Autobiography of Ilse Maria Olga Perl Porter

Autobiography of Ilse Maria Olga Perl Porter

Ilse Maria Olga Perl Porter

Written by herself

Ilse Maria Olga Perl Porter was born on January 31, 1924 in

Vienna, Austria, as the only daughter of Carl Sigmund Perl, a

sculptor, and Olga Ida Maria Jellinek, an artist. The father was

Roman Catholic, the mother was born a Jewess, but had joined the

Catholic faith at the age of 18.

Ilse was raised in the Catholic faith. She attended grade

school, lyceum, and textile industrial school in Vienna. The

family usually spent the winter months in Vienna, and July and

August in the countryside, a place called Schladming, Steiermark,

where the father's sister resided with her family.

In 1938, when Hitler's armies occupied Austria, many of her

mother's relatives fled to England and the U.S. to avoid intern-

ment. One cousin who failed to flee was killed in a gas chamber;

an uncle who was in the concentration camp at Dachau would escape

and came to the U.S. Ilse's mother was to a certain degree pro-

tected by her membership in the Catholic church.

In 1940, Ilse took a job as a bookkeeper with a transporta-

tion company to avoid getting drafted to work for an ammunition

plant. She stayed there until almost the end of World War II.

When the Russian soldiers approached the eastern parts of

Austria, the family fled and took refuge in Schladming, leaving

all their belongings back in Vienna. From there, Ilse was

drafted into the German army and assigned the work as a map

designer for a commando staff in the southern parts of Steier-

mark. Two weeks later, after the final disbandment of the German

army, she returned to Schladming, and having no source of income,

began to make a living as a farm hand, for food and shelter only,

no pay. Later on she became secretary to the town mayor.

While yet in Vienna, she had taken night classes in various

subjects, among which was English. So in the fall of 1945, she

moved to Klagenfurt, Kaernten, and took employment with the

British occupational troops, first as an English speaking typist,

later as an interpreter. In 1947, she returned to Vienna to live

again with her parents, who also had returned from Schladming the

year before. While working on several full and part time jobs,

she prepared herself for a college entrance exam, which she

passed in 1949 and consequently enrolled at the University of

Vienna.

Her mother had died the year before, in 1948.

On September 2, 1950, she married Herbert Eisenreich, and

moved with him to Enns, Oberoesterreich, to live with his mother

and family. She took a job with the European Exchange (Post

Exchange) in Linz as a personnel clerk and recruiter, later as a

foreign language correspondent for a jewelry export company in

Linz, Oberoesterreich. On December 13, 1953, her daughter Karen

Beate was born in Linz. Then she worked as a secretary and

interviewer for the refugee resettlement program of the World

Council of Churches in Linz. In July 1954, she divorced Herbert

Eisenreich, who had moved to Germany, and took a job as a sec-

retary to a wholesale grain dealer in Linz. In 1956, she re-

turned to Vienna to live there with her father and baby daughter,

working as a short hand typist and translator. In March, 1958,

LDS missionaries came to her door and on July 14, 1958, she was

baptized in the Danube and confirmed a member of the church. In

the spring of 1959, she answered an invitation of her mother's

Jewish relatives in the U.S., and traveled with her daughter to

Peoria, Illinois, where she stayed for six months as a guest of

her relatives, then returned to Austria in September 1959.

She worked as a teacher with the Lycee Francais (French

School) in Vienna during the school months, and in the summer as

a tourist guide in the Liechtenstein castle, south of Vienna. In

1962, she took a job as a secretary/nurse with a psychiatrist,

and also cooked for an aging widower, and did janitorial work in

the LDS chapel in Seidengasse. On July 23, 1962, she got her

endowment in the Swiss Temple in Zollikofen. At the end of the

same year, she applied for an Immigration Visa at the U.S.

Embassy.

In January, 1963, she was called on a work mission to

Frankfurt, Germany. She went there with her daughter, and began

to work as a translator, interpreter and general clerk for David

G. Thomas, then the representative of the Presiding Bishopric at

the European Mission under Theodore M. Burton. Shortly before

Christmas 1963, she received her visa and immigrated with her

daughter to the United States, being sponsored by Dr. and Mrs.

Loren C. Bryner, parents of the missionary who had baptized her

five years before. She attended BYU, working at the library,

also at the language training mission, and besides as a

housekeeper to pay for her and her daughter's living and her

tuition.

In 1964, she got her Patriarchal Blessing from Ariel

Balliff. In 1966, she obtained her B.A. and two years later her

Master's degree in Library Science. Before completion of her

Master's degree, she started her new job as a literature ref-

erence librarian in the rank of an instructor at the University

of Utah, on January 2, 1968, and had to go back to Provo for her

final and comprehensive exams and graduation exercises. While

working at the U. of U., she also enrolled there as a student of

theatre arts, won the 1969 playwriting award, and eventually

obtained her M.F.A. in theatre arts in 1974. In 1972, three good

things happened to her; she took a job as a cataloger with the

Genealogical Library, she obtained her U.S. citizenship, and -

best of all - she met Weston Earl Porter. On April 12, 1974, she

was sealed to him in the Salt Lake Temple for time and eternity.

A period of quiet happiness and great joy followed. From January

9th, until March 21, 1975, she spent 71 days at the bedside of

her ailing husband, even then experiencing moments of precious

tenderness, and buried him on March 24, 1975.

At the present time, she is still working with the

Genealogical Library, also working as a receptionist at the Salt

Lake temple, and lives with her mother-in-law.