Last Days in Old Europe

by Richard Bassett

  In those days, the use of the telex machine for filing reports from abroad was widespread. In the absence of my own individual office, I had to cross the First District to the k.k. Telegraphenamt, a quintessentially Ringstrasse palais, where three telex machines were available for general use. The machines resembled typewriters but required different shift keys to be pressed every time you switched from numbers to letters and vice versa. As a result, the unpractised could end up with a typescript full of extraneous characters which then had to be laboriously removed from the ticker-tape. Two splendid ladies in white coats, whose scientific attire suggested they might have been working in a chemist’s, had mastered how to read ticker-tape and helped me as I struggled to remove a letter or numeral which had entered the text by mistake. At first, a short dispatch of 500 words could take me more than an hour to type and send, but gradually my proficiency increased and the twenty-minute walk across town to the Telegraphenamt was a prelude to a pleasant afternoon, after which either a Heurige (vineyard tavern) or Hawelka beckoned. Rarely did anyone else appear to use the telexes, so I usually had the building to myself.

  I had to be careful not to arrive after 4.30. Although de jure the offices closed promptly at 5.00 p.m., or on Fridays at 3.00 p.m., signs of the imminent departure of the telex staff began to manifest themselves much earlier, especially in the run-up to the frequent Catholic holidays which punctuated the month of May. On Sundays a cheerful retired postman opened up the Amt for six hours. His smiles were sincere: trade union leverage ensured he was paid an especially generous rate for working that day.

  For most people not employed in the newspaper world or other ‘essential services’, the Vienna weekend, like that in Ljubljana, began shortly after lunch on Friday and built up a momentum of somnolence which, by midday on Saturday, had reached its first major climax with the closure of all shops – food and drink suppliers included. From then until Monday morning, if you required as much as a bread roll, you needed to make the long trip to one of the outlying railway termini where the Reiseproviant (travel provisioner) would supply a Kipfel or Semmel at inflated prices. Elsewhere in Vienna, this retail regime created parts of the city from where by Saturday afternoon virtually every sign of human life had vanished.

  At first these weekends, foggy in the winter, stuffy and humid during the summer, were a trial. The melancholy still summer weekend days were probably the worst. At the beginning of The Man without Qualities, Robert Musil describes Vienna’s lethargy at the height of a dusty dry summer’s afternoon. ‘It is an August day in 1913 … Tension and relaxation, activity and love are meticulously kept separate in time and are weighed out according to formulae arrived at in extensive laboratory work. If during any of these activities one runs up against a difficulty, one simply drops the whole thing.’

  In 1983, Vienna still had a kakanianfn4 feel to it. By Saturday afternoon, the mostly empty streets of the inner city took on the aspect of a sepia postcard. Fortunately, an interest in history and architecture invested even the briefest of walks in the Vorstadt (suburb) with considerable interest. An acquaintance encountered at a party soon after my arrival in Vienna offered a flat in her family palais in the Josefstadt opposite the Piaristenkirche. It was small but high up with light, airy ceilings. One neighbour was a vivacious young comtesse, the other, Sophie Nostitz, was the octogenarian daughter of the assassinated heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg. Coming out of the nearby Piaristenkirche after mass one Sunday, Sophie Nostitz and I exchanged some words. Perhaps because of the tragic fate of her parents, she well understood the concept of Ehrenfurcht (fear of the Lord).

  Living in the Josefstadt, I gradually came to know the many side streets which at times appeared to be a veritable roll-call of the once great Wiener Bürgertum. The names commemorated on the walls resonated with history. Opposite my flat stood the grand baroque Piaristenkirche and college where Bruckner had played the organ and where a generation later George Weidenfeld had gone to school. A few houses further along, a plaque noted the apartment where the founder of modern cinema, Fritz Lang, had been born. In the nearby Gardegasse, Alcide De Gasperi, the founder of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party, had lived and studied. Another plaque heralded the birthplace of the composer Joseph Lanner, the inventor of the waltz, while on the Auerspergstrasse, a severe neo-classical house with lovely Biedermeier detailing, subtly indicated by a small stucco musical lyre on its façade that Beethoven had lived here. To be a Josefstädtler was to have become a member of a distinguished cultural club.

