by Geert Mak
The undertone of Lüger's anti-Semitism, however, was different from Schönerer's. Despite its vociferous nature, it was more opportunistic than doctrinaire, more social than racial. Lüger remained the cordial Viennese who enjoyed sitting around the table with the same Jewish capitalists he hounded in the city council. ‘I decide who's a Jew and who isn't.’ That was Lüger.
In 1922, a decade after Lüger's death, the Viennese journalist Hugo Bettauer published Die Stadt ohne Juden: ein Roman von übermorgen (The City Without Jews: a Novel for the Day After Tomorrow), a satire of antiSemitism. Bettauer described a Vienna from which the Jews had suddenly disappeared. There would be no more bankers to advise non-Jews on their speculations, non-Jewish women would lose all interest in fashion because they no longer needed to compete with Jewish women, prostitutes with drunken pimps could no longer be comforted with presents from their soft-hearted Jewish admirers. Three years later, Bettauer, a friend of Karl Kraus, was shot and killed by a student, then forgotten.
The response to all this – Zionism – was, predictably enough, invented in Vienna as well. Why should the Jews continue to refuse national status? Would they not be much better off actually pursuing such a status? This was the theory developed by the liberal Jewish leader Theodor Herzl around the turn of the century: the time had come to set up a new Jewish state. At the same time, Herzl hoped this would be the salvation of liberalism: his new Jewish state would be, above all, a liberal one.
Herzl came from a wealthy, enlightened family in which religion amounted to little more than a ‘pious family memory’. In his younger years he considered himself a citizen of Vienna like any other, and during his student days even joined an outspokenly nationalistic Burschenschaft. When his fraternity club began gravitating towards anti-Semitism, he offered his resignation on the basis of his Jewish background, and his ‘love of freedom’. But he was deeply offended when his ‘brothers’ dropped him with no further ado. As a correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse in Paris, where he reported on the Dreyfus affair, he heard the modern, cultured French shouting ‘À mort! À mort les juifs!’, and realised that assimilation itself could not safeguard Jewish dignity. Herzl decided to turn things around. In the past, the Jews had always sought solutions in the outside world. Now they had to understand that the promised land was in them, in their own minds, their own wills. ‘The promised land lies there where we will bear it,’ he wrote. ‘The Jews who desire it will have their own state, and will deserve it as well.’
In 1896 he wrote his most important piece of work, Der Judenstaat – An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question. Support began pouring in from such major Jewish philanthropists as the German baron Maurice de Hirsch and the Rothschilds, while his speeches also drew an unparalleled enthusiastic response from the Jews in the ghettos. ‘This is no longer the elegant Dr Herzl from Vienna, this is a royal heir to King David, risen from the grave,’ crowed the writer Ben Ami after the first Zionist congress in 1897.
But what did Theodor Herzl really want? In the National Library I ploughed my way through a yellowed copy of Der Judenstaat, and several of his other writings. What strikes one is the way in which Herzl tried again and again to make this dream state attractive to poor Eastern European Jews as well. Just as Schönerer, through his stories about German tribes and rites, had used history to drum up a nation, just as Lüger had harkened back to the medieval Catholic order, so too Herzl repeatedly referred to the mighty Israel of King David. And, like his foes, he also linked that past to the modern age. The International Socialists dreamed of an eight hour working day, so Herzl's Jewish state would have a seven hour working day, reflected in the white national flag with its seven golden stars. ‘Humane, well lighted and healthy schools’ would be built everywhere. Much of the work would be done by ‘workers’ brigades’ of young people. Hebrew would not be the main language, for there would be a great many languages. The rabbinate would be respected, but also expected to keep to the temples, as the army to its barracks. Although he recognised their propaganda value, Palestine and Jerusalem were not Herzl's first choice.
The conclusion I arrived at was strange, but almost inevitable: the Promised Land of which Israel's pioneers dreamed was, in its deepest sense, not so much a Jewish Palestine as a liberal Vienna. In Herzl's utopia, there was no Star of David.
