Thunder At Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914

by Frederic Morton

  Berchtold was not the only one to exude optimism. Early in June his Berlin colleague Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg sent the German ambassador in London a note whose cheer contrasts with the grimness of the generals at Carlsbad just a couple of weeks before. The German Chancellor said that he could not blame Russia for wanting a stronger voice in the Balkans and that "I do not believe that Russia is planning an early war against us. Whether it will come to a general European conflagration will depend entirely on the attitude of Germany and England. If we two stand united as guarantors of European peace… then war can be averted."

  A few days later, on June 24 (three days before Archduke Franz Ferdinand's arrival in Sarajevo), the German ambassador reported a most amiable chat with Sir Edward Grey, the English Foreign Secretary: "The Secretary said that it was his endeavour to go hand in hand with us [Germans] into the future and to remain in close contact over all the questions that might arise… As regards Russia, he had not the slightest reason to doubt the peaceful intentions of the Russian government. Nothing could take place that would give this relationship [between Russia and England] an aggressive point against Germany. He believed moreover that lately a less apprehensive frame of mind on the question had been gaining ground with us in Germany. " The Foreign Ministers kept soothing, the chimneys of gun factories kept smoking.

  At the other end of the political spectrum, Vladimir Lenin did not anticipate war. When the Socialist International had called an Emergency Conference in Basel in 1912 on the threat of a worldwide conflict, he had not bothered to attend. Soon afterward he'd written to Gorki: "A war between Austria and Russia would be a very useful thing for the revolution in all of Eastern Europe, but it is not likely that Franz Joseph and [Tsar] Nikolosha will give us that pleasure."

  Now, in May 1914, Lenin had no eye for international clouds. It was not war between nations that was on his mind but the battle between factions within Socialism. He spent his huge energies on carving out an ever stronger Bolshevik position vis-a-vis the milksop Mensheviks and all other rivals contending for leadership of the revolutionary movement. From Poronin in the Galician mountains, on the Habsburg side of the Austrian-Russian frontier, Lenin's letters and couriers kept streaming into the Tsar's territory. They carried instructions on how to increase still further the circulation gains of the St. Petersburg Pravda that had put the Menshevik paper Luch out of business; how to spread Bolshevik control of the Metal Workers' Brotherhood so that Bolsheviks would dominate related trade unions as well; how to encourage a trio of Moscow millionaires-who hoped to liberalize the Tsar by encouraging pressure from the savage left-in the financing of Bolshevik activities. Lenin's chief purpose that spring: to present an array of Bolshevik voices as powerful as possible at the Unity Conference of all Russian Socialist Party segments set for July 1914 in Brussels, and then to march fully mobilized into the Congress of the Socialist International to open in Vienna on August 26.

  Meanwhile Dr. Sigmund Freud girded for intramural grapeshot at his Congress-that of the International PsychoAnalytical Association scheduled for September 1914 at Dresden. Now, three months earlier, it was apple-blossom time in Vienna and at Berggasse headquarters "war" meant "Jung."

  After all, relentless pressure from Freud's forces had just pushed the Swiss psychiatrist out of the presidency of the International Psycho-Analytical Association. Some sort of counterblow from Zurich must be expected. Yet June started the way May ended-quite clemently.

  For one thing, evaluation had been completed of the tests Freud had undergone-with excellent news. There was no sign whatsoever of any intestinal tumor. Soon afterward Freud's symptoms subsided. His fear of cancer vanished together with his Emperor's pneumonia. As for the Freud-Jung front, the first salvo from the enemy was subtle rather than searing. Jung fired it by way of his address to the British Medical Association in Aberdeen: "The Unconscious in Psycho-Pathology." The speech abolished psychoanalysis, at least in Jung's vocabulary: He didn't so much as mention the word. But except through omission he didn't attack Freud's movement either; at one point he even credited his former mentor with calling attention to the importance of dreams.