  Between the Josefstadt and Gumpendorf in the west one could thread one’s way through three remarkable Biedermeier freiwillige Durchgänge (pedestrian thoroughfares). The first of these however had a rather sinister atmosphere. It was high and narrow and it was hard not to think of it unchanged since the dreadful days of the Anschluss. The nearby Neudeggergasse confirmed the recollection of days when Vienna was not all sweetness and light.

  A simple plaque noted the site of one of the district’s synagogues, razed to the ground during the horrendous Reichskristallnacht of 9 November 1938. With that exquisite Viennese irony I would come to know so well, the building next door revealed a single column, symbol of the Enlightenment, and the inscription ‘Zum Römischen Kaiser’ accompanied by the monogram of the Emperor Joseph II, the Habsburg who had ‘set the Jews free’ with his Patent of Toleration in 1781.

  A few streets away another passage brought one to Ulrichsplatz and, high upon a wall, the delightful bronze statue of a seventeenth-century cavalryman riding down an Ottoman janissary. A faded inscription here reminded the passer-by that on this very spot Kara Mustapha, the Turkish commander overseeing the Siege of Vienna in 1683, had pitched his tent. The nearby Spatzennest Gasthaus carried a vast mural depicting the siege. From here the Stiftgasse eventually brought one to the last of the passages, the Ferdinand Raimund Hof, named after the Biedermeier writer, and then to the Gumpendorferstrasse with its memorial to Franz Werfel and that most atmospheric of cafés, the softly lit Sperl. Walking these streets in the evening twilight, it was rare that I encountered anyone.

  Gradually, I made friends with Austrians who shared the secrets of escaping the enervating weekends. The main avenue of refuge was to visit a relation’s country house for tea on Sunday or even stay at one of the many beautiful castles which were still in aristocratic hands, much to the chagrin of the nouveaux riches who, despite their millions, struggled in vain to find a decent schloss where they might act out the life of a Land-Graf.

  Despite two world wars, the end of empire and occupation by the Nazis and until 1955 by the Red Army, most of the old families had clung on to their properties and libraries. Nevertheless, many castles betrayed signs of foreign military occupation. At Steyersberg, the paintings were marked by bayonet cuts inflicted by Soviet troops. At Ernstbrunn, Prince Reuss showed me the large salon which had been vandalized by the Russians. The priceless Reuss collection of manuscripts had been carted off to the Hermitage. In its place the Soviets had left stencilled illustrations of their tanks on the walls. No doubt they could have been removed easily, and the room restored, but it suited the Reusses to preserve this memento of recent times as a warning against complacency. ‘If you have been occupied by the Red Army once, you cannot pretend it might not happen again,’ the old Prince explained.

  Tea at the Reusses’ was always a convivial affair, with a stimulating mix of people and generations. Most of the older generation spoke of the Habsburg monarchy as if it had ended a few weeks earlier. In many cases their fathers had played key roles in the July 1914 crisis running up to the First World War. I was introduced to the children and grandchildren of the diplomats – Hoyos, Szapáry and Musulin – who had held the fate of Europe in their hands. For many of them, the contrast between the lives of their parents before 1914 and their families’ uncertain paths after 1918 had nourished a philosophical outlook on the world. The glittering careers which they might ha
ve expected by reason of their birth had been denied to them, although through charm and intellect many had found ways of compensating. This ceaseless round of parties was an inescapable feature of Viennese life. Strange though it must sound today, a young Englishman with an interesting job was something of a rarity in Vienna then. Such was the mystique of The Times in those days all doors appeared to be opened to me, even though I knew that my opinions, if not completely worthless, were only as good as the next man’s.

