For that he took time off from his study on hysteria. He finally had to make a stand against Theodor Meynert. As stands go, this one was reckless and, to use a still uninvented word, oedipal. Privy Councillor Professor Meynert was not only the founder of the Vienna Psychiatric Clinic and one of the leading alienists of his time; not only a man of ecumenical culture and of advanced politics (piano virtuosos played Mozart in his salon and he had written poetry about the French Revolution); not only a huge force at the University and one of its most powerful lecturers; in addition, he had left a very early and very deep personal impression on Freud. In Freud’s own language, Meynert was “the most brilliant genius I have ever encountered.” He was “more stimulating than a host of friends.”
And just this man the young doctor now dared make his enemy. In 1889 things came to a boil, but trouble had been heating up for many months. During 1885–86 Freud had gone to Paris on a grant to study with Charcot. He had returned very excited about the potential of hypnosis, both as therapy and as diagnostic art plumbing the psychic origins of neurological disturbances. To Meynert, however, hypnosis only induced “an artificial form of alienation.” It would be unfortunate if “this psychical epidemic among doctors” were to spread.
Insubordinate, Freud had spread it. He had continued to practice and to champion hypnosis. On another subject he had also been heretic. He had treated hysteria as an affliction not limited to women and which behaved “as if there were no anatomy.” To Meynert this was nonsense. Hysteria was an exclusively female phenomenon (hystera being the Greek word for womb) caused only by nerve lesions. Theorizers like Dr. Freud verged on quackery.
For a long time Freud had borne this conflict mutely. But even his silent disobedience had excluded him from the laboratories Meynert controlled. He had been forced to restrict his already very limited University lectures to anatomy, and any kind of participation had been denied him at the Psychiatric Clinic. His work at the Kassowitz Pediatric Institute, which was small and outside the University framework, had really been banishment.
Now in 1889 the situation—like many such situations in Vienna—became envenomed. Speaking to a group of doctors, Meynert referred to his former disciple as “only a hypnotist.”
During the post-Mayerling spring of discontent, Freud decided to hit back, in print. The Vienna medical weekly, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschriften, had just asked him to review a book on hypnotism. There was his forum. Freud went to work as bitterly as the circumstances warranted, as cleverly as the eminence of his adversary demanded.
In his review Freud conceded that among the opponents of hypnotism figured men like Privy Councillor Professor Meynert who had acquired weighty authority. Freud further conceded that it was difficult for most people to conceive that scientists like Privy Councillor Professor Meynert, who enjoyed great experience in certain regions of neuropathology and who had given proof of great acumen, should have no qualifications on other problems. Freud conceded yet further that respect for greatness, especially intellectual greatness, was among the best characteristics of human nature. But even more important than such respect was the respect for facts. One needn’t be afraid to say so openly, if one set aside one’s dependence on authority in favor of one’s own judgment arrived at from a study of the facts…
It was, Freud went on, fitting to make some allowance for the frequent intolerance on the part of great men. Therefore he would not inquire into the reasons which led Privy Councillor Professor Meynert to attack him. He did want to state that as the victim of such attacks he was in good company—vide the author of the excellent book under review, Dr. August Forel. Dr. Forel was a brain anatomist of high repute and yet saw hypnosis as something other than “a piece of absurdity,” to use a term Privy Councillor Meynert had employed…
Since this reviewer appraised the book positively, Freud continued, Privy Councillor Meynert might be confirmed still further in his judgment that Freud had returned from the wickedness of Paris in a depraved state. But the reviewer, Freud, was still obliged to correct Privy Councillor Meynert’s recent definition of him as “a local practitioner of hypnosis.” This might create the impression that he did nothing else but hypnotize. On the contrary the reviewer was “a local nerve specialist” making use of all therapeutic methods, if Privy Councillor Meynert would be gracious enough to acknowledge that…
“Where is the old time?” Bratfisch had sung. “Where is the Gemütlichkeit?”
