A Nervous Splendor

by Frederic Morton

  By such a paradox Vienna attained greatness after all. It bred the geniuses who foretold the modern wound. And Rudolf, too, became in time a sad but significant precursor. He was the herald of an alienation common to the youth of our day. Over him loomed Franz Joseph, a storybook incarnation of The Establishment. Today The Emperor has been computerized into a system willing to grant its children lordly perquisites and sexual license while remaining resistant to all essential reform. Under today’s system the young often appear to be a generation of Rudolfs: free and glamorous in theory, crushingly impotent in action; freely skeptical yet unable to establish one skeptic-proof premise; free to see themselves as unbounded individuals without ever arriving at successful individuality; free to press pleasure to numb excess; free to demand the absolute of their senses and their ideals only to be failed by both, overprivileged and hapless at once; free to sound the depths of sophisticated frustration.

  The shots in the Vienna Woods were fired in 1889. Today and every day hundreds of other unnerved fingers are already crooked into hundreds of other triggers. Each time we hear of another strange young death in a “good” house we hear of another Mayerling.

  In the spring of 1889 none of that seemed to weigh on Vienna’s mind. Everything swelled and brightened toward Easter. By the second week of April, Dr. Schnitzler’s diary recorded, for all his jadedness, the four hundred seventy-fourth sex act with his Sweet Girl Jeanette. On the Kahlenberg hill, innkeepers dusted off the terraces that looked down over the vineyards into the beautiful city. At the peak, pyrotechnicians labored. They were readying something special for Easter Sunday: a symphonic fireworks in four movements whose crescendo would be the explosion of a crenellated ammunitions tower, high up in the Pleiades.

  The price of sugar was rising again. But it didn’t matter; the city was launched into Easter, the theater of Resurrection. There was not a branch in the Vienna Woods that wasn’t greening. Perhaps nothing was irretrievable, not even the Crown Prince. His ghosts teemed everywhere, his legends bestrode the realm. Some even believed that Rudolf might be reborn as a child entering the world at Eastertide.

  On Saturday, April 20, the day before Easter, at 4 P.M., Mozart’s “Te Deum” was sung in the Court Chapel, a few yards from Rudolf’s old apartment. Professor Anton Bruckner drew great chords and holy harmonies from the organ to celebrate the Resurrection. While the master’s august music rose among the vaultings, a different sound was heard in Bruckner’s native Upper Austria at Braunau. It was the thin cry of a baby born that afternoon. The parents were Alois and Klara Hitler. They named their little one Adolph.

  Gallery

  Rudolf driving his phaeton up to the Sacher Garden restaurant in the Prater, in a painting finished in 1889. (The man sitting in back is his footman.)

  The Sühnhaus (Atonement House) where Freud lived, beyond his means, in 1888–89. Anton Bruckner lived in the building facing it on the left-hand side.

  Rudolf with his wife Stephanie, daughter of the King of Belgium, called “the Flemish peasant” by many at the Viennese Court

  Anton Bruckner in an 1889 portrait: Court organist, genius composer, country bumpkin lost in the Imperial capital

  Franz Joseph—sideburned, third from right in foreground—receiving at Court. He holds his sword

  The Crown Prince early in 1888, wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece, and with one of his many uniforms, and with an already spectral gaze

  Mary Vetsera, dressed as a peasant for a costume ball. At seventeen the darling of the fashion columns, the “Turf Angel” of the horsey set…adorable and relentless.

  The only self-portrait Gustav Klimt ever painted: second from the left, the face haloed by the dazzling white ruff. The portrait is part of the ceiling mural Klimt was working on, disgustedly, above the right-hand staircase of the new Court Theater in 1888.

  Four Imperial Highnesses in 1884. Standing: Crown Prince Rudolf and the future Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Seated: Crown Princess Stephanie of Austria and Princess Auguste Victoria of Germany.

  Mitzi Caspar, Rudolf’s “Sweet Girl,” with whom he spent his last night before killing himself with Mary Vetsera at Mayerling

  Contemporary magazine illustration showing a gala audience arriving at the new Court Theater in Vienna’s great fall season of 1888

  Rudolf, “the elegant prince,” in hunting costume

  Arthur Schnitzler at twenty-six, an unsuccessful physician and would-be writer

  Johann Strauss. At sixty-three in 1888 he was a figure of consummate public glamour and recurrent private misery

  Hugo Wolf at twenty-eight, already becoming the modern master of the Lied. This photograph was taken in February 1889. Wolf’s short beard is so sparse because of his edgy habit of plucking out the hairs

  Johannes Brahms on the terrace of Johann Strauss’s summer house. The perfect manager of his own success, Brahms cultivated friendships with the rich, the titled, the famous.

  Rudolf’s mother, the Empress Elisabeth. Fifty-one years old in 1888, she was still Europe’s reigning beauty, a superb legend and a remote wife.

  Katharina Schratt, Court Theater comedy star, Franz Joseph’s cozy, comfortable beloved

  Jeanette Heger, accommodating and much betrayed, the original of the “Sweet Girl” character Arthur Schnitzler made a byword in his stories and plays. In 1888–89 Jeanette accommodated Arthur to four hundred sixty-four acts of love.

