Frau Anna

A little printed notice appeared in the Wiener Zeitung last week and with it passed another relic of oldtime imperial Vienna, the Vienna of Strauss waltzes and jangling, spur-heeled lieutenants.

"The affairs of Frau Anna Sacher," said the Wiener Zeitung, "have been placed under the administration of a trustee."

A friend of half the aristocracy of Europe, Frau Anna Sacher is an Austrian butcher's daughter, who ran, until last week, Vienna's stately Hotel Sacher. Short and fat, not unlike a dignified Emil Jannings in a curled wig, Frau Sacher used to move through the ancient corridors of her hotel, puffing on a long black cheroot, followed by two fat, asthmatic bulldogs. She never argued with a careless waiter or chambermaid. She boxed their ears soundly and passed on.

The large and prosperous Cafe Edouard Sacher on the Ringstrasse belongs to Frau Sacher's son. The Cafe Edouard Sacher is new and noisy. There is a jazz band, a cocktail bar, plenty of money in the cashier's drawer. Frau Sacher never allowed Edouard to have a word in the management of her hotel. Still Edouard was a dutiful son. It was no secret that the jazzy new cafe had paid many an overdue account for the old hotel.

The reason the Hotel Sacher has never made any money, though it is always full, is that Frau Sacher kept house frankly for aristocrats. The Sacher is the only restaurant in Vienna where the double-headed eagle hangs on the dining room walls and the imperial crown is on the porcelain. Loyal Frau Anna often allowed princes and archdukes to stay at Sacher's rent free. No rooms were ever available at Sacher's for tourists whom Frau Anna did not consider sufficiently haut ton.

Last week all the world knew that Frau Sacher ruled her hotel no longer. Viennese looked at the announcement over their coffee and whipped cream, and wondered. Was Edouard tired of paying Mamma's bills? Was Frau Anna, now nearly 70, retiring from old age? Had she, who wore an ermine wrap as a bathrobe, finally grown too eccentric?