Thunder At Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914

by Frederic Morton

  The entire, enormous crowd came to a halt on the largest Prater meadow, just as the first drops fell. Thunder overrode the greetings of the intial speaker. Within a minute rain flooded down. Hail peppered the deluge. The throng fled into the Prater's inns, restaurants, and coffeehouses. Here labor's holiday continued in jam-packed solidarity but also in an unscheduled key. Had the weather held, the workers would have listened in orderly rows as orators outside exhorted them to valor and temperance and discipline for the ongoing struggle. Now, munching sausage, sitting on each other's laps or even on banners condemning liquor, they toasted their comradeship with bottles of Gumpoldskirchner. Of course at the Inn to the Brown Stag where Viktor Adler himself had taken refuge, one drank only coffee or orange soda. Still, Adler must have known that this May Day had come to an end more Viennese than planned.

  19

  Spring was taking a precarious turn for all three of Vienna's grand old men. The downpour spoiled Victor Adler's fete; it exacerbated his asthma for the next few days. Helpless stethoscopes surrounded Franz Joseph's bed. And the patriarch of psychosomatic medicine found his health in straits just as his Emperor's pneumonia reached a crisis. The coincidence may not have been coincidental.

  During the winter of 1914 Freud had been suffering intermittently from colitis. In mid-April his symptoms persisted to a worrisome degree. He began to suspect a tumor of the colon.

  Things were greening and sprouting in the Vienna Woods, but this spring the doctor lost his taste for mushroom hunts. He felt too tired for noontime walks around the Ring. What energy he had, he gave to his work and to the fisticuffs disguised as monographs within the International PsychoAnalytical Association.

  Especially to the last. The association's politics, like those of the Balkans, had been steadily tensing. Until the end of 1913 Freud had hoped if not for peace, at least for a truce with his Swiss adversary, Carl Jung. In the course of the year Freud's allies had rallied around him in lectures and papers; they'd directed a scholarly scorn at the "dogmas from Zurich" (particularly at Jung's de-sexualization of the libido into general psychic energy). Freud himself, however, had refrained from all personal sallies. As if to fortify his restraint he kept refining his "Moses of Michelangelo," that essay in praise of conciliation. Yet at the same time he took a certain partisan pleasure in the response to his recent Totem and Taboo. The psychoanalytic intellegentsia took note that Totem scintillated on the symbology of primitive man, the very field Jung claimed as his own.

  In early 1914 Freud had begun to take a more decided role in the campaign. He used a paper begun during his Roman summer of 1913. Then, between trips to the Moses statue in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, he had blocked out "On Narcissism: an Introduction." Later, in Vienna, polishing the essay during the spring of 1914, he fashioned it into something of a stiletto: He included a very pointed though still civil revision of Jung's ideas on the subject.

  Meanwhile the enemy was not sitting still. Jung was preparing to pluck once more at the prophet's beard through upcoming lectures in Scotland. Rumors to that effect filtered fast to Vienna. As if to confirm them, Jung publicly protested against Freud-inspired "aspersions on my bona fides" and resigned as editor of the Psycho-Analytic Yearbook.

  For Freud this was a signal to stop all appeasement. He had long repressed the militancy of his resentment. The speed with which it surfaced now can be gauged from two sentences from two different letters. "I have no desire for separation," he had written about Jung on June 1, 1913, ". perhaps my Totem paper will bring on the breach against my will." On January 12, 1914, he wrote, working on another paper, ". I expect that this statement of mine will put an end to all compromises and bring about the desired rupture."

  General Conrad could not have expressed better his impatience with formal ties to a foe. After all, Belgrade still maintained diplomatic relations with Vienna, just as Jung was still President of Freud's International Psycho-Analytical Association. In contrast to the General, however, Freud wore the crown of his realm and could fire off ultimatums at will. "This statement" that would cause "the desired rupture" was a manuscript he had started just before New Year's when he also labored on "Narcissism" and "Moses of Michelangelo." For Freud it was a season of astonishingly diverse industriousness that continued as the months grew warmer and his colitis worse. Yet regardless of other worries or chores, Freud kept working on this "statement" designed to kill all "compromises" with the Jungians. He wanted to publish it in the next issue of the Psycho-Analytic Yearbook from which Jung had just resigned.

