Twilight in Vienna

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Text originally published in 1938 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

TWILIGHT IN VIENNA

by

WILLI FRISCHAUER

Translated from the German by

E. O. LORIMER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

Introduction 4

I — Where Shall we Turn? 6

II — A Tragedy of 1936 12

III — The Reign of Poverty 20

IV — Revolution 35

V — Bombs and Rumours 46

VI — Penniless Marriage 55

VII — The Rake’s Progress 61

VIII — Predatory Love 78

IX — The Man Behind the Scenes 96

X — On the Brink of Crime 110

XI — Ideas Run Riot 128

XII — Dictatorship of the Moderates 141

XIII — Austria Vixit 152

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 162

INTRODUCTION

THIS book contains no syllable of fiction; all the characters are drawn from real life.

My intention in writing this book has been to make a study of the reactions of the individual to the everyday life of today, to record the history of the last few years as it is reflected in the lives of ordinary people. It was obviously unnecessary for my purpose to detail the outstanding events of political and economic history. My interests lie in the field of subjective, human experience which the professional historian tends to overlook while concentrating his attention on outward occurrences. As a journalist, I address myself to the average newspaper reader who is already sufficiently informed about sensational happenings, outstanding personalities, and the general current of contemporary history.

To me the fate of the ordinary man and woman in the street seems of compelling interest, the fate of my fellow-countrymen and fellow-sufferers; the fate, in short, of the average, humble actor in the crowd in a period when the spotlight blinds the eye to all but the performance of the major stars. Penetrating studies of the times have analysed their effect on countries, peoples and communities. I have undertaken the task of investigating their effect on the human unit, of emphasising those events which have influenced him most decisively and most permanently, of observing how the individual demeans himself in the vortex of unprecedented phenomena, how he lives—and whether he can live at all.

As my work progressed, I became more and more conscious of the abnormality of the circumstances which surrounded a generation already demoralised by the stress and strain of war; the multitude of problems, objective and subjective, that men were called upon to face, was ominous; and ominous no less the spiritual tax on the individual.

I would point out that I have not concentrated on isolated cases, nor made a collection of the life-histories of the few. My book deals only with conditions of everyday life in many lands on the continent of Europe; I have even been at pains to pass over the exceptional case or, where I have included it, to indicate conscientiously that it is exceptional. I have not emulated the novel-writers who take the problems of the time as backgrounds for their romances, and touch lightly on such themes as revolution, inflation, unemployment and the fear of war. These backgrounds of the novelist are the foregrounds of my picture. The dramatis personæ of my story are not imaginary persons, but real people.

These backgrounds which at any earlier period of human history would have appeared well-nigh impossible, wholly intolerable, constitute today the inevitable conditions of life for millions and millions of human beings. My book has thus become a collection of situations such as daily confront the average man and woman; and few there be who can rise above them.

I grant that the situations described, the problems posed, the questions asked, are painful and tormenting. But they are general. The writer is not to blame, but his times. I have discussed these matters with numerous representatives of all strata of society, of all ages and of many nations, and have discovered that my problems were also theirs. Almost all were pondering them, almost none had a solution to suggest. Like myself they were seeking a remedy, waiting for a gleam of hope.

At a time when each individual is faced by complications piled upon complications—such as earlier generations in the main were spared—it seems imperative to look facts in the face, to call a spade a spade; to direct a searchlight into the shadows which enshroud politics, work, love: life. Thus we may reach the turning of the long lane towards better things. Otherwise I fear we see the beginning of the end.

I — WHERE SHALL WE TURN?

NEVER were men’s thoughts less directed inwards than at the present time. In every domain of life events crowd so hard upon each other’s heels that they compel a man to interest himself in conflicts which are not his own and in discussions which daze and deafen him though their subject matter may be foreign to his thought.