  Gustav Mahler at twenty-eight, the new director of the Court Opera at Budapest, where this photograph was taken

  The “Empire Salon” in Rudolf’s palace apartments, where he had to give the ponderous receptions that so bored him

  Mayerling as it looked during Rudolf’s last days, before its rebuilding

  OUR CROWN PRINCE DEAD

  Front page of the Wiener Tagblatt for Thursday, January 31, 1889

  His Apostolic Majesty, Franz Joseph, as photographed in 1888

  Rudolf’s first lying-in-state in his palace bedroom

  Dr. Sigmund Freud in his passport photograph for 1888

  Bratfisch, Crown Prince Rudolf’s private horse cab driver

  Theodor Herzl at twenty-eight, drawing-room playwright

  Acknowledgments

  Marcia Colman Morton has participated decisively in the researching and shaping of this book. There is no way to thank her adequately for her collaborative skill and her mysterious good humor.

  I have, of course, been aided by many other people. At the Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) in Vienna, Hofrat Dr. Franz Steininger smoothed my way. Dr. Hermann Frodl has been exceptionally resourceful and prompt in his response to fact queries. Professor Dr. Franz Grasberger and Dr. Günther Brosche of the Music Division of that library have been very helpful, as have Professor Otto Mazal of the Holograph Division, Dr. Kurt Broer of the Austrian National Tourist Board, and Dr. Anna Benda of the Austrian Court and State Archives.

  A number of Austrian diplomats have provided me with valuable advice and liaison. Among them are Ambassador Peter Jankowitsch (formerly at the United Nations in New York, now in Paris); Consul General Thomas Nowotny in New York; and, in the New York Consulate, Dr. Peter Marboe and Dr. Erich Fenkart. At the Austrian Institute in New York, I’d like to mention its director, Dr. Fritz Cocron; his deputy, Miss Gertrude Kothanek; and the tireless librarian of the Institute, Miss Friederike Zeitelhofer. My thanks go to them all.

  I am very indebted to Professor Heinrich Schnitzler and to Mrs. Therese Nickl for giving me access to the Arthur Schnitzler diaries and for their comments on Arthur Schnitzler. The Arthur Schnitzler photograph in this book was furnished by Professor Heinrich Schnitzler from his family album, and this kindness deserves separate mention.

  Dr. Frederick Hacker of Beverly Hills and Vienna has been most helpful to me through his essays and his private advice. He has introduced me to Dr. Anna Freud, to whom I tender my respectful thanks for her cooperation and especially for permission to use the hitherto unpublished ph
otograph of her father, Sigmund Freud. Herr Hans Lobner of the Freud Haus in Vienna has been unfailingly forthcoming.

  I have yet others to thank. In Vienna, Ernst Haeusserman, director of the Theater in der Josefstadt, for being so encyclopedically, informatively and wittily Viennese; Dr. Wolfgang Kraus, head of the Austrian Society for Literature, and his associate, Dr. Günther Frühwirth, for being such versatile resources; Dr. Gottfried Heindl of the Austrian State Theater for sharing his scholarship in Viennensa and his treasures as an anecdotalist; Professor Hilde Spiel for letting me profit from her insights; Thomas Weyr (of New York and Vienna) and Traudl and Erich Lessing for the books they lent me; Georg Eisler for putting at my disposal his expertise as well as his rare book, Wienerstadt, source of the drawings in these pages.

  In New York, Dr. Erika Freeman has let me loot her large psychoanalytic library; I have benefited from her gifts as analyst and social commentator. Mrs. Sylvia Landress, director of the Zionist Archives and Library of the Herzl Institute, has been of valuable service. George Marek has also been a great help, and not only through his published works. He has let me draw on his library and the full scope of his knowledgeability.

  Last not least, I want to thank Peter Davison, director of the Atlantic Monthly Press, for his editorial acumen and for his faith in this project. He has seen it splendidly through several nervousnesses.

  F. M.

  Bibliography

  This list is limited to primary sources.

  AUSTRIA AND VIENNA

  Books

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  Periodicals

  Die bildende Künste. Vienna, 1919.

  Schnitzler, Henry. “‘Gay Vienna’—Myth and Reality.” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 15, No. 1, Jan. 1954.

  Schorske, Carl E. “Politics and the Psyche in fin de siècle Vienna, Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal.” American Historical Review 66, July 1961.

  —. “The Transformation of the Garden: Ideal and Society in Austrian Literature.” American Historical Review 72, July 1967.

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  —. “Cultural Hothouse.” The New York Review, Dec. 11, 1975.

  —. “General Tension and Cultural Change: Reflections on the Case of Vienna.” Daedalus, Fall 1978.

  “Selbstmorde in Wien.” Statistische Monatschrift 21, Vienna, 1895.

  The daily newspapers in Vienna from July 1, 1888 through April 30, 1889: Abendpost, Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt, Neue Freie Presse, Neuigkeits-Weltblatt, Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, Wiener Fremdenblatt, Wiener Tagblatt, Wiener Zeitung.

  The weeklies: An der schönen blauen Donau, Der Floh, Kikeriki, Österreichische Wochenpresse, Wiener Salonblatt.

  JOHANNES BRAHMS

  Bill
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  Brahms, Johannes, Im Briefwechsel mit Franz Wüllner. Berlin, 1922.

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  Geiringer, Karl. Brahms, His Life and Work. London, 1948.

  Grassberger, Franz. Johannes Brahms. Vienna, 1952.

  Kalbeck, Max. Johannes Brahms. Berlin, 1914.

  May, Florence. The Life of Johannes Brahms. London, 1905.

  Schumann, Clara–Brahms, Johannes. Briefe aus den Jahren 1853–1896. Leipzig, 1927.

  ANTON BRUCKNER

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  Doernberg, Erwin. The Life and Symphonies of Anton Bruckner. London, 1960.

  Eckstein, Friedrich. Erinnerungen an Anton Bruckner. Vienna, 1927.