  The "statement" was a "polemic" as Freud himself more closely defined it. Its title: "On the History of Psycho-Analysis." Despite the neutral tag, it articulated (in the words of the editor of Freud's Standard Edition) "the fundamental postulates and hypotheses of psycho-analysis to show that the theories of… Jung were totally incompatible with them."

  ***

  Advance word of the Freud offensive reached Jung in the early months of 1914. Soon afterward the Freud-controlled Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psycho-Analyse loosed a barrage of hostile comment at Jung-influenced monographs. The strategy took. On April 20 Jung completed the breach. He resigned from the Presidency of the International Psycho-Analytical Association.

  "I am tired of leniency and kindness." Freud made that confession in a letter of May 17, three months after finishing the Moses essay in which he had embraced leniency and kindness. How well tuned he was to the world's mood in 1914. How quickly his Apollo had changed to Dionysus. And how mortal he remained, just like the world's other Dionysians. In midMay his intestinal symptoms, ever worsening, forced him to comply with his physician's demand. He submitted to a detailed examination by a specialist on cancer of the colon.

  20

  On may 12, 1914, two men in civilian clothes, yet attended by orderlies, had tea in the sitting room of a hotel suite in Carlsbad. One of them had obviously come to the spa for a purpose other than a cure. At sixty-two General Conrad was trim and fit, still a terrier primed to pounce. The tic of his left eye punctuated his energy, the crispness and speed of his motions. His handsome face, topped by the mane of gold and gray, glowed with a tan earned on horseback during spring maneuvers.

  His German counterpart slumped in an armchair as though he were much more than only four years older. General Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of Staff of the Kaiser's armed forces, needed the healing waters badly. Ungainly, flabby, bald, he was not at all well in stomach or kidney. Nor fortunate with certain wrinkles in his disposition. To offset these he read Nietzsche as the Muse of Power and he often talked about Thomas Carlyle's books showing that history was made by heroes. Still, he couldn't help proclivities odd for the principal warrior of the Junkers. He was a cello-playing Christian Scientist with a penchant for esoteric cults. At night, when nobody was watching, he translated Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelleas et Melisande from the French. He suggested a frayed, bruised poet, possibly androgynous, definitely overweight.

  The Kaiser called Moltke "der traurige Julius" (sad Julius). High-echelon wags in Berlin claimed that he was not sad, just hurting with bruises from his falls from the saddle. As a source of many a grin, the horsemanship of the Chief of Staff contributed to the lighter side of official life in Berlin. One of his celebrated tumbles had been in front of the equestrian statue of his uncle, the Helmuth von Moltke, the great Field Marshal von Moltke, victor over Napoleon III in the war of 1870.

  The comparison afflicted the lesser von Moltke all his life. So did the conflict between his duty, which must be remorseless, and his intelligence, which was considerable. "The next war," he had told the Kaiser a few years earlier, "will be a national war. It will not be settled by one decisive battle but will be a long wearisome struggle with an enemy who will not be overcome until his whole national force is broken… a war which will utterly exhaust our own people even if we are victorious." Yet here he sat, in May 1914, discussing the next war. It was von Moltke's job to map out the catastrophe of victory.

&
nbsp; Of course General Conrad suffered from none of his colleague's pangs or qualms. He had journeyed to Carlsbad ostensibly to underline in person what he had written Berlin in several memoranda; namely that Serbia's provocations in Albania and elsewhere could no longer go unanswered. Bel grade, he told the German Chief of Staff, was presuming too much on the patience of Conrad's imperial masters (an allusion to Crown Prince Ferdinand's pacifism and the caution of Franz Joseph, now so sick). A day of reckoning was at hand. It would put the German-Austrian alliance to a test. Conrad said he wanted to make sure that he and his Berlin confrere agreed on all the mechanics of the partnership.

