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From The Engelmann Rink To The Eisrevue: The Emmy Puzinger Story

Photo courtesy Bildarchiv Austria

"I prefer skating over compulsory figures... In the freestyle, you can jump a lot if you want and I like to jump... A waltz is too long for me. [I prefer] a foxtrot." - Emmy Puzinger, "Tiroler Anzeiger", January 14, 1937

Emmy Puzinger was born on February 8, 1921, in Vienna, Austria. Her parents came from Hernals, a quiet district in the city's northwest, and her father Leopold was a taxi driver. At the age of four, she was taken to the doctor because she looked pale. The doctor recommended she take up skating at the nearby Engelmann rink for health and exercise and even on her first trips to the rink, it was clear that she was a natural. The rink's director Rudolf Kutzer told her, "Little one... if you take good care of what I show you, and if you practice diligently, then you will become something great."

Photo courtesy Bildarchiv Austria

At the age of ten, Emmy was sent to Katowice to compete in a figure skating competition for youngsters. "The little Viennese girl in a Polish national dress" didn't win, but she made a strong impression on the Silesian audience. The following year, she was entered into a figure skating competition for school children at the Engelmann rink. She placed second, sandwiched between Olly Holzmann and Hedy Stenuf. That autumn, she was one of ten thousand school children who were sent by the City School Council to the sixtieth anniversary of the Engelmann rink, where she got to see Karl Schäfer and Fritzi Burger perform. Seeing two of the greatest skating stars of the day inspired her to pursue the sport seriously.

Photos courtesy Bildarchiv Austria

In 1932, Emmy won the "newcomers" class in a skating competition held at the Engelmann rink  during "uncomfortable, hurricane-like storm" conditions. The next month, she finished second in the "newcomers" class in a similar event in Innsbruck. The following year, she defeated Hedy Stenuf in a contest at the Engelmann rink and won an international competition for junior skaters in Seefeld. At her first ISU Championship as a senior, the 1935 European Championships in St. Moritz, she placed an unlucky thirteenth.

Top: Emmy Puzinger. Photo courtesy Bildarchiv Austria. Bottom: Emmy Puzinger kicking a ball to Karl Schäfer.

Hours of practice on figures with Rudolf Kutzer and free skating with Willy Petter paid off in 1936 when Emmy won her first of two consecutive Austrian titles. She was sent to compete at the Winter Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where she placed an impressive fourth in free skating and seventh overall. At the World Championships that followed in Paris, she placed fourth. Two judges had her second in free skating, right behind Sonja Henie. The downside of Emmy's overnight success was the considerable pressure that came with it. The talented teenager was praised by reporters for her "tremendous speed and feminine charm" and was hailed as the next 'big thing' in Austrian skating circles. If the likes of Herma Szabo, Fritzi Burger and Hilde Holovsky had given the great Sonja Henie a run for her money, surely a young Austrian skating queen would finally win with the Norwegian skating queen turning professional, sports officials figured.

Maxi Herber and Ernst Baier, Emmy Puzinger and Freddie Tomlins. Photo courtesy National Archives Of Poland.

In 1937, Emmy claimed the bronze medal at the European Championships in Prague and finished fifth at the World Championships in London. Though she performed very well in both competitions, not everyone was wowed. 

Emmy Puzinger at the 1937 European Championships. Photo courtesy Národní muzeum.

Of Emmy's performance in Prague, French journalist Robert Perrier wrote, "The young Austrian Emmy Puzinger, thanks to the excellence of her imposed figures, is classified in third place. Her free skating seemed a bit bland, compared to that of Cecilia [Colledge] and Megan [Taylor]. On an easy theme - too easy - she knew how to put on a slightly cutesy dance, but made not mistakes. Emmy was able to adapt the adage: 'Do not force your talent, you will do nothing with art.' She did only what she could do and she did it well."

Top: Karl Schäfer, Erich and Ilse Pausin, Dr. Pollatschek, Emmy Puzinger and Edi Rada. Bottom: Eduard Engelmann Jr., Ilse and Erich Pausin, Hedy Stenuf, Karl Schäfer, Emmy Puzinger and Rudolf Kutzer. Photos courtesy Bildarchiv Austria.

The following year, Emmy won her first of two 'Ostmark' titles - a combined national championship for German and Austrian skaters under the Nazi regime - and again finished third at the European Championships behind Cecilia Colledge and Megan Taylor. She was forced to withdraw after the figures at the World Championships due to illness. The rise of a new wave of young 'Ostmark' skating queens in 1939 dropped Emmy to fifth at the European Championships and sixth at the World Championships. On December 1 of that year, she married Josef 'Peppi' Wurm, a talented hockey player with the Eishockey Klub Engelmann Wien and Wiener Eissport-Gemeinschaft who represented Austria at two World Championships.