  Of course that sort of gesture furthered the aims of ill will by a show of good manners. At the same time it produced a sort of lull. Freud could-almost-return to normal business. He devoted himself to the famous Wolf Man case. Here Freud traced a phobia of wolves to the patient's glimpse, at a very young age, of his parents copulating a tergo. In truth, one aspect of the paper was yet another chapter of the anti-Jung argument. Jung held that such primal scenes were usually a neurotic fantasy. Freud maintained they were real. But in the Wolf Man paper he softened the collision between dogmas by admitting that the difference might not be "a matter of very great importance."

  The war with Jung was on, but at this point it did not require any very ugly waging. Freud looked forward to his summer cure at Carlsbad in a mood much brighter than that of the two chiefs of staff who had taken the waters there some weeks earlier.

  21

  Vienna perked up during the last weeks of spring. At one of Princess Metternich's famed "mixed dinners," industrialists heard from courtiers proof of Franz Joseph's complete recovery: Once more His Majesty was taking walks in the Schonbrunn Palace gardens with his one and only Frau Schratt. This unofficial but adorable bulletin lifted the stock market to the level from which it had dropped at the onset of the All-Highest illness.

  The weather was genial. It had the good taste to rain only at night. The sun seemed to have melted away most angry demonstrations along the Ringstrasse. Those controversies still left in town showed a luscious Viennese sheen. At the Cafe Central, Havanas were puffed, mochas were sipped, chocolate eclairs were being forked as the disputants faced the issues: Was Gustav Mahler's adaptation of Hugo Wolf's Der Corregidor really as calamitous as some reviews complained? Or did its problem reside not in the music but in the flawed presentation? And was the culprit of that flaw an opera management known for its anti-Mahler bias after the great maestro had passed? And for how long would that same straitlaced management keep Richard Strauss's voluptuous Salome out of its repertoire? And, still speaking of the Court Opera, did diva Selma Kurz deserve ten curtain calls for her Lucia di Lam- mermoor? Shifting to ballet, what about Pavlova's Directoire dress-wasn't that a bit out of key when she danced the gavotte, no matter how dazzling her entrechats? And had Frank Wedekind enhanced his own play Samson by not only directing it but also taking on the role of Og, King of the Philistines? Or was it time for that rather weathered eroticist to let go of the greasepaint?

  Outside Austria thornier themes drew grimmer contestants. In Great Britain, it was Irish against English as well as English women against English men. Suffragettes threatened to kidnap members of the royal family who would then be ransomed for the right to vote. The King could no longer take his morning ride through Hyde Park. Shouting ladies kept waylaying his horse. In France, the Socialist victory at the May elections showed popular resentment of the three-year conscription term while at the same time hardening President Poincare's insistence on it; the conflict produced daily melees between people and police. Russian strikes stopped factory wheels from Moscow to Tiflis. The Duma at St. Petersburg had become so rowdy that even the nicely cravated Alexander Kerensky of the usually well-behaved Labor Party had to be escorted from the chamber for causing a disruption.

  But it was Serbia-Russia's protege, Austria's bane-that shook with the most severe domestic turmoil. In Serbia the opposition between the two most powerful political camps sharpened toward a showdown. Prime Minister Pasic led one side; his Radical Party stood for measured nationalism. As nationalist, Pasic proclaimed Serbia's right to defend her interests (and pocketed, some said, commissions from the French firm Schneider-Creuzot, which was producing arms for Serbia's defense). But as a man of measure, Pasic feared that excessive action against Austria would risk a crisis before Serbia was ready. He suspected that zealots, mostly officers, would use war to usurp the g
overnment.

  Pasic's chief opponent was the chief zealot: Colonel Apis, officially head of Army Intelligence, secretly leader of the Black Hand. Apis would accept nothing less than the most drastic fulfillment of the Serb cause, above all the breaking of Habsburg chains that bound Slav brethren in Austrian Bosnia.