  Conrad, in other words, was fishing for reassurance. If Russia and France rushed to Serbia's aid, could Austria count on instant, unconditional German support? Conrad did not ask the question outright. But it hung in the air. Obviously it was the reason for his visit.

  In his response von Moltke had to take into account his Imperial master's philosophy. The Kaiser preferred easy braggadocio to nasty hard work like conducting a major war. And so von Moltke said that he hoped the world's peace would not be hostage to some petty Balkan adventurism. But he also said-swallowing a liver pill with a bitter grimace-that Kaiser Wilhelm was not the kind of leader who ever let his guard down. Germany could not ignore recent developments like those huge French loans to Russia and Serbia that were so plainly meant to finance armaments; or Russia's feverish overhaul of her transportation system to speed troop movements to the German border. The Triple Entente-von Moltke shrugged a weary shoulder as he referred to the camp consisting of Russia, France, and Great Britain-always carried on about German aggressiveness. These countries didn't realize that Kaiser Wilhelm would never raise his mailed fist except in defense of his or his ally's legitimate interests. All the hysteria in the Russian press, for example, about the naval implications of the recent widening of the Kiel Canal. True, German battleships could now steam directly from the North Sea to the Baltic. But that was a safeguard necessary in view of moves made by the Triple Entente-like the joint BritishRussian fleet maneuvers planned in the Baltic Sea.

  Conrad nodded with a vengeance: just what he was always emphasizing in Vienna-the Central Powers were only catching up-in fact, not catching up fast enough, wouldn't His Excellency agree?

  Von Moltke's counternod lacked his colleague's vim. Still, it was a nod. Yes, von Moltke said. Russia in particular was moving swiftly toward readiness. The later the showdown, the worse. "Before I took my leave," Conrad would write in his memoirs, "I again asked General von Moltke how long, in his view, the double war against Russia and France would last before Germany could turn with a strong force on Russia alone. Moltke: 'We hope to be finished with France six weeks after the commencement of operations, or at least finished to a degree that we can transfer our main strength to the East.' "

  Colonel Edward House, Woodrow Wilson's adviser, did not eavesdrop on this scene. But he happened to be touring Europe at that time on a mission for the American President. He was to collect information for a plan by which Wilson might calm down the continent. And the American did catch the mood producing conversations such as the one in Carlsbad. "The situation is extraordinary," he reported on May 29, 1914, from Berlin to the White House. "It is militarism run stark mad. Unless someone acting for you can bring about a different understanding, there is some day to be an awful cataclysm. No one in Europe can do it. There is too much hatred. Too many jealousies."

  It turned out that the White House must tend to belligerence much closer to home. American nationals had been abused in Mexico. In April, Marines had seized Vera Cruz. By May the United States stood on the brink of war with its Southern neighbor. Woodrow Wilson faced too much New World trouble to straighten out the Old.

  Lenin in 1914. Culver Pictures, Inc.

  Stalin ca. 1914. Culver Pictures, Inc.

  Hitler amid the crowd acclaiming the German declaration of war on Russia. Date: August 1, 1914. Place: Odeonplatz, Munich. Culver Pictures, Inc.

  Dapper Leon Trotsky's passport photograph, 1914.

  Viktor Adler, leader of Austria's Socialist Party. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  A married couple in love: Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife, Sophie. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  General Conrad von Hotzendorf, Chief of Staff of Austria's Armed Forces. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  Emperor Franz Joseph strolling with his lady love, the actress Katharina Schratt, in Bad Ischl. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  Sigmund Freud with his daughter Anna on summer holiday in the Dolomites shortly before his confrontation with Jung at the International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Munich in September 1913. Mary Evans-Sigmund Freud Copyrights, Colchester

  Chess players and kibitzers at the Cafe Central. Werner J. Schweiger

  Ball at the Imperial Palace in Vienna. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  Caricature of Karl Kraus, Vienna's preeminent satirist, peddling his periodical, Die Fackel. Die Muskete

  Emperor Franz Joseph in his hunting costume in Bad Ischl. Ost. Staatsarchiv-Kriegsarchiv