And finally we arrive at the anonymous observer to all this: the daydreamer, the homeless pauper, the hopeless painter Adolf Hitler. He spent six years in Vienna, from September 1907 until May 1913, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. Without a doubt, the city made an enormous impression on him. According to his future assistant Albert Speer, decades later Hitler could still draw the Ring with all its great monuments, to scale, by heart.
‘Adolf Hitler, as he was known [to friends and colleagues], did not particularly stand out amid the drab army of Viennese workers and the unemployed, neither by reason of any special talent, nor by reason of any lack of scruples, any criminality or demonic trait.’ This is how the historian Brigitte Haman summarises the conclusions of her impressive search for traces of Adolf Hitler in Vienna. In those days, she says, he could not have been much more than yet another hot-tempered eccentric, talking everyone's ear off and idolising the German people. No one had yet noticed the ‘compelling power’ of his regard. In his Viennese days, little or nothing could be seen of anti-Semitism on his part. For in spite of his avid political interest, he had only one goal: to become an architect.
None of this, however, rules out the fact that many of Hitler's ideas were drawn from the Vienna of that day. In his later views, the fin de siècle politics of Vienna are found everywhere. Schönerer's ideology and the cult that surrounded him were transferred almost intact to Hitler's National Socialist movement, up to and including the Führerprinzip and the street violence. His histrionic style, too, was probably borrowed almost directly from Schönerer. Years later, he would tell his table companions that he was a true ‘Schönererian’, and that he had come to Vienna as an art student with a great antipathy for Lüger. Only later did that antipathy turn to admiration. The roots of Hitler's radical racism, therefore, are probably best attributed to Schönerer.
What Hitler learned from Lüger, however, was at least as important: the political theatrics, the key role of public relations, and above all the crucial importance of social policies and major public-works projects. Demagoguery alone was never enough: people had to be governed as well. Hitler learned from Lüger, as he admitted in a speech much later, that ‘great works can secure the dominion’ of a movement. ‘If the words no longer reverberate, then the stones must speak.’
Is there anything left in Austria of this young Viennese eccentric? A few hours by train from Vienna lies Leonding, once a small village, now a suburb of Linz, with a village square and a bakery-cum-bistro where the local ladies spend their mornings in gossip. The American historian John Lukacs heard about the grave right after 1945 – friends of his who had recently been released from Mauthausen had picnicked near it – and he told me it was still there. But when I see the snowy churchyard I can barely imagine it. Almost all the graves are shiny and new, making it look as though an entire generation has died in this village in the last few years. The graves are usually emptied here after ten years, the poster with regulations says, and I almost abandon hope.
I search the graveyard systematically, scanning all the Fritzes, Franzes, Aloises and Theresas lying here. After forty-five minutes of ploughing through the snow, after I have covered almost the entire churchyard, I stumble upon it. The strange thing is that I feel no satisfaction, only a shock. The stone with the big black cross stands a little awry. An enormous pine tree is growing from the grave. The enamel portraits of the deceased are all too familiar. With half-frozen fingers I jot down: Alois Hitler, k.-u.-k.k. Zollamts Oberoffizial I.P. und Hausbesitzer, gest. 3 Jänner 1903 im 65. Lebensjahr. Dessen Gattin Frau Klara Hitler, gest. Dez. 1907 i. 47 Lebj. RIP. The stone allows no further inscription for her.
The low yellow house behind the graveyard is still there as well, the house where their little boy devoured Karl May westerns, played Boer War and chased the rats in the churchyard.
The Hitlers have no living descendants, but their headstone is decorated with freshly cut pine boughs and violets. The letters have recently been gilded. There are three new candles on the grave. A new wreath hangs on the cross.
In the train on the way home I read in the Wiener Zeitung about the trial of the forty-nine-year-old Franz Fuchs, who carried out a one-man terror and bombing campaign for four years. Four Gypsy children were killed in one of his attacks. In the courtroom, all he did was shout slogans:
Up with the German folk! Foreign blood, no thank you! Minority privileges, no thank you! Squandering our Lebensraum on foreign peoples, no thank you! International Socialism, no thank you! Counter-German racism, no thank you! Zionistic anti-Teutonism, no thank you!
