Childhood and Youth in the Galician Town of Stryj (1896

Childhood and Youth in the Galician Town of Stryj (1896–1914)

Józef Koffler spent the first eighteen years of his life in Stryj, where he would also return during his later periods of residence in Vienna and Lwów. He was born on 28 November 1896 in Stryj as a son of merchant Hersch Koffler and Rebeka née Schönfeld. His parents being of Jewish confession, they raised their three children (Józef, Gizela, and Szulim) in that faith.

They lived at 16 Potockiego Street. In 1907–1914 Józef Koffler attended secondary school, simultaneously learning the piano, harmony, and counterpoint at private lessons. His first attempts at music composition come from this period.

Stryj, Wałowa Street (renamed as Potockiego Street in 1908) (Polona)

Stryj, Potockiego Street (Polona)

Stryj, Wałowa Street (renamed as Potockiego Street in 1908) (Polona)

Stryj, Potockiego Street (Polona)

Stryj, Wałowa Street (renamed as Potockiego Street in 1908) (Polona)

Stryj, Potockiego Street (Polona)

Stryj is located 70 km of Lwów, in what was then the province of Galicia, formed in 1772 after Austria had annexed territories in Southern Poland.

Stryj, general view, 1916 (Polona)

In 1910 Stryj was town of more than 30,000 inhabitants, more than 30% of whom were Roman Catholic Poles, another more than 30% – Jews speaking different mother tongues, and less than 30% – Ukrainians of the Greek Catholic denomination.

Those of the Jewish confession were not a uniform group. Most of them spoke either Polish or Yiddish at home.

In Koffler’s youth, the status of the Polish language was enhanced by the fact that the Autonomy of Galicia was under a Polish (rather than German) administration between the 1860s and 1914. Koffler was also educated at a Polish secondary school in Stryj. Many Jews assimilated to the Polish culture and language (since there was no Polish state, this process was voluntary), whereas Germanisation was rare among Galician Jews in Koffler’s times. Józef Koffler likewise declared that Polish was his native language.

Koffler passed his end-of-school exams in June 1914, intending to enter music academy,

Stryj, main square on a market day (Polona)

but these plans were thwarted by the outbreak of World War I. Already in the summer, a Russian army offensive led to an ever-intensifying westward exodus of the Galician population. This was especially true of the Jews, who feared pogroms of a kind similar to those then frequent in Russia. Many went to Vienna.