  During the Cold War, it was an ill-advised Times foreign correspondent who did not make some effort to interact with the representatives of what was then usually considered the most important of British institutions in any Central and Eastern European capital, the British embassy. Frank Giles, later editor of the Sunday Times, had been advised by the legendary Bill Deakin,fn5 ‘In any city the most important Englishman is the British Ambassador but never forget: the second most important Englishman is always the Times man.’ (Deakin had added comfortingly that if the correspondent was killed on active service for the paper, a good obituary was guaranteed.)

  Within a few days of my first articles being published, a letter on headed paper came from the embassy inviting me to lunch with the press attaché. A bright (they were always bright) young man (they were always men) appeared at the appointed time in one of the more discreet of the restaurants of the Third District. In contrast to the suave manner of the consuls I had met in Trieste, this young diplomatist was keen to demonstrate solid proletarian credentials. My colleagues had warned me that ‘Of course everyone in the embassy is a spy,’ but even I, a tyro in such matters, found this earnest, gum-chewing young man an unlikely candidate for the second oldest profession. His relentless talk of football and reggae was not likely to prise open any indiscretions or encourage confidence, at least mine. No doubt the antipathy was mutual.

  This hapless young diplomat was probably the only Second Secretary in the embassy who in those days was not a spy, except, I suppose, that he might have been taking my measure ahead of my meeting with his boss, the Ambassador, at the annual Queen’s Birthday party, to be held a few weeks later. This event, until its abolition on grounds of cost some years later, was the highlight of the embassy social calendar. It brought together many members of the rather eccentric but small English community as well as the diplomats from the three British missions in Vienna. Thanks to the superb architectural setting of the Residence on the Metternichgasse, the event if unstimulating in conversation was always a feast for the eyes.

  Towering above all others present was the formidable British Ambassador, Sir Michael Alexander. Tall and spare, he commanded through force of intellect rather than patrician inclination. Alexander’s father had been one of the top three codebreakers at Bletchley Park during the war; his son had inherited his brain and many of his acute powers of observation. It was said that old Alexander had a sharp manner with subordinates, a characteristic his son had also clearly acquired. He had worked in Mrs Thatcher’s office after she became Prime Minister and had established a rapport with her which made him one of the very few diplomats she ever trusted. This direct line to ‘Margaret’ gave him a shield which no doubt came in useful in his frequent struggles with the more conservative elements of his department, ever suspicious of the brilliant maverick. Alexander organized Mrs Thatcher’s summer holidays in Salzburg, and his residence became a regular stop for visiting British royalty and other well-known figures. With a certain sense of mérite oblige, Sir Michael also arranged glittering lunches at which some of the more dashing elements of Vienna society were brought out to entertain these distinguished visitors.

  Occasionally one of the VIPs fell by the wayside and had to be replaced with less glamorous fare. One fine spring morning the Ambassador’s secretary rang to say that a guest for lunch the following day had dropped out and would I care, ‘despite the frightfully short notice’, to take Elton John’s place? I readily agreed and found myself next to Princess Margaret and the beautiful Countess Gaby Seefried. It was the day of the American attack on Libya when several US aircraft had taken off from their bases in the UK and bombed Tripoli in a deliberate attempt to kill the Libyan leader Gaddafi. My regal neighbour threw me an enquiring glance with her marine-blue eyes and said it must have been ‘very difficult’ for Mrs Thatcher to allow the American jets to use British bases for such a mission. ‘Did they hit anything?’ she asked. ‘Only the French embassy,’ I replied. ‘Serves them right for denying us the use of their airspace,’ chipped in one of the diplomats around the table to nods and murmurs of general agreement.

