The villa had a fine ‘English garden’ punctuated by tall trees which meant that in every direction the views from the first floor were of lush green foliage. Although it was barely ten minutes’ walk from the main city square, not another building could be seen from the upper floors of this enchanting house. Inside nearly all the furniture and paintings appeared to date from before 1914. In the middle of the garden stood a small pavilion with frescoes, erected in the late eighteenth century to commemorate Mozart. It predated the villa and had been commissioned by well-wishers of Mozart shortly after his death in 1791. A Biedermeier inscription noted that it was the first (and therefore oldest) monument to be erected to the great composer’s memory. In this respect, the ‘brethren’ of Graz had been ahead of both Vienna and Salzburg.
Life in the Schubertstrasse was very relaxed. There were walks and card games during the day. The sun shone brightly almost every day until a thunderstorm rumbled in around 6 p.m., drenching the tree-lined streets and gardens, and lasting about an hour before the setting rays of the re-emerging sun softly illuminated the early evening. As dusk fell, the moist air was so rich with the fragrance of the gardens that the effect was intoxicating. There were far fewer cars than in Western cities and in the perfumed air it was hard not to feel the Biedermeier beauty of the place, evocative of a Carl Spitzweg painting. Near by, a path led up to the Rosenberg Hill and beyond to the high plateau or Platte. As the billowing white puffs of cloud raced across the sky, the tall trees swayed in majestic accompaniment, their leaves shimmering in the wind. In the distance, a splash of imperial yellow on the horizon, stood the beautiful rococo pilgrimage church of Maria Trost, one of Styria’s many Marian shrines. The celebrated Austrian writer Anton Wildgans had captured this atmosphere in a letter to his wife written in October 1924:
Today, I walked from the Rosenberg over the ‘Platte’ to Maria Trost. It was a glorious autumn day; cool and at the same time warm because of the sun. This region is unique in its beauty. I can only compare it to the area around Naples. Spanish chestnuts grow all around in the woods and gardens and the lush meadows are filled with every conceivable wild flower.
Frau Höhnel, then in her eighties, had studied in Birmingham before the war, and she continued to centre the afternoons around a formal English tea. This was held either in her dark-panelled salon or, when the weather allowed, on the terrace overlooking the Mozart pavilion. Her affection for England was undiminished by her age or the vicissitudes of the twentieth century. She liked to dwell on ‘English values’ which she believed were so important for the world and represented an alternative to unbridled materialism. It was indicative of her generation’s outlook on life that when I offered to pay rent for a few extra weeks, she replied, ‘Don’t worry. We are not so mercenary here. Stay as long as you want.’
The Urania adult education institute in Graz complemented these early stages of my Austrian training. A remarkable legacy of enlightened imperial times, it occupied a fine palais behind the Herrengasse opposite the Gamlitzkeller. I had immediately felt welcome when, upon entering the Director’s office, I spotted a large oil portrait of Disraeli hanging on the wall behind his desk. This seemed a curious adornment to a baroque palace in Styria. The Director, a bow-tied septuagenarian called Dr Schall, taking me kindly to one side and offering me a glass of schnapps, explained, ‘A hundred years ago, Disraeli supported the Austrian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. I felt we should commemorate this somehow.’ I would soon learn that this exchange was typical of old Austrian ways. Under a façade of almost haphazard events, the foreign visitor was flattered, informed and even comforted.
Visits from friends in England were rare, but one morning in the Schubertstrasse I was delighted to receive a telegram from London giving me the details of the imminent arrival by train of a close friend who was en route for Dubrovnik, hoping to spend the summer painting watercolours of the Dalmatian coast. She was an adventurous and practical young lady, such as London seemed to produce in great numbers during the 1980s. As I was showing my guest the delights of the Graz Stadtpark rose-garden, I bumped into an old friend from the local Kleine Zeitung for which I had penned some articles and whose staff were unfailingly eccentric and kind.
‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ he asked me genially. ‘The Empress has just arrived in Styria and has invited me to tea at Schloss Waldstein. Would you like to join me? I am sure she would like to meet you.’