  In the spring of 1914, Belgrade simmered with the incompatibility between Pasic and Apis. The Prime Minister dismissed Apis's main supporter in the cabinet, Minister of War Milos Bozanovic. Apis's side retaliated through the periodical Pijemont. "A gang of men without conscience," it said about Pasic's party in May 1914, "… this government cannot be tolerated for a moment or rebellion will break out in our country." Apis had no public connection to the paper publishing the attack. Yet Belgrade recognized him as the target of the counterattack when the Minister of the Interior banned Pije- mont. Gendarmes summoned from the countryside patrolled Belgrade's streets: Serbia's other armed force had been alerted against an army coup.

  Vienna took note of Serb frictions but not of their deeper implications. Just at the end of May, the Chief of Austrian Intelligence-the one man in Vienna most likely to know Belgrade behind the scenes-retired abruptly. Apis's Habsburg counterpart, Colonel "Ostrymiecz" von Urbanski, was pensioned off. (The War Ministry did not deny rumors that he had been caught selling to a film producer memorabilia of his late associate Colonel Redl, the famous and now posthumously cinemagenic traitor.) The loss of its director disoriented Austria's information gathering service. Yet even at its best it would not have sniffed out an event in Belgrade of which not even the Serbian Prime Minister had an inkling.

  Underground, in the cellar of a shabby house, three young men went through a ceremony whose consequences would explode over millions of square miles of the world above.

  On the night of May 27, 1914, Gavrilo Princip and his two disciples walked down seven steps on Krakjice Natalije Street into a small room in the basement. They were met by a figure robed and hooded in black.

  "Who among you three speaks for the others?"

  "I do," said Princip, the youngest and smallest.

  "Do you know one important reason why you are going to execute this mission?"

  "Because the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is the oppressor of our people."

  "Do you know when you are going to execute this mission?"

  "When the oppressor comes to Sarajevo."

  "When will that be?"

  "On June 28. That is another important reason-that day. He dares to come there on St. Vitus Day."

  "And what is a third important reason?"

  Princip hesitated. He knew that on St. Vitus Day, June 28 of the year 1389, a Serb hero had penetrated the lines of the conquering Turkish army to stab its generalissimo Sultan Murad to death, thereby establishing the date for the Serbian national holiday. He knew that the appearance of a Habsburg prince on South Slav soil on just that day was a sneer at Serb pride and a second important reason for vengeance. But Princip could not think of still another important reason.

  "There are many reasons," he said.

  "We do not expect you to know that other special reason," the black hood said. "Very few people know it. Colonel Apis knows it. The Archduke has a special weapon. He will use it if we let him come to power. He will use the lie of moderation to steal our people's sympathy. Then he will oppress us doubly. You did not know that?"

  "No," Princip said.

  "Even in our country the Prime Minister uses the lie of moderation to keep himself in power. Did you know that?"

  "I have heard of it."

  "Are you ready to fight such liars with all means?"

  "Yes."

  "Are the three of you ready?"

  "Yes."

  Pause.

  "You may go into the next room."

  The next room was lit by a single candle on a table draped in black, against walls also draped in black. The candle flickered at three men sitting behind the table in black robes and black hoods. Before them, arranged in a circle around the flame, lay an unsheathed dagger, a skull, a crucifix, a revolver, a bottle with a death's head label. This was the altar of Smrt ili Zivot, the Bosnian arm of Colonel Apis's Black Hand.

  The black hood in the middle motioned the three youths to step forward. Line by line he began to recite the oath, which they repeated after him, line by line:

  "I swear by the holiness of the cross…"

  "I swear by the preciousness of liberty…"

  "I swear by the sun that warms me. "

  "And the earth that nourishes me…"

  `7 swear by God in heaven. "

  "By my ancestors' blood…"

  "By my honor and my life…"

  "As true as I am a Serb and a man. "

  "That from this day on until the moment of my death…"

  "I shall remain faithful to every law of this organization…"

  " I shall be ever r e a d y to s a c r i f i c e f o r it…"

  "To suffer for it. "

  " T o die f o r it…"

  "And I swear to take all its secrets with me to the grave…"

  The hooded men rose to their feet. Each man reached into the pocket of his black robe. Each pulled out a little cardboard box. Each box contained a capsule of cyanide. The three hooded men handed the three little boxes to the three youths. Each of the hooded three embraced each of the youths. Not another word was spoken. The candle was blown out. The three hooded men remained in the dark. The three youths groped toward the door.

