Few sights in our town inspire as much curiosity as the daily promenade of Mrs. Paulina Hermann. While the town’s respectable ladies, upon leaving the morning Mass, linger along the Corso to exchange the latest news, Mrs. Hermann invariably takes another route. In her basket, she carries fresh cuts of meat, and wherever she pauses upon a street corner, cats seem to rise from the very stones themselves. From cellars, courtyards, and shaded passageways, they emerge one after another – unhurried, unafraid, as though they know their benefactress well. Some passers-by shake their heads at the spectacle, others smile quietly, while still others insist that no man in all of Osijek could ever count every cat belonging to Mrs. Hermann.
On one such morning, just as the bells of the cathedral had fallen silent after Mass, two ladies paused at the churchyard gate. One inclined her head discreetly toward the woman making her way down the street.
“That is Mrs. Hermann.”
The other sighed.
“Feeding those wretched cats again. And in a silk dress, no less.”
The Perfectly (Un)Ordinary Elite
Indeed, few people in early twentieth-century Osijek, Croatia, were better known than Paulina Hermann, affectionately remembered as the town’s “Cat Mom”. It is hard to imagine that such an unconventional woman was not the subject of constant conversation. Bourgeois Osijek was a small town where news travelled just as quickly as it does today on social media – only then, the news spread through cafés, Sunday Mass, and leisurely strolls along the Korzo, the town’s main promenade.
Paulina Hermann, the “Cat Mom”, was born on 1 June 1859 in Nova Gradiška, a town in the historic region of Slavonia in eastern Croatia, into the Lobe family – one of the wealthiest and most influential families in western Slavonia at the time. The Lobes belonged to the new bourgeois elite of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – people whose fortunes were built through breweries, trade, and entrepreneurship rather than inherited castles and medieval titles, as had long been the norm. (It would be a mistake to think of a brewer as merely someone who makes beer. In the nineteenth century, brewery owners ranked among the wealthiest citizens. Beer was served in almost every household and was often safer to drink than water drawn from the town’s wells.)
Paulina married Dragutin Hermann, a member of one of Osijek’s most distinguished bourgeois families, uniting two of Slavonia’s most influential dynasties. On one side stood the Lobes; on the other, the Hermanns – prominent wholesalers, bankers, and respected citizens whose name became closely associated with Osijek’s economic and civic development.
Dragutin was co-owner of Thürner & Son, the city’s oldest grocery and colonial goods store, served on the Supervisory Board of the Osijek branch of the Austro-Hungarian Bank, and helped finance the construction of the monumental Church of Saints Peter and Paul, now one of Osijek’s best-known landmarks. Their marriage was, in many ways, an ideal union of wealth, prestige, and influence.
Osijek was precisely the kind of city in which such an elite could thrive. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was the fourth-largest city in Croatia and one of the country’s leading industrial centres. Factories sprang up along the railway, banks financed ambitious new investments, and wealthy merchants and industrialists commissioned elegant townhouses and palaces that still define the city’s streetscape today.
After their wedding, Paulina moved to Osijek, where the Hermann family already owned several valuable properties. At first, the couple lived in the city centre alongside other prominent Osijek families. Only later would Paulina’s name become permanently associated with a large estate on what was then the outskirts of the city, along Vinkovačka Road, where the villa now known as the Cat Mom’s Castle still stands.
A Sanctuary on the Outskirts and the Legend of the Cat Lady
It is said that the residents of the Upper Town grew increasingly troubled by Mrs. Hermann and her ever-growing multitude of cats, whose numbers, with each passing year, seemed to multiply like a quiet rebellion against order and propriety. Some complained of the incessant mewing beneath their windows, others of the lingering odour in the courtyards, while still others, as is so often the way of the world, objected chiefly because she chose to live differently from everyone else. Unwilling to endure such daily reproaches, Mrs. Hermann is said to have built a villa on what was then the outskirts of the town and removed herself there together with her most unusual companions.
Yes, the best-known local story says that the growing number of Paulina’s cats eventually became a source of irritation for her neighbours in the city centre. Tired of the constant complaints, she is said to have built a villa beyond what was then the edge of the city and moved there together with her beloved companions. At the beginning of the twentieth century, what is now Industrijska četvrt (Osijek’s Industrial District) was not a densely populated neighbourhood but an almost rural landscape of fields and open land – an ideal place for someone who had turned her home into an animal sanctuary, and, some might have joked, a small zoo.