One man knew where it was. At least he was among the few who could produce old-fashioned smiles in the teeth of modernity, of truth and of death. That man was Johann Pfeiffer, King of the Birds. He still performed on the Schottenring, a few steps away from Freud’s door. Only his act had changed. After Mayerling he stopped staging plays with the parrots—onlookers no longer responded so freely with their coins. Now he had his birds bring each paying customer an envelope from a shelf of horoscopes as they had at New Year’s. He knew how to give each prediction a funny twist. And his customers enjoyed that. The Viennese liked to interpose at least a joke between themselves and the future.
His problem was the lack of passers-by. The Ringstrasse did not make a comfortable strolling mall in the March of ’89. The mood remained too blighted, the weather too dismal. At the day’s end, the little heap of change the King had garnered was still not quite enough to nourish a family of five humans and seven birds.
Still the King did not abandon his jolliness or his daily stand on the Ringstrasse. But now he worked nights too. In late February he began to visit taverns. He gave humorous impersonations of Napoleon at a Viennese coffeehouse or of Frederick the Great playing a gypsy violin. He distributed home-made imitations of a fifty-gulden note on which was written, A fifty-gulden fine for all those not watching my performance. When that didn’t bring in enough money, he searched out dog owners among the more good-natured drinkers in the pubs and taught the pets comic tricks. He performed farcical operas with his shadow-playing fingers, and, after one long such evening at the beginning of March, he went home whistling; climbed up three evil-smelling floors in the Castelezgasse; tiptoed past his family whose members, feathered and unfeathered, were sleeping crammed together in the narrow apartment; opened its single window; and jumped out.
When they found him, dead, he still clutched his case of masks on which was written in gold letters: LIFE IS SERIOUS BUT ART IS GAY—VIENNESE SPECIALITIES
His funeral was marvelous. Truly eine schöne Leich’—a beautiful corpse—as the Viennese called successful occasions of the sort. Most newspapers noted his passing. The city which could not keep him alive showered him with fond obituaries and provided populous company on his last ride. After all, he had been a fixture on the Ringstrasse, its most charming landmark and the first to perish. The policeman on his corner there joined the cortege; so did the mailman and the Dienstmann and the chestnut vendor and the wine lovers whose taverns had been part of Pfeiffer’s nightly rounds.
When he had been laid to rest, they all returned to their pubs and the corpse became very beautiful indeed. It made up for that other, bewildering, tragic body still in its temporary coffin at the Capuchin crypt. Rudolf had conjured the glistening anticipation of greatness, only to dissolve into black bafflement. Johann Pfeiffer, King of the Birds, had offered never more than a moment’s diversion. And in one moment he was, quite logically, gone. He reminded the Viennese of one of their specialties: the art of making life unserious.
* * *
* It was the equivalent of the CIA in this new, hostile Serbia that instigated the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Rudolf’s successor, at Sarajevo.
Chapter 29
Johann Pfeiffer’s schöne Leich’ marked in some ways the beginning of a turning point. The same week in mid-March Prime Minister Taaffe appeared before Parliament to deny that he had ever termed his government’s policy “fortwursteln” (slogging on). Quite the contrary, he would characterize that policy as “durchfretten” (muddling through). He said it with a solem
n stern twitch of mustaches which rendered the playfulness all the more masterful. Somehow his pronouncement signaled the end of government mourning.
One began to hope that Mayerling might not be a world-devouring misfortune after all. The city could even give thought to ills elsewhere. London, for example, was still trembling before Jack the Ripper. In Paris, General Boulanger was degenerating rapidly from a new Bonaparte into a catastrophic blusterer. And an event on Russian territory made Viennese anti-Semitism look like a quaint peccadillo. Adolf Baron von Sonnenthal, the Court Theater’s foremost classic actor and the capital’s avatar of sartorial elegance; von Sonnenthal, whom Franz Joseph had called “Jupiter” in his letters to Frau Schratt—this fastidious Austrian luminary was nearly arrested by the Tsarist police during an engagement in Riga. Why? He had failed to apply for a special permit to stay on holy Russian soil, as required of all foreign “Israelites.” Only a protest by Franz Joseph’s ambassador saved Sonnenthal from deportation.
The incident helped Vienna recover some self-esteem. Austria’s feudal coloring might rival Russia’s; but—Lueger and Schönerer notwithstanding—it was at the same time democratic enough to champion its Jewish Jupiter.