  Gaby Seefried, a vision of impeccably dressed middle age with bright red lips, had been one of the favourite secretaries of Hitler’s spy chief Admiral Canaris during the war. Like most of the staff working for Canaris she had shared the Admiral’s opposition to Hitler. Canaris had asked her to hide a huge chest of funds to help the German resistance in the event of the July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler being successful. Unfortunately, the attempt failed, the Abwehr was dissolved and Canaris was executed, along with many other conspirators, in the last days of the war. Countess Seefried survived and married the Emperor Franz Josef’s favourite great-grandchild. She had an utterly captivating elegance. After lunch, she sat calmly smoking a cigarette, her legs crossed as she leant back into one of the small sofas which then adorned the Ambassador’s drawing room. Prince Rupert Loewenstein, the financial manager of the Rolling Stones, acted as a masculine counterweight to these Austrian graces. A man of paradoxes, this scion of an ancient German family was, despite the raucous, rebellious temperament of his world-famous clients, a devout Roman Catholic.

  Being the youngest there by several decades, I was questioned closely on the distractions of Viennese life. ‘Was there enough to do? Was it sufficiently stimulating?’ I caught my host’s eye for a fleeting second and noticed a faint smile cross his usually gaunt face. In the course of the next ten years I would come to know a number of British ambassadors; though they had many capacities very few came anywhere near the intellectual calibre of Michael Alexander. His duties in Vienna seemed too modest for his abilities, so it was pleasing to see him finally given the top job at NATO, where he was reunited with a politician he, and so many diplomatists, much admired, Peter Carrington.

  The rest of Alexander’s staff in Vienna were mostly amiable men (the only women in the embassy in those days were cypherenes).fn6 Dressed in blazers and club ties, and with voices honed in the major public schools and ‘crack’ regiments, they seemed languidly at ease in the grand Third Rococo reception rooms of the embassy or the well-stocked and extensive garden in the Metternichgasse – on top of which regrettably a new chancery building was erected in 1987, much to Alexander’s dismay.

  June brought many invitations from embassies and government departments. It also began the summer ball season, the highlights of which were the Rosenkavalier Ball in the Schwarzenberg Palais and the Johannsclub Ball at Eckartsau on the edge of the great Pannonian plain. There are few places more romantic than Schloss Eckartsau, hidden in its park on the Marchfeld, the great plain to the east of the Austrian capital. Unlike many of the balls I later attended in Vienna during the winter, this party was both intimate and spacious with a dance floor that was never a crush. Is there a more intoxicating experience for a young man than dancing a Viennese waltz with an Austrian or Bavarian woman who knows how to guide, flirt and bewitch her partner, while all the time giving the impression that he is really in charge?

  The glorious heat of midsummer on the Marchfeld meant that one could recover from these exertions as midnight approached by stepping outside and taking a path to the bridge over a moonlit stream to gaze at shooting stars before returning slowly to the music of Strauss and Komzák. By four in the morning, the castle was virtually empty, but with a few friends one could see the unforgettable gold disc rising over the flat fields where Napoleon had fought some of the greatest battles of his career.

  The blaze of crimson, which marke
d the slowly ascending midsummer sun, bathed the plain in a dazzling radiance while the only sound to be heard was the song of a thousand birds. Despite the overwhelming beauty of the place, one could not help being reminded of the melancholy of the departing Habsburgs who had spent their last days on Austrian soil here at Eckartsau in 1919. Until she returned to Styria in 1982, the Empress Zita had spent her last night in Austria here, guarded by some loyal retainers and a single British officer, Colonel Strutt, whom George V had sent to keep a protective eye on the imperial couple. Although it is now a museum, in those days Eckartsau was rarely open to visitors. Superficially, it was virtually unchanged from the days when Kaiser Karl and Kaiserin Zita had wandered through the park.

  The Rosenkavalier Ball back in Vienna was a more worldly affair. Organized by an American debutantes’ society, it aimed to match wealthy young American girls with the impoverished scions of the Erste Gesellschaft. The more poverty-stricken of my acquaintances from the aristocracy had prepared for this upper-crust Volksfest many days ahead. It promised a week of lavish entertainment and frequent excursions to Schloss Fuschl, near Salzburg, all culminating in the ball, where the precocious demands of the American debutantes were expected to stimulate high performance from their coroneted partners.