The events outside the Palace of Justice greatly rattled my great-uncle and changed his views. He himself did not participate in the demonstrations, but he couldn’t avoid reading newspaper accounts of the bloody events and hearing the vivid tales on everyone’s lips. He found it scandalous that a dozen policemen were decorated with the order of merit and the entire bourgeois press supported the excessive use of force. In his address to parliament, Chancellor Ignaz Seipel lay blame for the massacres exclusively on the Social Democrats. My great-uncle’s decided opinion was that only a malicious and irresponsible politician could assert such carefully crafted lies. He blamed both the entire Christian Democratic regime and the bourgeois class that had voted Seipel and his gang into power.
THE CASE of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston a couple of weeks later was big news on the front pages of the papers. Even though the two Italian immigrants were obviously innocent, they were sentenced to death for an armed robbery during which two people had been killed. They were granted several stays of execution. Protests were organized throughout the world; in Vienna seventy thousand marched in silence through the streets. It was no use. The judge declined to reconsider the case. Because of their troublesome political views and a general hatred of foreigners, Sacco and Vanzetti had been judged before the trial began. In August, any hope of justice for them was finally dashed. The poverty-stricken anarchists were executed in the electric chair.
My great-uncle felt a deep sympathy for the executed Italians and their families. He read everything he could find in the newspapers about their fate. Again and again he ran across the name of Bakunin, described as the leading light of anarchism. The name sounded familiar somehow, but he couldn’t place it.
IN HIS CHILDHOOD HOME no one had ever mentioned his paternal grandfather. The subject was taboo. His father despised the famous theater director and refused to meet him. My great-uncle must nevertheless have picked up something about his grandfather, somewhere or other, for when he saw a picture of the Russian anarchist in the paper, a memory suddenly arose before him as clear as life: He had heard that as a young man in Siberia, Andrej Scharf had been a disciple of Bakunin. Thinking of his grandfather, he realized how little he really knew about the past. He couldn’t even recall his own mother’s face.
In Vienna’s Central Library he located Bakunin’s complete works in German translation. He threw himself into the study of the anarchist’s bible. Its pages were full of views about disobedience. He read:
… the true knowledge valid for everyone, developed in all of its extension and in all of its unchanging detail, should reproduce the universe, system, or social order of all natural laws manifested by the relentless evolution of the world …
Astonished, he shook his head and turned the page. Since he didn’t understand much of this, he soon found Bakunin’s writings tiresome and returned them to the shelf.
After the stock market crash—during the months when every day he could see highly educated academics waiting patiently, hour after hour, in bread lines outside charitable institutions—he went back to the library to borrow more tomes critical of social conditions. A pale, almost transparent librarian helped him reluctantly—she wore a sort of tight little smile that suggested bitterness or incurable loneliness. He came home with his arms full of books. He could only dimly make out the differences between the writings of Rosa Luxemburg and those of Trotsky. Most of it was incomprehensible. But he did make one discovery: socialism. The socialists proved, black on white, that the capitalist world order was unjust.
It occurred to him for the first time that life and society should have had more to offer his mother than the dreary struggles with his father—a man who had given up and crawled into a bottle of booze, broken for life by a heartless father and his own lack of talent.
And that is how Antonio Gramsci entered his life. The author’s writings about solidarity with the working masses impressed him deeply. The same was true of his words about freedom and individualism. He devoured the Italian’s notebooks, which had been smuggled via clandestine means out of the fascist prison where he languished. Gramsci’s writings provided him the key he used to coax open all the locks and to understand the world. Their tone was harsh, but the notebooks of the incarcerated political philosopher glowed with certainty, even though he was physically broken, tormented by illness, and deprived of contact with the outside world. Everything could be explained; one needed only to have a clear grasp of history.