In Spain, hostile sections of one nation massacre each other and the thunder of their cannon resounds over all continents; in the Far East, Japan and China are at each other’s throats in bloody war; the most ardent lover of peace is constrained to wonder what consequences these struggles will have for his world, his country, his home. Distances that of old separated country from country and continent from continent have been annihilated by aeroplane and telephone and the nations jostle each other in space like the families in a slum tenement. Every quarrel next door pierces the thin partitions and brings unrest to the neighbours. Never before were politics and economics so closely and inextricably interwoven; daily, hourly, the repercussions of far-off political events make the humblest cottage tremble. Government of the Left, Government of the Right, Fascism, Communism—these are no longer philosophical abstractions; the pros and cons are no longer fought out in the intellectual field, the victor exercising an influence on gradual ordered development; they spell: sudden revolution, lightning changes, bankruptcy or credit, prosperity or disaster.

The inhabitants of a country are affected not alone by the form of their own government, whether democratically chosen by themselves or forced on them by a dictator. The word of a spiteful, without whose goodwill the best of men cannot hope to live in peace, dominates all thoughts even in countries which have hitherto been free alike from domestic turmoil and lust for conquest. Did nations and individuals in earlier days feel the same? Were they conscious day and night that the journeys of statesmen, that international conferences—although, or because, they so seldom yield any tangible result—were big with fate? Has the circulation of newspapers increased only because more people nowadays can read, because propaganda can penetrate to the remotest corners of the earth or because printers’ enterprise can produce them even in the desert? Is this not rather the unconscious expression of the fact that every happening touches us all in a manner new to history? Facts are what interest every one today. It is no accident that literature nowadays is concerned not with products of imagination and phantasy, but with accurate research into actual occurrences, that the writing of history is being exploited by the littérateur and that biographies are all the rage. It is no accident that this tendency has carried us a step further and that interest centres not so much in the lives of the great men of the past as in the jottings of contemporary journalists, which have become the best-sellers of the book market.

Our fathers still lived in the realms of phantasy, and the reading which occupied their leisure hours indicated the happy hunting grounds where their souls loved to take their ease; our generation has taken a header into reality. The difference between now and then is simply this, that in mirroring their times the great minds of today make no effort to lift the masses to their level, but allow themselves to be dragged down to the level of the masses. Scarcely one writer now sits down to write a book consulting only the dictates of his heart; even the greatest of living authors chooses his theme after long consultation with his publisher. Art is out for bread, and bread is only for the man who readily provides what the customer demands. Today the customer demands facts. But yesterday the reader sought refuge from the day’s events which thrust themselves sufficiently on his attention whether he would or no, and found asylum among the facts of history; but I fear this phase is already past. We may still hope to see a few belated books by authors who had devoted themselves to historical biography and are still working on their second volume.

But the new wave is already breaking on the shore; we are being flooded with the up-to-date products of contemporary history. Someone has travelled widely Inside Europe; the public hopes to find in his writings what the newspapers have not told, to peep behind the scenes in politics and behind the curtains of private houses and find this supplementary information artistically presented or at least well written up. Everybody longs to know what little Dollfuss was like in private life, is interested to hear that in the retirement of Berchtesgaden Hitler is seized by fits of hysterical weeping, or that the King of Siam has bought a house in Prague. Adventurers no longer set forth into the desert to discover unknown lands, but betake themselves to Russia or Germany to get the bedrock facts about conditions there. The trifling levers de rideau that have preluded great events are dragged into the limelight and displayed with greater or less imagination, with varying degrees of authenticity. John Gunther’s admirable book, Inside Europe, brought many interesting things to light; it is no less important to know what goes on Inside Europeans. In the countries of the continent torn asunder by party hate, exhausted by civil war, iron-ruled by dictators, the common-place, ordinary man is seldom to be mirrored in history, nor is he to be measured by the personalities which catch the eye of the foreigner. The feeling of Europe is better registered in the title of another journalistic book whose author voices his longing to get Away from It All.

