THE LOST CAFE SCHILNDER: One Family, Two Wars and the Search for Truth

Meriel Schindler

RIGHTS SOLD: UK/Hodder & Stoughton, North American/WW Norton, Germany, Brazil, Hungary, Russia

Film & TV handled by DunnFogg Agency

Translation & UK rights handled by Hodder & Stoughton

Meriel Schindler had spent her entire adult life trying to keep her father, Kurt, at bay. But when he died suddenly in 2016, there was to be no hiding from his extraordinary legacy: not only his fractured relationship with his two daughters, Meriel and Sophie, but also the truth behind what were always assumed to be Kurt’s tall tales of their family history.

The physical manifestation of these towering stories lay scattered around the isolated cottage where Kurt lived out his final years. What Meriel discovered in her father’s home were chaotic piles of Nazi-era documents, and a treasure trove of family photo albums reaching back to before the First World War.

In THE LOST CAFE SCHINDLER, Meriel explores the truth about her notorious and extraordinary family: Oscar Schindler, Alma Schindler, the composer wife of Gustav Mahler and Walter Gropius, Hitler’s Jewish doctor – Dr Bloch, and Franz Kafka.

Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, Meriel explores her father’s actual whereabouts on Kristallnacht; when he was said to have witnessed the Nazis beating his father half to death and ransacking the family home.

Meriel’s journey of discovery has taken her around the world to Poland, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Washington. However, all roads always lead back to the family café. A café in the grand Austrian tradition — the THE LOST CAFE SCHINDLER — in the very heart of Innsbruck.

Meriel Schindler is a Partner at the law firm Withersworldwide.

Meriel advises senior individuals and employers on all manner of workplace issues, ranging from contract negotiations to disputes to exit issues to post termination issues. Meriel is also a trained mediator.

THE LOST CAFE SCHINDLER is her first book.