transport'. On September 22, 1938, he was transferred from there to the Buchenwald concentration camp. He died in custody there on October 24, 1938. The official cause of death given by the SS was 'pneumonia'.

In March 1938, the book and art dealership and antiquarian bookshop Halm & Goldmann was rapidly Aryanized and taken over. As early as 31 March 1938, it is deemed to have been 'aryanized' and is run as an open trading company from 1 April 1938. As early as 13 March 1938, the first acts of intimidation occur when 'unauthorized persons' attempt a 'confiscation' and steal savings bank books and cash worth around 2,500 Reichsmarks. The intruders were caught by the police, but the owners never saw the loot. The 'Jewish' company name disappears almost overnight, and the name of the new company, which is not entered in the commercial register until January 20, 1939, is: 'Edhoffer & Kasimir' after the araiseurs, the 57-year-old painter Luigi Kasimir and the 52-year-old art publisher Ernst Edhoffer. In November 1938, the Buch- und Kunsthandlung und des Antiquariats Halm & Goldmann on Opernring is worth around 150,000 Reichsmarks and has an estimated value of 83,333.32 Reichsmarks. The asking price was 50,000 Reichsmarks, of which Luigi Kasimir was to pay 30,000 and Ernst Edhoffer 20,000. But the Ariseurs did not have that much cash, or pretended not to, which is why payment was to be made in installments and paid off by September 2, 1940 at the latest. This is never paid.