Zsuzsanna Kohner

Zsuzsanna Kohner Henney Shaw (1923-1984) My grandmother was not the best mother to my father. If WWII and the subsequent Soviet occupation hadn’t happened, she would have most certainly had an easier time parenting a child. She was never particularly maternal, but access to resources and family help would have most likely improved the situation quite a bit.

But the war had other plans for my family, and the ability to reliably and consistently parent just wasn’t in the cards for her (or unfortunately my father).

My grandmother’s given name was Zsuzsanna, but growing up, the family nickname for her was “Baby,” and she was definitely pampered and a bit coddled by her parents. She rarely attended school, and in fact documents list her as being homeschooled for most of her life. An avid horseback rider, we found records of her first competing in horse shows at around age 8, and this was her biggest passion.

In a Budapest society paper of the times there are many mentions of parties held in honor of the two Kohner sisters. A piece in 1938 describes a garden party held at the Kohner country home:

“ Baron Willy Kohner's garden party in Zugliget was the most visited, which is no wonder, since the beautiful little Kohner baronesses are the most attractive phenomena.”

While both the Kohner daughters were considered attractive, my grandmother was considered the more beautiful of the two. She was also considered quite fragile and delicate. We think she was homeschooled in part because she was in some way sickly, but also because she just didn’t like school very much.

My grandmother may have not liked school, but she was ambitious and intelligent. Later in life, after she settled in the United States, she joined my great aunt in getting a degree in interior design from the Parsons School of Design. Eventually she became a very successful interior designer in Washington DC, decorating embassies, hotels, and politician’s homes. In fact, at the time of her death in 1985, she was in discussions with the local PBS station about a home interior designing show.

After she and father left Hungary in late 1948,she found herself in Austria as inexperienced twenty-something mother with no money, no food, no clothes, and nowhere to live. These were obviously very difficult times for both of them. She often had to leave my father by himself in hotel rooms or with families they barely knew for extended periods of time. Life was uncertain, scary, and tenuous for both of them.

Eventually, my grandmother met my step grandfather, a witty American newspaper writer named Frederick Shaw Jr. He was a reporter for the International Herald Tribune at the time, and he was working at their Paris office. My grandmother sent my father to a French Catholic boy boarding school. He spoke no French, and knew no one. The students were allowed to go home on weekends, but by this time his future step father had been transferred to the London office, and my grandmother often visited him on the weekends, leaving my father at the school.

They eventually married, and when my father was in 6th grade, they moved to Germany together, and my father got to go to an American School. This was one of my father’s favorite times of life. He joined the Boy Scouts, learned English fluently, and thoroughly enjoyed “normal American” life in Germany.

The three of them eventually moved to New York City and then on to Washington D.C. My father was sent to a Catholic Hungarian boarding school in Pennsylvania that he despised, and then went off to Massachusetts to attend MIT, a school he was determined to attend since he was quite young.

We often visited my grandmother in D.C. growing up. One of my favorite things to do was to hang out in her attic home office. I loved going through all the books and books of fabric and wallpaper samples.

Of course her house was impeccably decorated. Toward the end of her life she added on a beautiful (but leaky and impractical) greenhouse and indoor pool to her Georgetown home, and filled it with what seemed like thousands of orchids.

Her life seemed so glamorous and wonderful to me. And in many ways it was. But she was also impractical, flighty, and at times quite self centered. The trauma of WWII, and the sacrifices she had to make after it, had taken their toll.

And they certainly took their toll on my father well. I see now that she did the best she could as a parent, with the skills and resources she was able to access (material and emotional). Sometimes they were enough, sometimes they weren't but she was trying to make a life for her and her son in the best way she could.