Viktor Gutmann

Baron Gutmann was born in Belišće on 3 October 1891 to a noble Croatian Jewish family named Gutmann. His father, Baron Alfred Gutmann von Gelse und Belišće (born 1857), was the youngest son of Salamon Heinrich Gutman and brother of Baron Edmund Gutmann. The entire Gutmann family was awarded with a hereditary peer Baron von Gelse und Belišće.[1] His mother was Ottilie (née Pollak von Rudin) Gutmann.

Baron Gutmann was married to Luise Bloch-Bauer, who was the daughter of Marie Therese (née Bauer 1874–1961) and Gustav Bloch (1862–1938). Luise was also the sister of Maria Altmann and niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer,[2] a wealthy member of Viennese society and a patron and close friend of Gustav Klimt.

He graduated as a mechanical engineer at the Vienna University of Technology.[3] After graduation he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army on the Eastern Front during World War I. Baron Gutmann was awarded with Military Merit Medal and several others valor medals.[1]

After the war he returned to Belišće to work at his family company "H.S. Gutmann". His grandfather Salamon established the wood-processing company "H.S. Gutmann" in Hungary. At first Gutmann worked under his cousin Artur Gutmann who was the oldest son of Edmund Gutmann.[3] After his cousin death, Baron Gutmann and his brother Ernest took over the company. Baron Gutmann and his brother have expanded the company, build up and developed Belišće.[1] Gutmann family was very loved and popular in Belišće and among company employees.[4]

During World War II Baron Gutmann company was nationalised by the Independent State of Croatia regime. As Jews, in 1943, Baron Gutmann, his wife and children were arrested and taken by Ustaše to prison at Savska street.[3]

Baron Gutmann and his family managed to survive the Holocaust. After the war Baron Gutmann, as an idealist, returned to Belišće to assist in the reconstruction of Yugoslavia.[3]

On 17 November 1945 Baron Gutmann was arrested by the newly founded communist regime of SFR Yugoslavia as a "capitalist and aristocrat" under false charges of collaboration with the Nazis.[3] After two days of the trial at County Peoples Court in Zagreb Baron Gutmann was sentenced to death on 23 November 1945.[2] The final verdict was confirmed by the Supreme Court of PR Croatia on 16 January 1946.[2]

He was executed in 1946 by the Communist regime in Zagreb.[2][3]

Baron Gutmann and his wife Luise had a son Franjo and daughter Nelly.[1]

Daughter Nelly was born in Vienna on 13 December 1928. Nelly enrolled in medical school at the University of Zagreb in 1946, where she studied for three years till 1949. In 1950 Nelly moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada where she married in 1955 to Prince Johananes Weikhardt of Auersperg, a descendant of Heinrich Joseph Johann of Auersperg and grand-grandnephew of two Minister-Presidents of Austria, Karl and Adolf of Auersperg.[5] After completing a PhD in cell biology at the University of British Columbia, Nelly assumed a position there as Associate Professor in 1968.

In June 2016 Council of the County Court in Zagreb accepted request for review of Gutmann's trial and quashed the verdict from 1946. The review of trial of Gutmann was requested by Nelly, daughter of Gutmann.[2]