The Empress was none other than Zita, last Empress of Austria, last Queen of Hungary, Queen of Bohemia, etc. etc. I had read in the papers a few days earlier that she had returned to Austria for the first time since she and her husband, the Emperor Charles, had left Vienna in 1919. She was now in her ninetieth year. Naturally, I needed no encouragement to accept this spontaneous invitation to visit one of the outstanding personalities of the last days of the Habsburg Empire. ‘I’ll pick you up from the Schubertstrasse tomorrow at two.’ With that he bade us farewell: ‘Servus. Christi.’
The immediate dilemma, as my English friend with her discerning eye pointed out, was what on earth should I wear? The summer clothes of a fledgling young correspondent of limited means were simple indeed. I had a pair of cricket flannels, a few second-hand shirts with detachable semi-stiff collars and a burgundy silk waistcoat. For an audience with the last Empress of Austria, these did not seem sartorially sufficient.
Gottfried Pils, a neighbour in the Schubertstrasse whom I had met a few weeks earlier, was an artist with a profound interest in the Habsburg army. He quickly came to my rescue. Ushering us into his study, he opened a cupboard with a flourish and pointed to a gleaming blue dragoon officer’s uniform dating from 1914, complete with crested classical helmet, sabre with black and gold porte-épée sword-knot and cross-belt with silver cartridge case. Here was a chance to bring Osbert Lancaster’s world into reality. In a few minutes I had myself been transformed into one of the heroes of an Erich von Stroheim film. Herr Pils eyed my appearance critically with the eye of the specialist. There was a reluctant consensus that the helmet did not fit and, in a flash, another cupboard was opened to reveal the full-dress uniform of an adjutant of Uhlans. Once again I was unbuckled and reattired amid a baroque running commentary of theatrical expletives. ‘Tighter! Jesus Maria! The sword belt must be tighter … What about the Uhlanka? Du lieber Gott. Where is the Uhlanka? Stiefeln? Um Gottes willen.’
Arresting though the finished product was after sabre and tschapka had been carefully fitted, it occurred to me that to adopt the parade uniform of an officer of an army, however distinguished, which had taken up arms against my own was perhaps not the best choice for an aspiring foreign correspondent of The Times. Reluctantly, I surrendered my spurs, sabre and Uhlanka and returned to more conventional attire. With some help from my watercolourist friend’s sewing skills, I somehow managed to appear reasonably respectable in that charity-shop stalwart of certain Cambridge graduates in those days, the faintly pinkish Egyptian cotton jacket. My Austrian friends pointed out that in any event ‘as you are English, no one will mind.’
The following day we drew up outside the Castle of Waldstein where the Empress’s youngest child, the Archduchess Elisabeth, lived with her husband Prince Henry of Liechtenstein. Their son, Vincenz, charming and smiling, appeared in a linen Styrian summer hunting jacket carrying a decanter of ice-cold Welschriesling, that most refreshing of Styrian wines, still utterly unknown outside Austria. He cast an amused eye over me and sighed, ‘What a pity,’ when I politely refused his offer of a glass. It was after all only three in the afternoon.
He led me along a corridor bedecked with antlers to a room with a fine vaulted ceiling, where his parents awaited me. There the Archduchess Elisabeth was soon telling anecdotes about her mother, before suddenly standing up and gently escorting me towards a lady leaning on two sticks who had emerged on to a nearby corridor overlooking the courtyard. She was dressed in a black cardigan and black fur-lined slippers. The Empress Zita had worn black since her husband’s dea
th in exile on the island of Madeira in 1922. Since the 1950s, she had lived not far from the Austrian frontier in a convent building put at her disposal by the Swiss Bishop of Chur.
While in Trieste I had heard much of Zita. As a young Empress she had had a blazing row with Banfield. Both in their twenties, they had angrily clashed in 1917 on the bombing of Italian cities. When he was presented to the Empress, Zita had demanded to know why he ‘had deliberately disobeyed’ her orders and ‘bombed Italian cities’. Banfield had replied evenly, ‘Your Majesty should save her feelings for our cities which the Italians are bombing daily.’ This stand-off between the two young headstrong personalities had been described by eyewitnesses as electric.