Exactly how many cats Paulina owned is impossible to determine. As the legend grew, so did the numbers, with stories speaking of dozens, even hundreds, of animals. According to a local tradition, when a kindergarten was built near the villa in the 1970s, workers reportedly uncovered the skeletons of numerous cats. Whether or not the story is true, one thing is certain: her devotion to animals was far more than a wealthy woman’s pastime. Caring for them was a daily commitment to which she devoted a considerable amount of both her time and her fortune. They were not ornaments, status symbols, or exotic pets. They were ordinary stray cats that most people would have simply walked past.
Every day she made her way through the streets of Osijek, feeding abandoned cats, while on her estate she offered refuge not only to them but also to dogs, pigeons, and other animals. Contemporaries recalled that as soon as the cats caught sight of her basket of meat, they would begin following her through the streets, until the image of a woman surrounded by a procession of cats became part of everyday life in Osijek. It was this that earned her the nickname “Mačkamama” (pronounced MAHCH-kah-mah-mah / literally, “Cat Mother”), a name that would ultimately outlive her family name.
Yet cats were not her only protégés. Mačkamama devoted a substantial portion of her wealth to helping people as well. She supported Osijek’s poor, donated generously to the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, and contributed significant sums to the care of the elderly and those in need. On her large estate, she allowed impoverished families to live in the outbuildings, and many paid no rent at all. Those who did were charged only a symbolic amount. While other wealthy landowners built walls around their estates, Paulina opened hers to those who needed help the most.
Town Gossip
Chronicles of Osijek – as told in the cafés and along the Corso: It was often said that Mr. Dragutin Hermann was a gentleman of quiet disposition and impeccable manners, and that only such a man could ever have been the husband of Mrs. Paulina. Some maintained that he, too, rolled his eyes at a house overflowing with cats. Others swore that he secretly paid the town’s butchers to ensure that not a single one of them ever went hungry. Still others declared, with great certainty, that no respectable husband would willingly allow himself to be remembered by posterity for his wife’s cats. In the final years of Mr. Hermann’s life, whispers spread ever more frequently through the town that husband and wife no longer shared the same household. How much of this was true, and how much was merely the idle pastime of Osijek’s cafés, is now impossible to say.
When Mr. Hermann passed away in 1927, many believed that the curious story of Mačkamama would finally come to its end. Quite the opposite happened. Paulina continued to live exactly as she pleased, and a few years later astonished Osijek once again by marrying the Austrian Baron Wessely. Naturally, the town found itself with fresh material for conversation. For there were few things the people of Osijek enjoyed more than discussing the lives of others – especially when those lives belonged to someone who cared very little for what the world might say.
Paulina spent the final years of her life away from the public eye. For that very reason, this is the period about which we have the fewest reliable facts – and the greatest number of stories. It was during these years that tales began circulating that her villa was home not only to countless cats, but also to dogs, pigeons and a variety of other animals. Some even took the story a step further, claiming that she kept a lion. A rather unusual way of taking a love of cats to the next level.
The Court Case and the Psychiatric Evaluation
Yet years of generosity, a lavish lifestyle, and an unwavering devotion to animals gradually began to erode the family’s vast fortune. After her husband’s death, Paulina inherited considerable wealth, but the cost of maintaining her large estate and caring for hundreds of animals continued to grow.
For some time, whispers had been making the rounds of the town. “Have you heard? That Hermann woman has ordered half the butcher’s shop.” – “And for what sort of feast?” – “For the cats!”
Eyebrows were raised along the Corso, heads were shaken in the cafés, and at the marketplace the butchers were said merely to nod whenever the carriage from the Hermann villa appeared. “For the lady again,” they would say. “Veal this time. Her cats dine better than half the town.”
Her relatives, however, found the matter far less amusing. While the town laughed, they watched the family fortune steadily diminish. “This can go on no longer,” they told one another. “If it continues, she will be left with nothing.” And so, in the year 1931, they resolved to take the matter before the courts, petitioning that Mrs. Paulina be declared a spendthrift and deprived of the right to manage her own estate. To the court they brought entire bundles of invoices from butchers, chemists and various merchants. Each bill was intended to prove that a lady who spent such extraordinary sums on stray animals could no longer be trusted to manage her fortune wisely.
For many years afterward, people about the town continued to tell how the cats, innocent of any wrongdoing, had come perilously close to becoming the principal witnesses in one of the most extraordinary lawsuits Osijek had ever seen.
The court was unwilling to rule solely on the basis of the family’s accusations and therefore ordered a medical evaluation. Paulina was examined by some of Osijek’s most respected physicians and psychiatrists, who concluded that she was fully aware of her actions and showed no signs of mental illness. She wasn’t a crazy cat lady – just a cat lady. What others dismissed as madness, they simply described as an unconventional personality. The court therefore rejected her relatives’ petition and upheld her right to manage her own affairs.