  The next morning, on Thursday, May 28, 1914, Princip and his two companions boarded a steamer anchored at a Bel grade dock. They carried small suitcases and wore loose overcoats. Under his coat, each of the three had two bombs tied around his waist. Each also carried a revolver in one trouser pocket, ammunition in a second pocket, and in a third, instantly handy, the capsule of cyanide.

  It was a misty, sleepy day. Slowly the ship began to plow upstream on the river Sava, westward toward Sarajevo.

  22

  Eight days later, on June 5, his excellency Jovan Jovanovic, the Serbian envoy to Vienna, bowed himself into the gold-onwhite rococo of the office of the Habsburg Minister of Finance Leon von Bilinski. For intricate Viennese reasons Bilinski doubled as Minister in charge of the Austrian province of Bosnia-Hercegovina; in that capacity he ushered his visitor to a chair. Bosnia abutted on Serbia, and the visitor had come on a queasy errand.

  After an exchange of courtesies all the more elaborate for the tension between the two countries, Jovanovic ceremonially cleared his throat. It was his duty, he said, to express a certain concern of the Royal Serb Government, namely the forthcoming participation of His Imperial Highness the Arch duke Franz Ferdinand at Austrian Army exercises to be held in the Sarajevo area. Since these exercises were to take place in territory adjacent to Serbia and since they coincided with Serbia's National Day, they might provoke some regrettable actions.

  "Regrettable actions?" the Austrian asked.

  Yes, very regrettable, the Serbian envoy said. Under the circumstances an Austrian Army soldier of the Serb race might be misled into loading his rifle with real bullets to aim it at His Imperial Highness. Therefore the Serbian government earnestly hoped that the Austrian government would want to shift both the time and the place of the maneuvers.

  It was Count von Bilinski's turn to do some throat-clearing. He replied that, first of all, the police reported peace and quiet in Bosnia, including the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. Furthermore the army exercises would take place nowhere near the Serbian border. Lastly, he had no doubt whatsoever that His Imperial Highness, the Archduke Crown Prince, enjoyed the full loyalty of the entire Austrian Armed Forces. Or did his Excellency have specific information to the contrary?

  The Serbian envoy said, no, he could offer nothing specific. The concern of the Serbian Government simply reflected the general mood of the Serbian people.

  Count von Bilinski gave a civil nod. His Excellency's remarks, he said, would receive the consideration they deserv
ed. Meanwhile he was grateful to His Excellency for taking the trouble to visit him on such a lovely day. The Serbian envoy, on his part, thanked the Minister for extending him so gracious a reception. And the mendacities of etiquette continued until the gold-on-white doors closed on the encounter.

  ***

  Of course the envoy's visit had been prompted by some quite specific information. It had been relayed to Serbia's premier Panic by his Minister of the Interior: A contact at the frontier had reported that on the night from June 1 to June 2 three young men, heavily armed, had been spirited across the river Drina which separated Serbia from Austrian Bosnia.

  The purpose and identity of the youths were not known. Known to the Prime Minister, however, were the ways of the Black Hand. Known, too, was the Archduke's forthcoming presence in Sarajevo as well as the Black Hand's motives for turning him into a corpse. Decked out in Serb patriotism, they aimed at sedition against the Serb government. A murder of that enormity would cause an imbroglio convenient for the Black Hand-a chance to seize power.

  Prime Minister Pagic could not idly turn his back while such a scheme moved forward, could not let killers, dispatched by Apis across the Drina River, continue toward the Archduke. He must warn Austria. But the warning must be masked. After all, Apis was still Chief of Serbian Army Intelligence. Pagic had not been able to dislodge that bald monster. By giving Austria specifics about a possible assassination, he might be giving away clues leading to the complicity of a high Serbian official and so incriminate the whole country. Hence a compromise: Panic instructed his envoy to alert Austria but to omit any genuine details.