There was obviously more to discuss than this fractious episode and we turned to the question of the difficulties her husband had had with Berlin in 1917 and the Prussian generals. The Empress was keen to emphasize that her husband had repeatedly tried to persuade his German allies not to send Lenin back to Russia in the famous plombierten Zug (sealed train). ‘He knew that Lenin was a virus, Gift [poison].’ The word was articulated with such force it appeared almost to ricochet off the walls of the room.
The Empress had also helped organize the ill-fated Austrian peace-feelers of spring 1917 through her brother Prince Sixtus, an officer serving in the Belgian army. Her consistently anti-German position during the war had led the Germans not only to spy on her that year but also to conduct a well-orchestrated press campaign against her, stressing her Bourbon-Parma lineage and Italian sympathies. (She was the seventeenth child of the Duke of Parma, deposed in 1859.)
With characteristic cravenness, the post-war republican Austrian authorities had also been far from generous to her. When her daughter Adelheid died in Austria in the 1970s, the Empress had wanted to return for the funeral. Most of the younger members of the Habsburg family had eventually been permitted to visit Austria, but the officials of the Second Austrian Republic pedantically clung to the anti-Habsburg laws of the 1920s, which insisted that such ‘privileges’ were not granted to any Habsburg born before 1919. Zita thus had had to wait for her ninetieth birthday before returning to Austria when, thanks to the direct intervention of Pope John Paul II with the Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, the law banning her from Austria had finally been overturned.
After twenty minutes, we were joined by other members of the family and my friend from the Kleine Zeitung. The Empress looked for a moment disconcerted but then smiled as she realized that one of her five-year-old great-granddaughters, also called Adelheid, had hidden her walking sticks. In an answer to a question, she stressed that neither she nor her husband had ever abdicated. The conversation moved swiftly to lighter topics and any initial stiffness was quickly set aside. Her smile and laughter were infectious, and she seemed to radiate an inner harmony born of an indifference to material things. I was aware of being in the presence of a deeply spiritual person, one for whom the perils of the world no longer held any threats. ‘Man ist was man ist’ (One is what one is), she told us with a smile.
I had always imagined the republican Austria of the 1980s to have left behind the courtesies and formal modes of speech associated with royalty. Socialism in Austria, even more than in Italy, seemed to strike a robust pose when confronted with the legacy of monarchy. The Austro-Marxism prevalent in the Second Republic could be notably adelfeindlich (nobility-hostile). It was therefore a surprise to hear my colleague from the Kleine Zeitung, whom I had always imagined as a ‘progressive’ socialist, lapse seamlessly into the formal language of the Dual Monarchy. Kaiserliche Hoheit (Imperial Highness), Kaiserliche und Königliche Majestät (Imperial and Royal Majesty) – these phrases tripped off his tongue as if he had been moving in court circles all his life rather than in the editorial offices of a newspaper of largely unreconstructed republicanism. But then, I remembered, this was Styria.
The Empress remained discreet, and those who attempted to ask questions designed to coax out her opinions on current events and personalities were met with a smiling ‘Keine Ahnung’ (No idea). On some historical subjects, however, she offered firm views which challenged the conventional narrative of events. One of these concerned the tragedy of Mayerling, the hunting lodge where in 1889 Crown Prince Rudolf was found dead with his mistress Marie Vetsera. These tragic events, immortalized in films, books and even ballets, have long been considered a suicide tryst. According to the Empress, the reality was more complex and it involved power politics and raison d’état, as was often the case with Habsburg tragedies in the late nineteenth century. Rudolf, she said, had become embroiled in a plot to depose his father, Franz Josef, and realign the monarchy away from Germany and towards France. Key to these designs was the support and participation of the Crown Prince, who held enlightened views, was undeniably Francophile and had struck up a close friendship with several men who would later reach considerable prominence in European affairs. One of these was Georges Clemenceau, a bitter opponent of the Habsburg monarchy and France’s intractable wartime leader. Clemenceau was a frequent visitor to Vienna, where his brother had married the daughter of Moritz Szeps, the powerful editor of the leading Viennese newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Rudolf, who had a close relationship with Szeps, began to see a great deal of Clemenceau. At some point in their discussions the need to support the modernization of the empire and detach it from a potentially subservient relationship with Berlin crystallized into moves to bring about dramatic political change. Rudolf eventually realized he was becoming embroiled in a dangerous plot against his own father which could destabilize the monarchy, so he desperately tried to withdraw. But the men he was dealing with had not come thus far to be so easily dissuaded. They blackmailed the Crown Prince, threatening him with exposure as a potential regicide. When Rudolf still refused to fall in with their plans, and indeed counter-threatened to reveal their machinations to the Emperor, they decided to murder him. The Empress’s revelations were mostly politely ignored and even her son, the Archduke Otto, felt compelled to treat his mother’s words with caution.fn4 The definitive account of what took place in the hunting lodge of Mayerling still remains to be written, although many of Austria’s leading historians have decided that Rudolf’s death was not suicide.
