Frieda (Frida) Hilfreich, who ran an antiques shop at Petersplatz 4 / Jungferngasse 2 in Vienna’s 1st district from 1906 to 1938, was one of the seven children of Herrman (Hermann) Nagel and Rosalia, née Rosenfeld, who both died in 1895. In 1905, she married Eduard Hilfreich, born in Schaffa (Šafov) in South Moravia in 1871, the son of Siegmund and Teresia Hilfreich, née Kandler, who had obtained a trading licence for the antiques trade at Petersplatz 4 in 1904. In 1906, Frieda Hilfreich was granted her own trading licence and ran the business under her own name from then on. Her husband was also involved in the business, but for a time he still ran his own companies in the same sector at Renngasse 9 in Vienna’s 1st district and at Hörlgasse 18 in Vienna’s 9th district – the couple’s residential address before they settled at Bauernmarkt 9 in Vienna’s 1st district. One of Eduard Hilfreich’s brothers, Adolf Hilfreich (1868–1931), ran an art and antiques shop at 1 Riemergasse, in Vienna’s 1st district, from 1918 onwards; following his death, his widow Ernestine, née Friedmann (1880–1942), continued to run the business. Frieda and Eduard Hilfreich had three sons, all born in Vienna – Kurt (1906), Paul (1909) and Leopold (1910) – who lived at home with their parents until they fled. Kurt worked in his mother’s business. From late 1932, Paul Hilfreich held a taxi licence jointly with his brother Leopold, before he fled, as a Social Democrat, and illegally entered Palestine following the February Uprising of 1934; he later worked there as a locksmith and labourer in Tel Aviv and was married to Bassia Fany, née Weiser.

The Hilfreich family belonged to the Jewish community and were among those persecuted following the annexation of Austria to the National Socialist German Reich. In 1938, Martha Schreder took over the Hilfreichs’ antiques shop, initially without involving the Vermögensverkehrsstelle (VVSt = Property Transaction Office). The VVSt retrospectively approved the ‘Aryanisation’ in January 1939 and, in 1940, imposed an ‘Aryanisation surcharge’ of RM 1,620 on Schreder in addition to the fixed purchase price of RM 2,000, due to the shop’s prime location. In July 1940, Frieda and Eduard Hilfreich handed over a suitcase containing their personal effects to the forwarding agency of Dr. Franz Reitter for safekeeping. They officially deregistered their address at Franz-Josefs-Kai 5/I/10, in Vienna’s 1st district, and moved to Berlin in early January 1941. However, Eduard and Frieda Hilfreich had in fact fled to Yugoslavia, where they initially stayed in Zagreb and, following the German invasion of the Kingdom, were interned in a camp in Draganić, Croatia. In December, they fled to Ljubljana, which had by then been annexed by Italy. From April 1942 to mid-September 1943, they lived in the Aprica internment camp in the province of Sondrino (Lombardy), before entering Switzerland illegally via Campocologno (Graubünden) to escape deportation by the Germans. There they were once again interned in various camps, including Girenbad in the canton of Zurich and, finally, the Flora refugee home in Paradiso-Lugano. Their names appear on a list of liberated persons who arrived in Palestine aboard the steamship Mataroa on 8 September 1945. Their son Kurt had settled in Tel Aviv in 1938 and married Sarah Rifka, née Hirschberg; his brother Leopold worked as a merchant in Haifa. Ernestine Hilfreich had been deported to Riga in 1942 and murdered.

In November 1946, Martha Schreder registered the Hilfreichs’ antiques shop as expropriated property with the relevant municipal authority, in accordance with the Asset Expropriation Registration Regulation (VEAV). The restitution proceedings concluded in June 1951 with a settlement between her and the claimants Kurt, Paul and Leopold Hilfreich. In return for a payment of 25,000 schillings and a partial contribution towards the Hilfreich family’s legal costs, Schreder remained the owner of the business.