  The assassin Gavrilo Princip (right) with his co-conspirator Trifko Graben (left) and a friend on a bench in Belgrade's Kalmedgan Park, May 1914. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  Count Leopold von Berchtold, Foreign Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  June 12, 1914, sixteen days before the assassination: The Kaiser visits Franz Ferdinand at Konopiste. From left to right: The Archduke in the uniform of the 10th Prussian Uhlan Regiment; his wife, the Duchess Hohenberg; the Kaiser in hunting costume, having his hand kissed by one of the Archduke's sons. Archiv Gunther Ossmann, Wien

  The Chief of Serbia's Intelligence Bureau, Colonel Dragutin C. Dimitrijevic, flanked by aides. Also known by the code name "Apis," he was the head of the Serbian terrorist organization The Black Hand, which funded the assassins. B ildarch iv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  Konopiste. The esplanade leading to the rose garden at Archduke Franz Ferdinand's castle. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  June 28, 1914, ten minutes before the assassination: Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife leave Sarajevo City Hall. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  The death car: Franz Ferdinand and his wife in the back seat with Count Harrach standing on the running board. Bildarchiv d. Ost. Nationalbibliothek

  The assassin Princip just after his arrest. Culver Pictures, Inc.

  But the arithmetic of the militarism alarming Colonel House was indeed awesome. Despite Socialist resistance, the Berlin parliament had raised the peacetime strength of the German military establishment from 660,000 to nearly 800,000. The three-year conscription period added enormous striking power to the French army. Within four years Russia's preparedness program had increased her forces by 500,000 men to 1,300,000, and her forces were growing still. In a similar span Austria had expanded her army from 400,000 to half a million. "We spend half as much on armaments as Germany," wrote the Socialist ArbeiterZeitung soon after the Generals' High Tea at Carlsbad, "yet Austria's gross product is only one-sixth of Germany's. In other words, we spend proportionately three times as much on war as Kaiser Wilhelm. Must we play Big Power at the cost of poverty and hunger?"

  As these words were published on May 29, a cold spell shivered through the Vienna Woods. Twenty-four hours later the sun returned. Again lilacs flashed, cuckoos called, kites soared above apple blossoms in the hills wreathing the city. At almost the same time the First Lord Chamberlain made a smiling announcement at Schonbrunn Palace. The congestion in His Majesty's lungs had cleared. Most signs of pneumonia were gone and so was the fever. The august patient was making a strong recovery. In fact, His Majesty's physicians had reason to hope that he would be able to return to a normal schedule in about two weeks.

  ***

  The legend of Franz Joseph could continue, perhaps, forever, in the flesh. And from the trivial to the c
rucial, everything seemed to change for the better along the Danube. Nevetle, a yearling from the stable of Foreign Minister Count von Berchtold, came in first at the Freudenau races in Vienna. This brightened the wit of upper officials supping at Meissl & Schadn. They were familiar with certain perfumed coaches often waiting at a side entrance of the Minister's offices at the Ballhausplatz. To them the fact that his filly had won the Con Amore handicap signified that-with the Emperor improved-the Count's continued tenure would also continue his luck in the conduct of affairs, be they foreign or female.

  Indeed, private sport aside, the Foreign Minister could point with satisfaction to news important to the world at large. At a meeting with legislative leaders he quoted a statement just made by the French Prime Minister: It expressed deep admiration for the wisdom with which Franz Joseph-so recently restored-guided the destiny of the realm. Count von Berchtold also mentioned that the King of England had confirmed his intention to hunt with Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand in Austria come fall. For Serbia the Count had words of hope and moderation. (Of Albanian complexities he said nothing, possibly because they were simply too complex: On the one hand, the insurrection against the mbret had caused half his government to resign and himself to seek refuge on the Italian warship Misurata; on the other hand, the mbret had created yet another decoration, the Order of the White Star of Skanderbeg, whose glitter on the breasts of some disorderly majors re-ordered things to the point where the mbret could slink back to his capital again.) On the whole the Austrian Foreign Minister was happy to conclude that Cassandra wails about the imminence of war were as unfounded as earlier evil rumors about the imminence of the monarch's death.