Eduard Steiner
(Březnice 1884 – Auschwitz 1944)
The owner of Vienna’s Giant Ferris Wheel
Eduard Steiner was born on 25 April 1884 in the Bohemian town of Preßnitz (now Březnice, Czech Republic). He was a businessman, owned a hardware shop in the small town of Horažďovice (formerly Horažďowitz) and was married to Karolina née Fischlova, with whom he had three daughters. After the English owners of the Giant Ferris Wheel, built in 1897, were expropriated during the First World War and Gabor Steiner, on whose land it stood, had gone bankrupt, Eduard Steiner bought the cultural monument, which became listed in 1920. Steiner continued to own the Ferris wheel until 1938, when it was “aryanised” by the Nazis.
Eduard Steiner probably stayed frequently in Vienna, where he also owned an apartment, but the rest of the family lived first in Horažďovice and later in Prague. On 20 June 1942 Eduard Steiner was deported to Theresienstadt due to his Jewish ancestry and later onward to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he and his wife were murdered on 18 June 1944.
In 1953, the Ferris wheel was restituted to Eduard Steiner's daughters, who then sold it on to their lawyer.
Literature and sources
Claims Resolution Tribunal, Certified Award to Elizabeth Muller, 31 December 2003: https://www.crt-ii.org/_awards/_apdfs/Steiner_Eduard.pdf
Roland Girtler, Streifzug durch den Wiener Wurstelprater. Die bunte Welt der Schausteller und Wirte, Vienna/Cologne/Weimar 2016.
Cécile Cordon, “Das Riesenrad hat alle entzückt”. Die wechselvolle Geschichte des Wiener Wahrzeichens, Vienna 1997.
https://www.holocaust.cz/en/database-of-victims/victim/126563-edvard-steiner/