The majority of us would be glad enough to get away from it all—but we scarcely can. We are one and all the captives of our time, and even in the most prosperous of countries mental leisure is far to seek. Not alone in the heart of European unrest, in the basin of the Danube or in Germany, but in almost every country, the inhabitants live in the perpetual fear of external attack, internal revolution or financial collapse; not only on the mainland of Europe but even in wealthy, democratic England in a time of prosperity, peace of mind and opportunity for reflection are impossible for anyone who gives thought to world affairs. Even in England people cannot get away from it all—except the privileged few who can travel into the wilds. Even Britain’s peaceful countryside resounds to the clang of immense rearmaments; danger of war flickers now here now there and every flame threatens to start a general conflagration. Germany rattles her sword; France is shaken by financial and political crises; Italy faces a huge budget deficit; everything conspires to undermine the confidence and disturb the calm of England, though for the moment she is drawing profit from the situation. Shares are rising, the stock exchange is active, armaments are mounting, all this spells the circulation of money and prosperity. How long, how long can armament go on without the weapons being turned to use? When that time comes who will be fighting against whom? Who will be able to stand aloof from the next war?

Aeroplanes, guns, gas, mines—all these have been often enough described and painted in all their horror. But the effect of all this even on the individual who does not think, who perhaps will not think, has yet to be conceived. The millions who every day eagerly unfold their morning paper and read of distant fighting, do they still repress into their unconscious and refuse to formulate the question: how long will it be till we, bitterly against our will, are drawn into the strife? There can be only a few, a few sturdy folk in Leeds and Manchester who feel secure as long as their factory chimneys smoke, who believe that they have recaptured after the War the peaceful life, the tradition of their forefathers, who bask contentedly in the radiance of their bank balance. How long...?

Men are restless. Products of a day when nothing is certain, they live for the passing moment. Daily they receive the impressions of Today and seek to solve the riddle of Tomorrow. But insecurity, unrest, hems them in on every side. They have no courage to build for the future when danger threatens and cannot be ignored. They cannot but fear that at any moment—through no fault of their own—a storm will wreck and shatter the whole edifice they are painstakingly rearing. They are not masters of their fate, they are dragooned and led, however faithfully they live within the present law. Any week, any moment, a new law may be passed which will still further curtail their freedom. They are supposed not yet to have done enough though they have willingly shouldered an unheard-of burden of taxation and ask only to live out their own lives in their own way. Above all, they are affected not only by the legislation of their own country but by the laws of neighbouring states; and today all states are neighbours. The regimentation of a man’s private life becomes daily more stringent—and that not only in dictator countries or countries oppressed by poverty.

A friend of mine was arguing one day with others asserting that he declined to subscribe to any political creed, he wanted only to live in peace, practise his profession and get on in the world. He was promptly accused of irresponsibility and condemned as one of those people whose indecision was at the root of the prevalent insecurity. No one is allowed to stand aside; everyone is being forced to decide for or against, to take his stand to fight for some principle—the day is coming when no evasion will be possible. Many tremble at its approach, breathless with dread that it may overtake them before they have found the path they wish to tread, or seen the goal they hope to attain.

What are we to do? What are we to aim at? Where are we to find that inner anchorage without which there can be no happiness—and happiness is what one and all we seek. Who can set quietly about building his own house and seek sanctuary amidst his own tastes and inclinations, when tomorrow his house may be bombed from above or blown up from below? When he may be summoned any day before some tribunal and asked, Are you with us? If not, are you against us?

Who can commune with himself in times like these? Who dare give thought to the individual when it is considered anti-social not to place the welfare of the Community above the interests of the One. We are not allowed to question whether the apostles of these social principles are right or not; the principles themselves are now accepted as axiomatic. Yet it may well be that the roping in of so many aimless, questioning and despairing individuals only increases instead of diminishing the sum of aimlessness, of questioning and of despair. Before we can, form a community or join a community, we must first as individuals arrive at clarity concerning ourselves, our times and the problems of our times.

