Heinz Otto Schild, 18 May 1906 - 15 June 1984

Heinz Schild traced his family back to Eastern Europe. His grandfather, Adolph Schild, was a tailor. He married Caroline Mueller, a girl from Seret, his native town. They emigrated to Istanbul. They had seven children including Herman, Heinz’s father. Herman Schild was born in Istanbul in 1872 and was educated by the ‘Frères des Écoles Chretiennes’. However, he was a typical 19th-century agnostic with no interest at all in Jewish affairs. At the age of 16, he left Istanbul to avoid military service and got a job in Trieste. In 1897, he moved to Fiume (now Rijeka, Slovenia) where he joined a Hungarian navigation company called Adria, eventually becoming one of its directors. Herman Schild became an excellent linguist. He was an anglophile and so he was delighted when Heinz settled in England.