Our conversation moved to a close. At 4.15 promptly, tea was served and half an hour later we said farewell to the last woman to have worn the crown of the Queen of Hungary. ‘Give my best wishes to England,’ she said, and then surprisingly, ‘and especially to the Isle of Wight where I learnt English so many years ago at Ryde Convent.’
A week later, I took the train to Vienna. The comfortable and spotless cream and blue carriages drew up at Graz railway station ready to ascend the Semmering Pass to the Austrian capital. The stationmaster wore a velvet-collared cape and smart red and gold cap. A few Styrian friends from the Urania had come to bid me farewell. As the carriage moved off, I saw Dr Schall and Frau Höhnel wishing me luck as if I was a great-nephew heading off on a journey around the world. Although Graz was scarcely a hundred miles from Vienna, my Styrian friends knew no one whom I might look up in the Austrian capital. The federal structure of Austria engendered enormous cultural, linguistic and psychological differences between Vienna and the provinces. In addition, as in England, cadence, accent and intonation still revealed sharp class differences.
Happily, at a party in London, I had encountered the vivacious Babsi von Ow, then a young Reuters trainee who in the teeth of parental opposition had fought her way into Oxford to emerge as one of the brightest of her generation. Fixing me with her dark eyes and all the cynicism one might expect from an embittered octogenarian, she had given me a merciless verdict on modern Vienna. ‘The contrast between the eternally glorious past and the permanently banal present impinges at all times.’ Generously she gave me the names of two distant cousins, Victor Attems and Karl-Eugen Czernin. She also wrote down the address of a small pension called Alt-Wien in the Spiegelgasse where, she said, ‘You will find your feet.’
The Charm of Old Austria
Vienna–Salzburg–Pannonhalma–Budapest
As the train chugged slowly up to the Semmering, the landscape became rockier and more Alpine. On a distant outcrop of rock I made out a chamois gazing across the cloud-filled valley below. As we ascended ever higher, we broke through another layer of cloud to a sunnier world where castles apparently floated on air, perched on precipices of grey limestone whose lower reaches were enveloped in fog. A shaft of sunlight cut through the murk before the train, gathering speed, penetrated the swirling wreaths.
Large Edwardian hotels in the Alpine style peeked out between the trees, their balconies deserted and their windows shuttered. At the Semmering station, the train halted for five minutes. Pushing down the window I breathed in the Alpine air and savoured the monument erected to the memory of Ritter von Ghega, the gifted engineer who had constructed the Südbahn. Ghega was a familiar name and figure in those days, thanks to the beautifully designed chocolate and cream 20-Schilling note from whose reverse his whiskered features stared out.
Born in Venice, Ghega was, as his name implied, of Albanian origin, yet another example of the pan-European traditions of the Habsburg lands. Between 1848 and 1854, he worked tirelessly on the route of the railway which would link the Adriatic with the imperial capital. In the face of many doubters who simply did not believe it possible to construct a railway over the Semmering, he succeeded in building an elaborate series of hairpin bends which enabled locomotives to manage the gradients without the addition of extra gears. Thanks to the personal intervention of the Styrian Archduke Johann, the route to the Adriatic went through Graz, thus linking Styria with the Mediterranean world as well as the Danube.
Last Days in Old Europe Page 7
