Abel Posse
The novelist's father, Ernesto Parentini, a porteño of Italian parents, was one of the founders of Artistas Argentinos Asociados and was the producer of the legendary feature film La guerra gaucha (1942), based on the text by the poet Leopoldo Lugones. The young Abel Posse grew up in the Argentine capital near Rivadavia street, and given his father's profession was exposed to the artistic and cultural milieu this most sophisticated of the South American capitals had to offer. The “Queen of the River Plate”, as Buenos Aires came to be known, fascinated the young man, (4) and his memories are evoked in his novel Los demonios ocultos (1987).
He was able to mingle with the glamorous stars of Argentine show business, like Chas de Cruz, Pierina Dealessi, Ulises Petit de Murat, Muñoz Azpiri, the writer of radioplays which were performed by Eva Duarte (de Perón), as well as the tango composers Aníbal Troilo and Homero Manzi. Such were the family connections to show business that one of his aunts, Esmeralda Leiva de Heredia, better known as “La Jardín”, was an actress friend of Eva Duarte. (5) Growing up in this environment enabled him to obtain an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the tango repertoire and its culture, (6) which imbues his novel La reina del Plata (1988).
Paul Preuss (climber)
Paul Preuss was born in the mountain town of Altaussee, Austria on 19 August 1886. His father, Eduard, a Hungarian of Jewish descent, taught music; his mother, Caroline Lauchheim, an Alsatian, had been a private tutor for a baron. They met when Eduard was engaged to give Caroline's wards music lessons. Based in Vienna, Eduard Preuss and family (including two older sisters, Sophie and Mina) spent summers in Altaussee, following the migratory patterns of the vacationing Viennese upper class that employed him. As a boy, Preuss would often accompany his father, an amateur botanist, on his rambles throughout the local mountains of Altaussee. Never a robust child, at the age of six, Preuss was struck with a polio-like virus that left him partially paralyzed and confined to a bed or a wheelchair throughout that winter and spring. Once sufficiently recovered, the boy practiced gymnastic exercises and took walks to increase his strength. Though his father died when Preuss was in his tenth year, the latter continued the tradition of their mountain rambles, sometimes accompanied by his sisters or friends but often alone. At the age of eleven, he began pursuing summits in earnest, inaugurating his career as a mountaineer. Later, as his interest in alpinism intensified, he would train by placing inverted glasses on top of a wardrobe and doing pull-ups on these unstable supports – excellent practice for loose rock. One-armed pull-ups also became part of his routine (though apparently not on a glass).
Following in the footsteps of his father's avocation, after high school Preuss studied plant physiology at the University of Vienna and was awarded a doctoral degree at Munich University in 1911. After graduation he became an assistant at the Botanical Institute of Munich University.