Emmy Puzinger and Josef Wurm

The outbreak of World War II and the cancellation of the 1940 Olympic Games played the backdrop to the downfall of Emmy's struggling amateur career. She lost her national title to Hanne Niernberger in 1940 and the following year, only managed to finish fourth. An invitation from Karl Schäfer to perform in his new Karl-Schäfer-Eisrevue presented itself, but there was a catch. Dr. Roman Seeliger recalled, "From the present point of view it sounds a bit strange but at the time a married woman needed her husband's consent if she wanted to work. So Emmy asked her husband to agree to her decision to become a professional skater. It went without saying that Josef, who was an ice-hockey player, agreed to Emmy's first step to become a show star on the ice. [Josef] had already had to go to War but the couple had the opportunity to write letters to one another."

Photos courtesy Bildarchiv Austria (left) and Dr. Roman Seeliger (right)

In 1943, Emmy appeared in "Der weiße Traum" - one of the highest-grossing German films of the Nazi era. The musical comedy, was classed as a 'Durchhaltefilm' or endurance film - something lighter to inspire Germans to persevere during the War. Dr. Roman Seeliger noted, "One has to point out that the story had nothing to do with the political goals and ideology of Adolf Hitler. On the contrary: In some parts of the movie music in an American style was played which was forbidden by the Nazis elsewhere. In addition to that, the choreographer Willy Petter (who was destined to become the 'creator' of the Vienna Ice Revue) was said to be 'half Jewish' (a term of the terrible regime). The Karl-Schäfer-Eisrevue may have saved Petter's life in a certain way. Some say it was difficult to persuade the officials to produce the film because skating was a sport that did not fit into the ideological background of the Nazi Regime as skating did not contribute to 'toughening up for War'. As a matter of fact 'Der weiße Traum' is said to have been the most successful German-language black and white movie of all time. Famous Austrian actors such as Lotte Lang, Olly Holzmann and Wolf Albach-Retty (Romy Schneider's father) were playing in the frame-story. On the ice, Karl Schäfer was Albach-Retty's double and Emmy Puzinger was Olly Holzmann's double. It is worth mentioning that actress Olly Holzmann was a rather good figure skater and therefore skated some parts of the vaudeville numbers in the movie by herself. But Puzinger‘s skills on the ice were necessary in the more difficult parts of the show."


After the War, Emmy toured for over a decade with the Wiener Eisrevue alongside talented skaters like Eva Pawlik, Rudi Seeliger, Dr. Hellmut May and Fernand Leemans. She also skated in several German and Austrian revue films in the fifties including "Frühling auf dem Eis", "Traumrevue", "Guten Rutsch!", "Die große Kür" and "Symphonie in Gold". She performed all over Europe and even took to the ice in the Soviet Union and Algeria. Dr. Roman Seeliger recalled, "Due to the post-war economic shortages in Austria, the Vienna Ice Revue could not organize enough lightbulbs to illuminate the frozen Grazer Hilmteich, a pond in the Styrian provincial capital city where some of the first performances took place. So the spectators were asked to deliver bulbs for the show. When Emmy Puzinger danced while it was snowing, the fascinated audience was led into a dream world of a fairy who seemed to glide weightlessly through the snowflakes. Her husband Peppi Wurm was the head of the technical workers of the Vienna Ice Revue. So Emmy had the privilege to be together with her partner in private life though touring through the world."

Emmy Puzinger and Helmut Löfke. Right photo courtesy Dr. Roman Seeliger.

Emmy was the only original member of the Wiener Eisrevue's cast remaining when the company was sold to Morris Chalfen, the owner of Holiday On Ice, in 1971. She retired not long after but remained interested in skating for the rest of her life. Dr. Roman Seeliger remembered, "Emmy loved to go skating even as an old lady. She watched the shows of Holiday on Ice but did not like the new style. She criticized that in some vaudeville numbers the attention of the spectators was not focused on one or two skaters. 'You don’t know where to look,' she said, 'At the skater, at the acrobatic pair in the air or at the dancing singer? Is it an ice show or a circus? When they all show their skills at the same time, you can’t concentrate on any of them. So you don’t realize if the skaters are able to keep the tension upright from the beginning of a vaudeville number to the end', she used to say, posing like a ballerina as if she were under the klieg lights. As far as the new international champions were concerned, however, she did not criticize them but appreciated their achievements. She only would have chosen different tunes for the free in many cases as she loved operettas and the music by Robert Stolz. The creator of many Viennese Waltzes and songs had composed nineteen ice operettas for the Vienna Ice Revue. I had the honor to celebrate Christmas with Emmy and other skaters in the last years of Emmy’s life: Erni Zlam (who had performed as an acrobatic duo together with Willy Petter's wife Edith) and Helmut Löfke (the skating partner of many outstanding stars such as European Champions Hanna Eigel, Ingrid Wendl, Regine Heitzer and Eva Pawlik) were among Emmy's dearest friends of her skating past."

Photo courtesy Dr. Roman Seeliger

Emmy passed away on June 19, 2001, at the age of eighty, twenty years after her hockey player husband. She is remembered today as one of the great queens of Austrian figure skating.

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