MY GREAT-UNCLE no longer frequented the Waldvogel Tavern. Almost everything there had changed. The agreeable—gemütlich—atmosphere was gone as were the Eastern European immigrants and chess matches. Nor was stocky Julius still the owner; he had died shortly after his much younger wife, Hildegard, ran off with an itinerant beer salesman. The beer hall now was run by his nephew Ernst, a man more interested in racehorses than in his clients. The poets no longer recited their verses on Tuesday evenings. They now wore armbands with swastikas and discussed the views of Hitler.
One evening in an alley close to the tavern, my great-uncle watched from a distance as a humpbacked old Russian Jew, once a regular at the Waldvogel Tavern, was kicked into a bloody mess by three uniformed Nazis. He did not dare to intervene for fear of being attacked himself. The struggle against fascism, he told himself in an effort to quiet his conscience, should be carried on with means other than violence.
AFTER CIRCUS JACK had been declared bankrupt, my great-uncle secured employment as a magician and illusionist at the Steinkeller Cabaret.
One evening Sigmund Freud paid a visit. The cabaret’s owner, Steinkeller, met him at the door. They traded a few Jewish jokes and Freud was shown to the table closest to the stage. He ordered a small espresso, lit a cigar, and blew smoke rings. After Fernando’s act the owner invited the world-famous psychoanalyst to take the stage to offer a few remarks about our need for illusions.
Freud spoke with majestic, magnetic dignity. He said that he had observed Fernando closely and with great curiosity. He had noted a number of interesting points, but these he would keep to himself. He acknowledged that he was moved by the talented magician’s presentation. He quickly added that, of course, this was a matter of innocent deception, in the sense that Fernando had led everyone to believe they were seeing something that in fact had never happened. At that point someone in the audience spoke up and asked Freud if he believed that human beings had so-called supernatural powers. The curer of afflicted souls emphatically denied such a contention and said that parapsychology was pure humbug. He then offered several profundities about our fundamental need for illusions and our susceptibility to suggestion. Last but not least, he stressed the importance of using one’s own faculty of critical reasoning and not allowing oneself to be duped, either by stage presentations or in public spectacles. He received a hearty round of applause.
My great-uncle had not been warned of Freud’s visit, and he felt offended that his art had been dismissed as if it were nothing more than simple trickery. He spoke up immediately and expressed his humble admiration of Freud by calling him “the Christopher Columbus of the human subconscious.” He suggested a little experiment that might prove the existence of psychic powers. He asked Freud to write down something on a scrap of paper and place it in the breast pocket of his suit. My great-uncle asserted that his intuition could reveal what was written on the paper. The proposal caught Freud’s fancy; he agreed with pleasure to participate in this innocent experiment.
“Herr Fernando,” he said politely, “a few moments ago you called me Columbus, but I see myself as more of a conquistador. I possess the curiosity, boldness, and endurance of such a man.”
“And the same ruthlessness, dear doctor,” called out someone in the audience, provoking a few hearty guffaws.
“That may well be,” Freud continued. “But I have looked deeper into the soul of man than anyone else, and I have never been able to detect any mystical powers there. Do not take my remark personally, Herr Fernando, bu
t you will not be the first charlatan I have exposed.”
He took his pen, wrote something on a piece of paper, and placed it in the breast pocket of his suit. There was a heavy silence in the hall as my great-uncle stepped close to Freud, closed his eyes, and appeared to concentrate, all in a highly theatrical manner. The first thing that came into his mind was an image of tiny colorful fish. They were swimming around in dimly lit aquariums in the reception room of the dead phrenologist who claimed to have studied at number 19 Berggasse with the father of psychoanalysis.
“Tancred Hauswolff!” exclaimed Fernando.
Freud couldn’t believe his ears. “That is correct,” he said and held up the paper, which was then shown to the audience: Tancred Hauswolff.
Everyone in the house applauded. The jubilation was boundless. People didn’t just laugh; they wept with rapture. The next day Fernando was the talk of Vienna, and the queue for admission to the Steinkeller Cabaret stretched for blocks.
