View entry
Name: VON KLARWILL, Viktor Isidor Ernst 'Rufus' (Ritter)
Nee: son of Elsa von Klarwill
Birth Date: 2 June 1902 Vienna
Death Date: 1984 Lower Beeding, Sussex
First Date: 1935
Profession: Businessman
Area: Naro Moru
Married: 1. In Ramsau, Lower Austria 28 July 1935 Friederike Viktoria Gessner b. 20 Jan 1910 Troppau, Austria, d. 19 Jan 1980 Kenya [later Joy Adamson] - div. 18 Dec 1937; 2. In Kenya 1944 Rachel Sutton b. 30 July 1905 London, d. 8 Oct 1988 Lower Beeding, Sussex; 3. ?
Children: Idonia Wraughton van der Bilj (28 Aug 1946 Cape Town, S Africa-2000 Westminster) ; one other
Book Reference: Cass, Glimpses
General Information:
Glimpses - Internees in WW2 - One such was "Rufus" Viktor Lidov Ernst, Ritter von Klarwill, an Austrian born in 1902 of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, and therefore by Jewish law a Jew. He set up cottages along the Naro Moru River as a base for Mt Kenya safaris and for years was remembered because of Klarwill's hut on the mountain, near Makinder Camp. He is, however, perhaps better known as the first husband of Joy Adamson - for all of 2 years (July 1935 - December 1937)
Web Victor von Klarwill , an Austrian businessman who, being Jewish, wisely worried about the rise of the Nazis. In 1937 he sent his wife to Africa to find a suitable place for them to stay until the Nazi era's end.