It is Wednesday, 3 February, 1999.
Chapter SIX
Vienna
THE DAYS AT HIS PARENTS’ HOUSE WERE FILLED WITH THE MURMUR of the waves, birds were always singing in the gardens. Irfan Orga lived in Constantinople, which would later be called Istanbul. He was five, the son of a wealthy carpet merchant. He lived behind the Blue Mosque, the house looked over the Sea of Marmara.
Later, Irfan committed his memories to paper, and in them he describes the bedroom as he awoke, full of marine light, the morning kiss from his beaming mother, the games of ‘lion’ in his grandfather's big, soft bed, and later their walk together to the coffee house. There comes a day when his grandfather suddenly begins to stagger, together they limp home, the doctor arrives, there is excitement, sorrow, he is allowed to see his grandfather for a moment, and for the rest Irfan remembers mostly the wait in the sunny garden and the cooing of a wood pigeon.
That was in spring 1914. The Orga family spent their last summer together with Uncle Ahmet and Aunt Aysşe at the beach resort of Sariyer, in a house on the Bosphorus. Uncle Ahmet swam in the sea each morning, and in the cool of the evening he taught Irfan how to fish. ‘One time I saw a school of dolphins, and watched breathlessly as they jumped through the air.’ As they rowed home, Irfan's uncle told him stories. Aunt Aysşe and his mother drank coffee under the magnolia. ‘They looked so flowery and elegant, sitting there on their chaises longues, chattering like sparrows while the sun washed their brightly coloured silk dresses back to pastel.’ Later, lying in bed, Irfan could hear the adults talking quietly on the veranda.
Halfway through that summer he noticed the tone change. One evening the conversation was grimmer, the adults laughed less. Irfan heard his father say something about ‘war’ in Europe, and that he and Uncle Ahmet would have to ‘go’, and that he therefore wanted to sell his house and the business as soon as possible. ‘I listened sleepily to what they were saying, and heard that strange, new word ‘war’ pop up again and again. That word seemed lately to rule everyone's thoughts, and resurfaced at regular intervals when the men were together. My father said:“The German officers aren't training the Turkish Army for their dark eyes.” To which my uncle replied: “But if we enter this new war, we're done for as a nation.”’
On the surface, it remained a holiday like all the others. Irfan's father relaxed in the garden, the children grew browner with each passing day, the ladies went for short rides and paid a few visits. They were happy days, and they were quickly over.
When they took the ferry back to Constantinople, the ship passed the garden with the magnolia tree one last time, the garden of the swimming parties and the stories. ‘We waved bravely to my uncle and aunt, but none of us knew that we were saying farewell to a life that was going to disappear from the face of the earth.’
After the summer holidays, Irfan started at a new school. He overheard another sentence: ‘The situation is serious.’ The family business was sold. Everyone began squirrelling away goods. Shops closed, prices rose. Women were almost the only ones who ventured out onto the street. That fall, the Orgas moved to a smaller house.
Not long after, one evening in November, they heard the sound of drumbeats approaching. The family went to the door. Irfan's father put his arm around his shoulder, the boy leaned against him. Then a man appeared from around the corner, beating a big bass drum: ‘All men born between 1880–5 are to report to the recruitment centre within forty-eight hours.’
The next day there was no bread to be had. Uncle Ahmet had been born in 1885. He came to say goodbye, and drank his coffee in silence. Then Irfan's mother began sewing a crude white duffel bag, with careful little stitches. A few weeks later, the drum came for his father.
‘We didn't have the slightest expectation of war,’ Joseph Roth wrote of spring 1914. ‘That month of May in the city of Vienna floated in the little silver-edged cups of coffee, drifted over the table linen, the narrow staffs of chocolate crammed with filling, the red and green millefeuilles that looked like exquisite jewels, and suddenly chief councillor Sorgsam blurted out, right in the middle of the month of May: “Gentlemen, there will now be war!”’