How are we to serve the community if we ignore the millions of entities of which the community is composed? Would it not be more practical to begin at the other end, with ourselves, with our neighbours, and might we not thus by healing the wounds of individuals perform a greater service to the community of the future? Before we can decide in favour of Right or Left, we must take stock of this era into which we have been born, investigate, analyse, determine what it is which weighs so heavily on us and those around us. We have grown up in a period which has no parallel in history, which offers us no precedents, no charts, no signposts.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, is the motto of a method of education for which there is much to be said. In what other era, however, have the boys and girls of a whole generation, entitled to look to their fathers for guidance and advice, turned to them and found them sunk in uncertainty and despair? In happier days even the rebellious youth who refused to hearken to the advice of parents and elders, and defied their cautionings a thousand times, was well aware that he could count on warnings and advice another time.

Now of a sudden the parents face an unknown world and all its terrors, as helpless as new-born babes. It is not possible for the old to begin again at the beginning and adapt themselves to this strange new world; this is bad enough, but worse than all is to have to confess that they can give no useful counsel to the young. No wonder that aimlessness breeds headstrong folly, and the young echo with enthusiasm the loud cries which resound on all sides calling them into one camp or another, adjuring them to join one or another community of the aimless. Instead of one restless individual being given peace, collections of restless spirits are drawn together to become the perpetuum mobile of our restless times.

Agitators shout from their platforms offering to show the true path to hundreds and to thousands. Has any of them ever stopped to single one young man out from the crowd and have a talk with him alone? They address the community—have they ever troubled to discover the problems of the individual, to realise how much confusion and uncertainty must first be cleared away before one of these young men can become a useful member of any community? Has any of these tub-thumpers ever attempted to visualise the circumstances in which these lads have grown up—the situation in their homes and in their neighbourhood, which rims counter to every natural instinct, which clouds their outlook and ruins their character?

Someone may argue that the problems of today are the same old problems that have confronted and agitated humanity and youth since the dawn of time. This generalisation will not hold water. Assuredly there have been from the dawn of time problems of politics, of religion, of idealisms, of life, but people have within the last few years been faced by accumulations of unprecedented circumstance, events, experiences which have profoundly disturbed their inner life—more profoundly than war or revolution. Revolution, for instance, was one factor only in the everyday experiences of a whole generation and brought many others in its train, equally unprecedented, equally unnatural.

It is our tragic fate to live in this wholly exceptional period, and there seems no solution of the problem of how to shape our lives anew after such experiences, such anxieties. Thousands of unprecedented phenomena and their terrifying consequences still keep our overwrought nerves astrain.

The deafening noise of modern times drowns the small voice of man’s own soul, but the soul’s reactions are not less vital to the individual because no one heeds them. The relative importance of external and spiritual experiences has been reversed, but are not the multitudinous mass-psychoses of today more fraught with danger than the individual conflicts of old? Is it not true that they arise solely because the individual is no longer allowed to grow independently to his own stature, but is stretched on a common last? Because our times demand—even amongst democracies—totalitarianism not only of ideas but of emotions?

The man who is convinced that he has remained unscathed by events and their consequences must study the human types which have been evolved under the stress of the times, and the manner in which they have been created, for even the mentally sound cannot avoid contact with the bacilli of the mentally plague-stricken. We shut away our cholera cases in isolation hospitals: we let our neurotics roam at large to infect the world around them. If we cannot isolate them, there is all the more need to protect ourselves against the infection, and the first step towards self-protection is diagnosis.

For if the mentally-sound is ignorant of the first symptoms of the prevailing disorder, or rashly neglects them, he is in danger of becoming himself a carrier. The epidemic that at first sight may seem to us as only the strange affliction of a strange people, today concerns us all! Nothing is more inept than the Pharisee’s proud phrase: God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are!

