That same year, Karl Wlaschek bought the Schlosshotel Velden, a five-star property in Austria’s southern Carinthian province where he had performed after the war. At a gala reception celebrating the purchase, he sat down at a piano and played “I’m in the Mood for Love.”
Fifth Marriage
In April 2012, as a 94-year-old widower, Wlaschek made headlines in his personal life when he married for a fifth time, to then 63-year-old Ricki Schenk.
Wlaschek was born in Vienna on Aug. 4, 1917. His father, Rudolf, was a plumber and his mother, Aloisia, was a housewife, according to his biography.
He graduated from high school and studied chemistry at Vienna’s Technical University until 1938, when his studies were interrupted first by the Anschluss, Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria, and then by World War II.
Wlaschek was drafted into the German army and assigned to units that fought in Poland, France and the Soviet Union. He survived the war by using his skills as a musician and joker to win assignments off the frontlines, according to his biography.
His two children, Marie-Luise Bittner and Karl Philipp Wlaschek, were from previous marriages.