The main storyline is well known: how the Austro-Hungarian crown prince and his wife pay a state visit to Sarajevo, on Vidov Dan of all days, the day the Serbs commemorate each year their defeat at Turkish hands in Kosovo in 1389; the fatal shooting; the arrest of the ‘terrorist’, the nineteen-year-old Bosnian-Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip; Austria's list of humiliating demands to Serbia; Russia supporting ‘brother nation’ Serbia in its refusal; Germany siding automatically with Austria; France adhering to its alliance with Russia; Great Britain's fruitless attempts to mediate; the chain reaction of mobilisations which neither the czar nor the two emperors could bring to a halt; the fate that had an impact on the lives of almost all Europeans.
It was a war that started in the poor, peasant corner of south-eastern Europe, but took on its horror and vastness only with the participation of every major Western industrialised nation. It was a war that sloshed back and forth like waves in a basin: the trigger lay in the East, the escalation in the West, but the greatest destruction ultimately occurred, again, in the East.
Throughout almost all those years of war, the West was split by a long, stubborn front that stretched through Flanders and along the Franco-German border. In the East, the Germans were able to break through quite quickly; there, another front had been drawn through the middle of Poland. At first, that was the case in the Balkans as well: Austrian troops took Belgrade in late 1915. Then their advance ground to a halt, due in part to fierce Serb resistance in Macedonia. The Italians, too, put up a bitter struggle against the Austrians, their losses almost equalling those of the British. No less than eleven major battles were fought in the Alps, and Caporetto (present-day Kobarid in Slovenia) became a sort of Italian Verdun: there, between October 1915 and September 1917, more than 300,000 soldiers were killed or wounded. The Mediterranean was in the hands of the French and British navies, and in spring 1915 the British tried to invade Gallipoli in order to break through to Constantinople by way of the Dardanelles. Their plan was to create a single Allied-Russian front, but the attack on Austria and Germany's ‘soft white underbelly’ failed.
Irfan Orga's little world was demolished within the year. Uncle Ahmet went missing in the Syrian desert. Aunt Aysşe died of a broken heart. The family's house burned down, taking with it all the family's hoarded capital. Irfan's father died during the forced marches to the Dardanelles. The family sank into poverty. The children ended up at boarding schools, Irfan ate grass to still his hunger, his mother slipped into madness. Only Grandmother Orga remained on her feet, hardened, old, tough as nails.
Gavrilo Princip was too young to be executed. Instead, he wasted away after four years in a cell in the Little Fort at Theresienstadt, later used as a Nazi transit camp in the 1940s. In retrospect, his prison psychiatrist reported, he was stunned by what his action had precipitated. He had been furious about the boorish Austrian annexation of the former Turkish pro
vince of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. He had been bitter about his country's backwardness and poverty. That was all that was on his mind; except, of course and above all, a glorious and heroic death for himself.
Europe seemed to tumble into this war almost accidentally. During summer 1914, in almost every country one noted a sort of blithe patriotism, a sense of ‘stop and fix it’, a minor blip in a glorious age of welfare and progress. ‘Back for Christmas’ was the British motto. In Berlin, the kaiser told his soldiers that they would be home again ‘before the leaves have fallen’. The cafés were full of happy faces, and people stood up and clinked their glasses together whenever the national anthem, ‘Heil dir im Siegerkranz’, was played. Café Piccadilly was quickly rechristened the Vaterland Café, Hotel Westminster became the Lindenhof. Czar Nicholas II appeared on the balcony of the Winter Palace and was cheered by an enthusiastic crowd, which then sang the national anthem and kneeled before him in unison. Strikes were called off. The Duma held a recess ‘in order not to hinder the government's work with undue politics’. The name St Petersburg, sounding overly Teutonic now, was changed to Petrograd. The French cooper Louis Barthas wrote in his diary: ‘To my great amazement, the announcement [of the mobilisation] seemed to give rise to more enthusiasm than despair. In their innocence, people seem to love the idea of living in an age when something grand and compelling is about to happen.’
