Christian von Ehrenfels
Christian von Ehrenfels was born on 20 June 1859 in Rodaun near Vienna and grew up at his father's castle Brunn am Walde in Lower Austria. He joined secondary school in Krems and first studied at the Hochschule für Bodenkultur in Vienna and then changed to the Universität Wien.
Baron Omar Rolf von Ehrenfels
For a period Rolf lived in Berlin. His first wife Ellen Feld can be seen as she has a part in a film, Das grosse Sehnen , for which Rolf wrote the manuscript. Rolf and his friend Willy Bodmershof worked on it together and shot it partly in a studio in Berlin, partly on location in Istanbul in 1923. On this trip, partly by bicycle, Rolf's interest in Islam was kindled. Also Christian von Ehrenfels appears in it, as a wise man. There are still photos in Ehrenfels archive, Lichtenau. The film is now in the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna. The film was reviewed by Kurt Bauchwitz as press clippings in the Ehrenfels archive show. Kurt was one of the intellectual Jews in the Berlin Wilmersdorf area. With him Rolf Ehrenfels developed a friendship for life. Kurt called himself Roy C Bates when he had escaped to the US after 1933. Their relationship is documented in the Roy C Bates papers in the Grenander Collections at Albany University, USA.