Vienna at the turn of the century

A historical thumbnail sketch from Joachim Fest’s Hitler, this excerpt describes turn of the century Vienna. The parallels between Vienna 1900 and America, Britain, Australia, Sweden, 2000, are obvious.

“Vienna at the turn of the century was a European metropolis, that had retained the glory and tradition of centuries. Full of glory, she ruled an empire which extended into what is today Russia, and deep into the Balkans. Fifty Million people, belonging to more than ten nationalities and races, were governed from here and held together in unity: Germans, Magyars, Poles, Jews, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Italians, Czechs, Slovaks, Rumanians and Ruthenes (Beloruss/Ukrainians). It was the “Genius of this city”, to soften all differences, to balance the tensions of the Nation of Many Peoples and to make them fruitful in this way.

Everything seemed built to last; Kaiser Franz Joseph celebrated in 1908 the sixtieth Anniversary of his rule and was a symbol of the State itself: his dignity, his continuity and his tardiness. Also the position of the High Nobility, which ruled the land politically as well as socially, looked unshakeable, while the Bourgeousie successfully made it to riches, but not to noticeable influence. There was still no general, equal suffrage, nevertheless the petty Bourgeousie and the Working classes of the rapidly growing industry and trading centers saw themselves, with ever increasing pressure, courted by parties and demogogues.

It was, however, for all it’s sense of being in the present and all it’s flourishes, already a world of yesterday: full of scruples, brokenness, and deep-dwelling doubt about itself. The glamor, which Vienna was still developing at the turn of the century, was marked by a feeling of doom and downfall, and in all the wasteful partying, which was celebrated even in literature, the notion was already palpable, that the epoch had lost its vitality and only lived on in pretty appearances. Weariness, defeat and worries, the ever more bitterly fought-out quarrels of the Peoples of the Empire, and the shortsightedness of the ruling groups caused the flimsy edifice, full of rich memories, to cave in. As of now, it still stood. But nowhere was the atmosphere of Farewell and exhaustion so palpable. One could not experience the end of the Bourgousie-period more glamorously and wistfully than in Vienna.

Already at the end of the 19th century the inward contradictions of the “State of Many Peoples” had become increasingly trenchant and severe, above all since the Hungarians had achieved the famous “Equalization” of 1867—meaning Special Rights. The double-monarchy was, as people said, a glass jar full of cracks, held together by an old string. For in the meantime the Czechs were demanding the equalization of their language with the German, conflicts broke out in Croatia and Slovenia and in the year Hitler was born, the Crown-prince Rudolf escaped from a net of political and personal entanglements through dying; in Lemberg the Governor-general of Galicia was killed on the open street, the number of soldiers deserting the Army grew greater every year, at the University of Vienna there were protest demonstrations of national minorities, on the Ring-street columns of workers marched under dirty red flags: Symptoms of unrest and weakness in all parts of the Empire, which made it clear that Austria was about to break apart. In the year 1905 rumors began to circulate in the German and Russian presses, which claimed to know, that between Berlin and St. Petersburg discussions had taken place, concerning the distribution of territory amongst neighbors and various interests which would take place if the Kaiser’s Empire was to break up. The rumors solidified, so much so, that the Foreign Office in Berlin saw itself compelled to try to calm the Austrian Embassador in a conversation initiated by themselves.”

PF: After a brief paragraph describing how conflicts between Austria and Prussia had led to a political estrangement between the newly formed Germany of the Second Empire and Austria, which left the German Austrians (the actual “Austrians”) feeling like their identity was not being served, and feeling the Habsburgs were ‘Slav-friendly’, the author goes on:

“The fear that came into view from such reactions, is obviously easily understood in the context of a general crisis of change. In a silent revolution, the old, cosmopolitan, feudal, and peasant/rural Europe, which had remained in an especially anachronistic way on the territory of the Donau-Monarchy, perished: the ground-tremors and conflicts associated with this perishing left no one untouched. Above all the bourgeousie and petty bourgeousie classes felt themselves threatened from all sides: through Progress, through the incredibly growth of the cities, through technology, mass-production and concentration in the economy. The future, which was for so long an area of private and societal utopian dreaming, started to become, from this time and for ever broader social groups, a category of worry.”

PF: Martin Luther King, America 1960, Multiracial Britain? Immigration restrictionism, the riots in England and Australia?

“These unrestful feelings called numerous contrary movements to the fore, naturally enough, which mirrored the increasing need to escape reality. Above all it was völkisch (ethnocentric) and racist Defense-ideologies, which pretended to be the curative teachings for a threatened world: they made possible the concretization of difficult feelings of worry into pictures accessible to the man on the street.”

PF: At this point I have to open my eyes wide, trying to imitate a young Fawn or a sweet young girl, and say with sweet innocent tone: “Defense ideologies…. whatever could those be?”

Posted by Potential Frolic on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 01:52 PM in
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