Gradually the Viennese were regaining their happy sense of singularity. Toward the end of March even the weather mellowed. Overnight the Vienna Woods became snow-dappled undulations of sweet baby-green; birches, willows, poplars leafed; pussywillows pearled up and down the slopes. The trams ran again, during a truce in the strike, and carried thousands out into the spring. And the poor, most of whom lived in the outer districts, often had no need of transportation. Many discovered once again that only a few steps led from fetid tenement to freshness. As soon as school and factory let out, the sprint was on to the hills—the Kahlenberg, Kobenzl and Leopoldsberg—for meadows, for freedom and for flowers. Everybody luxuriated and gathered. The grime of ten thousand windowsills was soon covered by clusters of crocuses and lilacs, by lovely scents and petals. Sunday noon saw Vienna’s lower million sunning, basking, sipping wine in the groves; all around them the vineyards budded, and new-born foliage did its first rustling to a breeze. What other city offered such easy solace to its underprivileged?
And where else could you find aristocrats returning with such style from their delinquency? For them the Mayerling dreariness was over. The chill had passed. The horsy turf at Freudenau beckoned to the Esterházys and the Schwarzenbergs. His Highness had to inspect his yearlings. Her Highness had to renew her wardrobe. The May 1st fashion promenade in the Prater lay ahead. Every day another quartered ensign rose on the flagpole of another town palais to announce that Their Lordships were once more in residence. The initial spring event, a roller-skating gala held by Princess Pauline Metternich, was a hilarious success.
Vienna’s surface was being smoothed and prettied. Rudolf was gone, yes. But—behold!—life went on, to a general firming of prices. The stock market remained buoyant, the interest rate showed rather serene moderation. The death of this firebrand fairytale liberal had, come to think of it, removed an element of volatility and radical caprice. One might perhaps begin to feel a bit of hope again.
And someone was already waiting in the wings to tickle away the last sheath of numbness. Theodor Herzl set out to cause a pleasant citywide buzz. For the first time, he sharpened his skill as an inspiriting genius and an attention-getter. The man who would in the next decade turn the whole world’s eyes to Zionism, in March 1889 learned how to fire up the Vienna public. Not in order to found a Jewish homeland—but to inveigle ticket-buyers to the box office.
The comedy Herzl had written with Hugo Wittmann, purified of all references to sleeping cars, neared production. It went into rehearsal at the Court Theater just when the management again rejected Ibsen and his “problem plays.” In terms of literature the Court Theater’s decision was a felony. In terms of social therapy it was a boon. Vienna badly needed some nice safe titillation. Couldn’t it be provided by something called Love Poachers, a pseudo-risqué farce with a question mark for an author? Herzl quickly realized that the city, still ailing from a great evil mystery, would adore curing itself with a juicy little mystification.
“We are fully determined,” he wrote in his own and his collaborator’s name to the Director of the Court Theater. “We are fully determined not to reveal ourselves even after a success (which the Lord may grant). Only after the play succeeds abroad will we emerge from the mystic clouds.”
And very soon Herzl managed to generate some tantalizing vapors, through his burgeoning public-relations virtuosity. Of course he and his partner were fortunately placed. Wittmann controlled the cultural news columns (though not the critics) of the Neue Freie Presse where Herzl himself was a power. In addition, Herzl had just become feuilleton editor of the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung. He had big drums to beat with. But the point was not to let the public know the source from which came all that appetizing noise, all those intriguing mists.
“We received the following item from Berlin,” read an item in the Neue Freie Presse on March 7. “A new comedy, a work of special interest, will receive its premiere at the Deutsches Theater there. Love Poachers is the name of the play which has caused a certain excitement in literary circles for the past few weeks. As is well known, it arrived at the Vienna Court Theater anonymously by mail from Berlin, but the very first glance at the manuscript dispelled the mistrust usually inspired by anonymous plays. The work was accepted immediately in Vienna. The parts have already been assigned. We are close to the premiere, and one guesses curiously who the author might be…”
During the next few days both the Neue Freie Presse and the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung sprinkled casting news about Love Poachers into their pages, noting that the Court Theater elite such as Adolf von Sonnenthal (the Jewish Jupiter) and Hugo Thimig filled major roles, while the play’s by-line remained a magnetic vacuum. The coffeehouses and the high-tea gossip congregrations could now buzz about a riddle that was comfortable and toothsome for a change. Herzl & Co. candied and spiced it further.
