Anton Hallinger of Montauk and Glendale, Queens, died last Thursday at home in Glendale. He had just turned 95 in October and had been in hospice care for only a day, after returning from Long Island Jewish Hospital in Forest Hills to be at home with family members around him. He lived on the ground floor of his two-story brick rowhouse with a live-in care provider; one of his sons lives on the top floor with his fiancée and their children.
Mr. Hallinger was born in Bavaria on Oct. 9, 1925, one of four children of Karolina Vogel Hallinger and Anton Hallinger, and grew up at the family home in a small town called Enzerweis. He had a primary school education and played youth soccer for the nearby town of Dornach, his family said, and became a lifelong FC Bayern Munich soccer fan.
As a young man of 19 he fought in the north of France in the final year of World War II. After the war, "he rode his bicycle to and from work as a machinist because he could not afford a car. He tried to buy a motorcycle and vowed that if he was unable to obtain it he would leave Germany," the family said. He was a resourceful man, who, after obtaining a contract to work at a bottling company in Bogota, Colombia, kept his vow to emigrate. The company paid for his air travel.
In the late '50s, after seven years in South America, he sailed to New York City and settled in a boarding house run by an older German couple in Ridgewood, Queens, at the time a German enclave. Mr. Hallinger began writing to his future wife, Elfriede Sprenzinger, who was still in Germany, and persuaded her to meet him in New York, which she did, rooming in the same boarding house and being chaperoned by the owners. The young couple returned to Germany in January 1961 to be married among their families. She died in December 2008.
Mr. Hallinger worked as a master machinist and welder at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was invited with his wife to "lavish art and fashion galas hosted by the Met," the family said. He retired in 1987.
In 1973 the couple bought vacant land in Culloden Shores, Montauk. They had a builder put up the shell of a house two years later. "The only way he could secure the financing to build was to borrow the money from Riverhead Building Supply, since mortgage rates at the time were near 20 percent," the family wrote. "Anton finished the house himself. The Montauk summer residence is still in the family and enjoyed by grandkids alike."
The Hallingers had four children, all of whom survive. They are Anthony Hallinger of Glendale and Montauk, Curt Hallinger of Clayton, N.C., Christian Hallinger of Glendale, and Carol Hevaghan of Park Slope, Brooklyn. He leaves 11 grandchildren: Tristan, Christopher, Stephanie, Thomas, Marc, Olivia, Emma, Anton, and Eva, all with the surname Hallinger; and Fiona and Katerina Hevaghan. Two sisters, Fannie and Notburga, and a brother, Hermann, all died before him, in Germany. He is survived as well by nieces and nephews there.
Mr. Hallinger was a summer parishioner at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk, where the Rev. Robert Joerger officiated at a funeral Mass on Tuesday, followed by burial at Fort Hill Cemetery. He was a parishioner also at St. Matthias Catholic Church in Ridgewood.
There was no wake held, so as to avoid the risks associated with the Covid-19 virus, but a memorial gathering is planned for a later date. The family has suggested memorial donations to Concerned Citizens of Montauk, P.O. Box 915, Montauk 11954, or St. Matthias Catholic Academy, 58-25 Catalpa Avenue, Ridgewood 11385.