She had won the case, but the battle against debt had already been lost. The woman who had once belonged to the very highest ranks of Osijek’s elite spent the final years of her life far removed from her former prosperity, even as the legend of Mačkamama continued to grow.
A Legacy of Generosity
Osijek, February 1938. Baroness Paulina Wessely, née Lobe, Passes Away
Yesterday, Osijek lost one of its most extraordinary citizens. After a prolonged illness, Baroness Paulina Wessely, née Lobe, passed away at the age of eighty-one. The deceased was born into the distinguished Lobe family of Nova Gradiška and, through her marriage to the Osijek merchant Dragutin Hermann, became a member of one of our town’s most prominent bourgeois families. Throughout her life, she supported charitable institutions, aided the poor, and earned particular renown for her care of abandoned animals, for which she came to be affectionately known among the townspeople as Mačkamama. She is survived by her daughters, Friederika and Angelina, by numerous relatives, and by many friends who will remember her for her generosity, her singular character, and her uncommon love for all of God’s creatures.
Paulina Hermann died on 9 February 1938 and was buried at Saint Anne’s Cemetery in Osijek. Yet her story did not end with her death. As the years passed and no one remained to pay the cemetery fees, her gravestone was removed, and the location of her final resting place gradually faded into obscurity.
It was not until February 2024, following research into historical burial records and a collaboration between local historians and Ukop, Osijek’s municipal cemetery company, that her grave was rediscovered and positively identified. The City of Osijek subsequently assumed responsibility for the grave, protected it from being reassigned, and installed a new headstone bearing her name and the image of a cat. Nearly eighty-six years after her death, Mačkamama once again has a place where people can pay their respects.
And what of her home – Mačkamama’s Villa? Even after her death, it never lost its humanitarian character. In 1956, as refugees fled the brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution, it was this very villa that offered them temporary shelter. A commemorative plaque at the entrance marks the event, while representatives of Hungary’s national minority in Croatia and the Hungarian Consulate regularly lay wreaths there in memory of the victims and in gratitude for the refuge they received.
After the Second World War, the villa became state property, while Paulina’s daughters left Osijek and settled in Zagreb. Part of the family’s elegant salon furniture was nevertheless preserved thanks to the Museum of Slavonia, which acquired it in the early 1960s. Following careful restoration, the furniture found a new home in the city’s ceremonial reception rooms, where it remains today as a quiet reminder of the Hermann family.
Today, the villa has been converted into a restaurant and event venue and is one of the best-known landmarks of Industrijska četvrt (Osijek’s Industrial District). Not far away stands a wooden sculpture of Mačkamama surrounded by cats, erected in 2006 to commemorate the woman who left such a lasting mark on the district’s history. Every 1 June, on Paulina’s birthday, the district also hosts Paulinafest, a community celebration dedicated to her life, her charitable work, and her love of animals. For a woman who spent much of her lifetime as the subject of gossip, it is perhaps the most fitting tribute imaginable: the city that once regarded her with curiosity now honours her instead.
Osijek’s High-Society Cats
Today, more than a century later, perhaps two women from Osijek will once again pause at the sight of her. Only this time, they will no longer whisper, “That’s the Hermann woman.” Instead, they will point to the wooden sculpture surrounded by cats and, perhaps with a touch of pride, tell their children, “That’s our Mačkamama.”
Once you start digging through old newspapers and dusty books, you soon discover that Paulina Hermann was far from the only eccentric woman of her kind. America had women who kept hundreds of Angora cats on their estates. England had aristocrats who organized some of the first cat shows. Russian noblewomen built heated rooms for their beloved feline companions. Their contemporaries laughed at them too. People said they loved cats more than they loved people. Today, we remember them as pioneers of animal welfare.
There was, however, one important difference.
While many wealthy people displayed their fortunes through expensive pedigree breeds and exotic animals, Paulina opened her doors to those no one else wanted. Her cats never won prizes at cat shows, carried no aristocratic pedigrees, and were never posed as elegant ornaments in salon portraits. They were ordinary cats from Osijek – the ones hiding in courtyards, attics and cellars, making a living by hunting the city’s mice (and, quite possibly, its mosquitoes!).
Thanks to her, I can no longer picture early twentieth-century Osijek simply as a city of factory chimneys, horse-drawn carriages, and rattling tram tracks. Instead, I imagine it as the setting of Disney’s The Aristocats. At any moment, a dozen cats might appear from around the next corner and scamper after an elegant lady carrying a basket in her hand.
Everybody wants to be a cat, because a cat’s the only cat who knows where it’s at…