On March 14, there were yet other stories about interest abroad not only in Love Poachers but in its enigmatic authorship. On March 17, Herzl published nonchalantly, under his name, a vignette about the foibles and fascinations of literary life. On March 19, the play opened to an absolutely sold-out house.
“Is it a success? Is it a failure?” Herzl wrote a day later to the Director of the Court Theater. “We anonymous ones don’t know for sure.”
The critics were quite sure and nearly unanimous. “Yesterday the much-discussed anonymous comedy Love Poachers opened,” wrote the reviewer of Herzl’s own paper. “The public commotion about it is as ill-justified as the speed with which the management produced it. The play is cleverly nailed together but coarse in character and contains some very questionable borrowings from familiar French drama. Herr Förster, the Court Theater Director, must have decided to accept it as a former actor; the piece gives him a chance to display his thespians though it is literarily worthless.”
The Neue Freie Presse discussed Love Poachers not only in the same issue but on the same page with a Hugo Wittmann feuilleton (about the memoirs of a former American Ambassador in Vienna). “Too broad,” said the reviewer, and then bent over backward to his Presse colleague until he could call the play “a bad comedy but a pretty good farce.”
“Do you know a Theodor Herzl? Or a Frau Baumgartner? Or a Herr Hugo Wittmann? Or a Herr Hugo Lubliner?” asked the Salonblatt. “These and other unknown and well-known names are being bandied about in connection with Love Poachers, which just opened at the Court Theater. If you suppose that the author tried to increase the public’s suspense by leaving out his name, you must be wrong. I would think he follows with mixed feelings the hunt for his by-line…The play does not possess the literary significance to deserve special attention or satisfy special expectations. The author will not get much honor from the play, but, judging from its local success here, much gold.”
Th
e Salonblatt was both right and wrong. Right about the gold. Love Poachers played to packed houses. Wrong about “the author’s” doubts concerning the curiosity about “his” name. Herzl & Wittmann kept fanning the flames.
Actually that required resourcefulness of a high order. The premiere coincided with those City Council elections revolving to a large degree around the pros and cons of anti-Semitism, a hot controversy. In terms of news space, Herzl & Co. had to compete against the Jewish issue.
Still, the Love Poachers boys did well. The Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, for example, reported on Dr. Karl Lueger’s rough and successful electioneering on behalf of his Jew-baiting Christian Socialist Party. But even more space was given—on the same page—to a feuilleton by Herzl’s best friend and confidant Heinrich Kana. It was called “How I discovered the Author of Love Poachers” and began as follows:
The mania to ferret out the author of Love Poachers has now spread to the editorial offices of this newspaper. At 9 A.M. today the editor-in-chief instructed me to identify the man. I went to the Court Theater and encountered a huge crowd of people, all of whom—men, women and children—were secretly hoping to be pointed out as the author of Love Poachers…Inside the theater an attendant told me that the manuscript had been handed in by a man with a full blond beard and an upward-tilted nose [an aryanized cartoon of Herzl], His name is Johannes Hawranek and he lives in the Johannesgasse…Walking out of the theater I called out to the crowd, “Gentlemen, none of you wrote Love Poachers.” A tremendous noise started but luckily a fiacre carried me away.
The noise didn’t stop. In City Council elections, conservatives, clericals and anti-Semites made gains against the liberals; all along Herzl’s Love Poachers promotion continued merrily. On April 5, the cultural page of the Neue Freie Presse reported that a Herr Kadelsburg of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin had been named “with the greatest certainty” as the author of Love Poachers. On April 9, the Neue Freie Presse printed Herr Kadelsburg’s categorical denial. New puzzlement flowered, the box office prospered. The Viennese were grateful that they could guess at frivolities—no longer about other, darker things.
A Nervous Splendor Page 28