MY GREAT-UNCLE quickly took advantage of his new celebrity status to develop his repertory. He began to write and present monologues of biting social commentary. His career was brief but it had long-lasting consequences.
In her monumental work One Hundred Years of European Cabaret (1982), the Belgian theater historian Ghislaine Vlaminck writes that Fernando single-handedly transformed the art of the German cabaret. His fame sprang from his impudent and unerring political satire. Vlaminck writes:
Fernando was the epitome of the frustrated moralist and the scourge of the wicked, a man who mercilessly flayed them alive at the Steinkeller Cabaret. As a socialist he criticized the egotism of the propertied classes and their love of money. As an anti-Freudian he poured out his gall on psychoanalysis, disparaging its leading lights as “psycho-anuses.” As a pacifist he mocked war-lovers and militarists. As an atheist he placed himself at a significant distance both from the Jews and from the Catholics.
But there was one name that came up more often than any other in his performances: that of Adolf Hitler. After the seizure of power in Berlin in 1933, Fernando’s monologues were built almost exclusively around that name. The fact that the Nazi movement was gaining strength with every passing day egged him on to even greater daring and insolence. As the tramping boots of ten thousand members of the ruling party made Nuremberg tremble in the flickering of torches and the forest of banners, Fernando was the only German-speaking cabaret artist who continued to mock the neatly mustachioed former corporal with the comical sweep of hair that fell over his forehead. He turned the locale that had been Vienna’s most exclusive cabaret into a bastion of anti-Nazi sentiment.
Hitler’s Berlin cast dark shadows over Vienna. David Steinkeller received a summons to the office of the police chief to receive “a few friendly words of advice he would be wise to heed.”
Gagging Fernando? The very thought of it was grotesque. Steinkeller strove to articulate a defense of the principle of artistic freedom. The reply he received, loud and clear, was that his favorite had clearly overstepped the bounds of reason and permitted himself to utter every imaginable sort of indecent talk, questioning the morality of the Catholic public that faithfully supported the fatherland. What was now at stake was not Fernando’s future but that of the cabaret owner himself, and it depended entirely on the subject matter presented in his locale. Steinkeller was advised to get rid of his star performer as quickly as possible or face severe personal consequences. He promised to think it over, but he was determined to allow Fernando to express himself freely onstage, no matter what happened.
Two weeks later on a warm July day with dark thunderclouds on the horizon, Steinkeller was summoned again. This time it was no longer a discussion between him and the police chief. Two muscular toughs in leather coats were there to help convince Steinkeller. The two of them were direct and forceful in their reasoning: They forced him into a chair, gave him a couple of bone-jarring slaps, and held his shoulders in a steely grip. Steinkeller felt his heart racing and the blood roared in his ears. He listened in fear and paralyzed fascination to the police chief’s knowledgeable description of everything they would do to him if Fernando wasn’t out of the cabaret within twenty-four hours. This must have been extremely painful for Steinkeller, for he had a heart of gold and loved Fernando like a son. He realized in horror that he had no choice; it was useless to resist and he had to yield before the threat of further violence.
TO HIS OWN SURPRISE, my great-uncle had a sudden, perceptible feeling of relief, almost of exhilaration at these developments. For a while he thought he would miss the theater, especially the contact with the audiences when he looked directly into their eyes as they listened to him, thirsting for truth—the very thing, after all, that humor is so powerful in presenting to us in our lives. But instead of grieving, he took up his pen to battle against ever more rampant fascism. He was elated to see the same hands that a few years earlier had hefted suitcases in the railway station and later extracted colored ribbons from a clown’s hat now producing articles published on the front pages of the Arbeiter-Zeitung under the pseudonym Scharfrichter (Executioner). His life had the sweet smell of the resistance struggle and the wind of freedom. This made him even more daring. The principal theme of his articles was how to oppose Nazism. He exuded self-confidence. With Gramsci in his valise he knew exactly how to go about formulating the campaign of resistance.
