First and foremost: if you are not familiar with “Grado”, it’s quite simple: this is a spa town on the north Mediterranean coast of todays Italy, between Venice and Trieste.

The area was known as the “k.u.k. Küstenland” (Imperial Coastland). Shortly after 1900 Grado arrived on the tourist-map and quickly developed into an extremely fashionable small town with a long, sandy beach for the wealthy citizen of the monarchy.

Emma Auchentaller arrived at around that early time to Grado and fell in love with the location and the people. She already had a very good introduction to the leading family of the town through her sister Martha Thonet, who summered there the years before.

In these early years visitors came to such places mainly to improve their health. To get buried in hot sand and then bath in the warm waters of the sea was a boon to ones own body, let alone you had anaemia, a common disease of that time.

Through skilled networking, persistence and being at the right place at the right time, Emma got hold of the ancient Napoleonic fortress, called Fortino (little fort). She tore it down and replaced the ruin with the beautiful Jugendstil (Art Nuveau) “Hotel Fortino”.

Christine Casapicola, collected more than 600 pages of letters from the Auchentaller family archive, transcribed the hand-written Kurrent-Scribble (Gothic-handwriting) into modern texts and edited them down into a 300-pages strong, intensive, thrilling, riveting story of a powerful woman married to a famous painter of her time.

Josef Maria “Pepi” Auchentaller, her husband, had just created a huge “Frieze” for the important “Beethoven-Exhibition” in the Viennese Secession building in 1902. Next to Auchentaller Gustav Klimt, his colleague in the Secession-movement, created his own (today world-famous) Frieze. But “Pepi” (short for Josef), as he was known, had also overspent his budget and time. He was broke. That’s why Emma wanted to save the family finances.

Casapicola’s newly released book: “Emma Auchentaller: LETTERS FROM GRADO, 1900-1912” describes, through the writings of Emma a world so familiar to ours, that it could be your neighbours story. It seems, that on the outside the world had changed totally, but on the human level we still play the same games like one hundred years ago.

Emma’s 1903 Grado-based Fortino-project is truly a “Start-up” undertaking and her father plays the “Business-Angel”, just as in any Silicon valley scenario; there are competitors, big money, developers and all of them circle like vultures over the still virgin beaches. And there is the bureaucracy, which tries to prevent, regulate or stream-line things for their own good.

Emma writes one letter after the other and one gets riveted by her clear and beautiful descriptions of daily life around her, so similar to ours. It gets really funny: beside all the grandness and speculations, there are guys who manage to sell their run-down shacks on the beach to the highest bidder, only because their small strip of land became so valuable overnight.

The best sea-food, crates of oysters, eel, crabs, you name it, is sent almost daily by train to Emmas parents in Vienna - overnight! Today there is no direct train-line to Vienna anymore and little fish around.

Emma runs the Fortino at high speed, it becomes an immediate success and she the “Queen of Grado” (for a while at least). When she enters her dining hall, all the men get up from their chairs and applaud. In the years to come she will run a full-house until end of the season in October, while her neighbours house only a few guests.

But she is restless, in 1905 she buys a whole island called Morgo (1.1 mil sq ft) off the coast of Grado, then the adjacent “Old School” as an extension to the hotel. All the years she fights for a professional laundry capable to service the growing number of hotels and restaurants. After six years of looking around and searching for alternatives she finally gets it, but the investment and daily management is hers.

At the end she is tired, to say the least, around 1909, Emma gets a burn-out, her health is affected, she worked much too hard and her aspiration was too high.

A surprisingly modern story, which happened only some one hundred years ago. When she finally wants to sell her dear Fortino, World War I is around the corner and the plan is buried.

The Auchentaller’s in 1914 leave Grado, in 1915 Italy declares war on the Austrian Monarchy, but that was not the end of the Auchentaller story in Grado. After the war they return to their hotel and island, only to face later a second war.

Emma’s letters stop shortly before the war, the rest is known history (however, more details on the Auchentaller, Scheid and Thonet family further down on this homepage).

Finally: who ever reads this book will end up with a more clear character: it doesn’t matter if we drive vehicles ourselves or are driven by computers - our human interaction would not change.

Currently only available in German, an Italian and English edition is (hopefully) planned.

Andreas Maleta