This article was published in the Spring 2009 volume of RotweissRot, the journal of the Auslandsösterreicher.

Liesl Müller

Several journeys to Vienna during the last 18 months have led me to search for the past. Year after year I had felt more and more like a stranger in this beautiful town, but how could that be as I am after all born and bred Viennese! So I have made it my mission to rediscover the city and to reflect on my heritage.

I was born there and am closely connected with Vienna’s theatre history. My mother was the renowned and popular soubrette Rosl Berndt, the Shirley Temple of her day. She was discovered in Singer’s Dance Academy as a great up-and-coming young talent by the well-known composer and cabaret artist Hermann Leopoldi. Her stage debut at 9 years old, was in the Carl Theatre in the ‘Rastelbinder’ Lehar’s popular first operetta. During the first World War, aged 13, she sang before the Austrian Emperor Karl during the last hours of the monarchy. Now a well-known soubrette and cabaret artist, she married my father, Karl Müller, who in the 1920s was the owner of the legendary “Kabarett Simpl” in Vienna which still flourishes to-day.

With such a strong theatrical background the stage seemed an obvious first career choice. I showed an early talent when aged two, I escaped from my grandmother’s supervision and climbed the stage of the “Simpl” to present a song-and-dance solo. My performance was a great success with the audience but less well received by my grandmother!

But I did not choose a career on the stage. I studied modern languages instead, learned to speak six fluently and ultimately married Tom Johnson who at the time was a Royal Air Force officer in the Control Commission in Romania where I was living with my mother and step-father, a Rumanian. Later Tom became a wine importer and author of several books, and I became Elizabeth Johnson living in Hampshire, England. I could have had a rewarding life as a happy housewife and mother but instead established the EJO, the Elizabeth Johnson Organisation, which was recognised by the British Council and which over many years, enabled more than 250,000 young people from all over the world (among them students and pupils from Austria through my work with the OKISTA) to stay with local families and attend language courses in England.

In 1970 I became a member of the Federation of International Youth Travel Organisations (FIYTO)
and five years later I was elected its Vice President. At the international FIYTO Conferences each year members clamoured for me to sing.

As Liesl Müller (my stage name), my life has taken a completely different direction, and I now devote myself to music. I sing Viennese songs and international chansons (English, French, Italian, Romanian)
and have made several CDs. I have given concerts in Vienna, London and Rome. In Vienna I performed in the International Theatre and the Wiener Theaterkeller. In Rome I sang in the magnificent palace of the Cultural Forum of the Austrian Embassy. I was happy to be able to help the “Save the Children Fund” and other charitable organisations through my concerts.

The duality of my life caused Heinz Janisch of the Austrian state radio ORF to dedicate one of his ‘Human Portraits’ programmes to me for which he came to England specially to interview me. This programme describes people who in midlife have successfully mastered a second, quite different career.

Michael Heltau, recently said of Liesl Müller: “ I met Liesl Müller three years ago and have kept in contact with her ever since. I admire Liesl because she, a genuine Viennese, is the best ambassador Austria could wish to have in the English-speaking world.

You can purchase Liesl’s CDs via this website or from Otto G Preiser & Co. GmbH., Simmeringer Hauptstraße 54, 1110 Vienna, Austria. Tel: +43 (1) 533 1853.

A new CD will be available in September.

If you have any comments or questions, we will love to hear from you. You can contact us via the email link on this website.