Gabriele Sonderwald

Gabriele Sonderwald (née Reichel) came from Neulengbach in the Vienna Woods, where her parents ran an ironmongery. Her left papers document the extensive mobilisation of children and young people for the war. Thus she participated as a ten-year-old in sending “Liebesgaben” – “loving tokens of solidarity” in the form of small packages with knitted wares, food and other useful things for the soldiers on the front. In the course of these actions pen-friendships developed with three soldiers yielding a total of sixty-nine forces postcards, which she eventually compiled into an album. After the end of the war Gabriele Sonderwald began to study piano at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, as it was then called.