While this was going on, he was also working on a study of the Spanish Inquisition. His interest in that subject had been roused by Mathäus Frombichler, who had by then been called to Berlin by his friend.
ADI HAD REACHED his goal after many years of struggle. The temperamental Austrian with the stony face and the comical haircut had succeeded in convincing the German people to put the fate of the nation in his hands. He was the Reich Chancellor, and with his fiery speeches he fed the people of Germany a vision of invincibility and a future German empire in Europe. Millions placed their blind allegiance in the new Führer and roared their enthusiastic adoration of him.
But Adi had no shortage of enemies, either. He was used to verbal attacks from the unholy alliance of Jews and Western democrats. But now things had changed. His trusted astrologist had warned him of an incipient conspiracy to get rid of him. The crystal ball predicted that the Führer would die in his own kitchen. Adi deduced that someone would attempt to poison his food. He wasn’t easily intimidated, but he took this threat seriously. He immediately took a number of precautions. He dedicated himself to a strictly vegetarian diet and consumed only green salads. He also directed his old friend Frombichler to quit his job as principal chef at the Hotel Imperial and come to serve as his own private chef.
AMONG FROMBICHLER’S ANCESTORS there was a mystic named Salman de Espinosa. This man had lived in medieval Spain and had been tortured without respite for eight days by Catholic executioners. They never succeeded in breaking his resistance. Like Hitler, the Inquisition believed that the Jews were responsible for every misery and evil in the world. A great number of Spain’s Jews fled that country; those who remained fell victim to persecution.
My great-uncle was fascinated by the story of Salman de Espinosa. He saw a clear parallel between fifteenth-century Spain and contemporary Germany. He could see that the fate of the Jews was sealed. It was only a question of time. Clouds were massing on the horizon.
IN THE EARLY HOURS of March 12, 1938, a German agent sent a telegram to Berlin from the main post office in Vienna with a request for military assistance. Within hours Hitler’s tanks rolled across the borders. Flag-waving children and adults lined the streets to welcome the invaders. Austria was occupied without a shot being fired and was annexed to Nazi Germany.
FOLLOWING THE NAZI SEIZURE of power in Austria, the so-called Anschluss, all political parties except the National Socialists were dissolved and many of my great-uncle’s friends were arrested. He sent Elsa and the girls to Budapest to get them out of harm’s way. He stayed behind and continued to write about the Spanish Inquisition as a prede
cessor of Nazism.
DAVID STEINKELLER, a Romanian citizen, was one of the first to receive an order of deportation. It was redacted in obscure bureaucratic language but was extremely specific about where he was to report and what he was allowed to carry with him. Steinkeller sent a letter to the Gestapo replying that three years after the Nuremberg racial purity laws, the significance of which had escaped no one, he was well aware what awaited him and he preferred to take things into his own hands. He dressed himself in his most elegant suit, carefully knotted his tie, and heaved a sigh. He missed the laughter and tears of free, unintimidated audiences listening to Fernando’s monologues. He then made his way up to the attic and hanged himself.
SOMEONE WAS BEATING on the front door. My great-uncle was sitting at the kitchen table by the window, writing. He had an idea of who it might be and he went to open the door. Five large men in black leather overcoats stood outside. “Gestapo!” their leader barked.
“Franz Scharf,” replied my great-uncle, and regarded the rest of the men inquisitively. “And you, gentlemen, who haven’t introduced yourselves? What are your names? And in any case, what are you selling?”
“Secret police!” the leader announced. “We are here to arrest the Jew Scharf. We also have an order to search the house for books or papers with anti-Nazi views.”
“Anti-Nazi views,” Fernando echoed him. “Everything in this residence is opposed to the Nazis, down to the toilet paper that I used to wipe my ASSHOLE.” A second later a hard fist smashed into his chin and he lost consciousness. When he came to, he was on his way to Dachau.
The Elixir of Immortality Page 20