Even where individuals have occasionally attracted attention, it is only in cases where the horror of their fate has outbidden the horror of the common lot. It is all too easy to forget that the fate of the average man today is in itself exceptional, and is not the easier to bear because it is shared by millions. The same curiosity with which of old men studied, observed and analysed all that was beautiful and good and successful, is now directed into the depths, but turned only on to the unhappiness of the most unhappy. Is the average man in many countries not unhappy enough to deserve attention? Is his fate not infinitely more intolerable than that of his brothers in earlier generations? The tale of the ordinary man, which today seems a common-place to his contemporaries, would have seemed the worst kind of sensational penny-dreadful to the reader of not so long ago. We must restore to our contemporaries the perspectives of normal life. They must learn to recognise that the fate of the individual is not less horrible because it is general and apparently inescapable. A study of the average man of today, of how he lives, of how he is forced to live, or what life is driving him to, will soon reveal how far the cruel necessities of our day are compelling him to forsake the strait and narrow way.

The heroism, or rather the martyrdom, of the Unknown Soldier is more instructive than the portrait of the politician, the statesman, the dictator. It gives us a clearer picture of the times in which we live. The problem of today is how we came to be so cruelly enmeshed.

We must not shrink back in horror if the mirror of our times shows us a hideously distorted face; only the careful study of these ghastly features will reveal to us how distorted life itself has become, how distorted the experiences of millions and their influence on the mentality of the whole community. We cannot hope to combat this influence successfully until we have traced every phase of its origin and dissemination. Body, soul and spirit have been weakened and are still weak, yet the sick man of today must daily, hourly expect recurrent attacks of illness which he is in no state to repel.

II — A TRAGEDY OF 1936

ON the 29th of May, 1936, Mr. Mendel Winkler, M.A., was found lying dead in a pool of his own blood in his house in District 9 of Vienna. The police were summoned, and were able at once to state that the feeble old man had been murdered and robbed. He was bound hand and foot with cords, his neck and head were wounded in several places; cupboards and boxes had been rifled, jewellery, cash and savings bank-books were missing.

The police investigations proved difficult. Several suspects were arrested, but they were able to prove their innocence and had to be promptly released. Not till six weeks later, on the 14th of July to be exact, was a young clerk of twenty-two, Edward Illetschko by name, arrested under grave suspicion of being Winkler’s murderer. After several lengthy hearings the peculiarly brutal crime was brought home to him. He had heard from a girlfriend, Josephine Brunner, aged 17, that Winkler was a wealthy man reputed amongst his many acquaintances to be eccentric. Josephine Brunner was assistant in a hairdresser’s which the old gentleman regularly attended. In the shop he was wont to boast to all who cared to listen about his wealth, his income and his jewels, not without a secret hope that Josephine might be sufficiently impressed to accept some of his repeated invitations to a theatre or cinema. Josephine had obstinately declined his kind offers, and when he had become inconveniently insistent she had complained to her employer about his customer’s importunity. She had also spoken about the matter to her friend Edward, whose greed and jealousy had been aroused. Gradually the possibility of a robbery had dawned on him. He had finally confessed as much to the police, though he steadfastly denied having had any intention of murdering the old man. When he was ultimately brought to trial in January, 1937, his mother was charged as accessory to the robbery. A few days after he had committed the crime he had confessed it to his mother, and though she was not censured by the court for not denouncing her son to the police, she had made herself accessory after the fact by accepting from him and expending a share of the spoil. All the witnesses deposed that a warm affection existed between mother and son.

The trial created a major sensation. It abounded in dramatic incident. The accused young man sobbed and wept in remorse for his deed; the old mother had severe heart attacks during the proceedings. On the third day of the trial the prisoner attempted to take his own life, and was only prevented by the vigilance of the police attendants. The cross-examination of Edward’s girlfriend made even the most hardened frequenters of murder trials prick up their ears.

In reply to the presiding judge’s questions, Edward Illetschko told the story of his life.