Vienna Secrets

by Frank Tallis

  “That may have been Edlinger’s perception. However, it was never my intention to threaten the priest.”

  “Then why did you do it? Why did you physically stop him from entering the ward?”

  “I was concerned for the welfare of my patient. I did not—”

  “Yes,” Schmidt interrupted. “We know the reasons you gave for denying the young Baron von Kortig the consolation of his faith. But that is a different matter. The question I am asking concerns your conduct toward Father Benedikt. I repeat, why did you physically stop him from entering the ward?”

  “I did not think he had given due consideration to the young baron’s state of mind. I hoped that, after a moment’s delay, he might review his position.”

  “Well, if I may say so, Herr Doctor, that strikes me as a remarkably arrogant thing to suggest. How could you possibly know what Father Benedikt had—or hadn’t—considered?”

  “Come now, Councillor,” said Professor Roga. “I think Dr. Liebermann should be allowed to justify himself. That, after all, is why he is here today. You were saying, Herr Doctor, that you were concerned for the welfare of your patient….”

  Liebermann looked over to the professor, a dignified gentleman with kind eyes.

  “Thank you, sir. The young baron had been given morphine and was oblivious of his condition. If Father Benedikt had begun to administer the last rites, this would have signaled the young baron’s imminent demise. I believe that this would have caused him great distress. He was not mentally prepared to die.”

  “Herr Doctor,” said the bishop, “do you think what you did was wrong?”

  “I did what I thought was best for my patient,” said Liebermann.

  “Yes,” said the bishop, “but was it wrong to stop Father Benedikt from administering the last rites to a dying Catholic?”

  “I am a doctor,” Liebermann continued. “When I am called to attend a patient, I do not see a Catholic patient, a Jewish patient, or a Muslim patient. I see only an individual in need of care, a fellow citizen of Vienna.”

  “But we are not all the same, are we?” said the bishop. “We are, in many ways, quite different.”

  “I do not believe that people are so very different,” Liebermann replied. “Particularly when they are dying. In the final moments, we all want peace, not terror.”

  The bishop frowned. “If you encountered the same situation again, would you repeat your actions?”

  “Yes,” said Liebermann. “I would.”

  Eisler coughed into his hand and caught Liebermann’s eye.

  “Tell me, Herr Doctor, if you were asked to write a letter to the old baron explaining your reasons for denying his son the last rites, would you do so?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And if you were also asked to include in that letter an apology—not for what you did but for causing the old baron distress—would you do that too?”

  “Indeed.”

  Eisler and Professor Roga looked at each other and nodded.

  “Well, gentlemen,” said the chancellor, “I think we are in full possession of the facts. Could those who consider Dr. Liebermann’s conduct unbefitting a physician in the employ of the General Hospital please raise their hands?”

  The bishop and Schmidt registered their vote.

  The chancellor looked to his left, and then to his right.

  “Two in favor of Herr Dr. Liebermann’s dismissal, and two against. It is therefore incumbent upon me as chancellor to resolve this matter by casting a vote.” Professor Gandler sighed. “Herr Dr. Liebermann, I must be frank. I have not been impressed by your arguments. Moreover, you have risked exposing the hospital to a damaging scandal. In my personal dealings with you I have found you to be rash, proud, and unwilling to accept advice. You cannot disguise poor judgment behind a veil of immature idealism and expect unanimous approval.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Schmidt.

  “This hospital needs good doctors,” the chancellor continued. “It does not need self-appointed crusaders, an Order of Hippocratic Knights!” The chancellor paused before adding, “However, you acted in accordance with the necessities of your profession…” Gandler grimaced and uttered his final words with obvious discomfort. “And you will be retained.”

  “Gandler?” Schmidt was looking at the chancellor, bemused.

  The chancellor’s concluding remark was so unexpected that Liebermann was not confident that he heard it correctly.

  “I can stay… in my post?”

  “Yes,” said the chancellor, unsmiling.

  The bishop and Schmidt had begun a private conference.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You may leave, Herr Doctor.”

  Liebermann bowed, turned on his heel, and walked briskly toward the antechamber. The sound of discontented voices followed him.

  “Really, Gandler,” Schmidt was saying. “This is quite unacceptable…”

  Liebermann passed through the antechamber, and the moribund clerk opened the double doors to allow him back into the hall. As soon as they were closed behind him, Liebermann made an obscene gesture in the face of Princess Stixenstein, laughed hysterically, and ran toward the stairs. He skidded to a halt when he saw Rheinhardt waiting by the balustrade.

  “What are you doing here?” said Liebermann.

  “I wanted to be the first to know. Well?”

  “I haven’t been dismissed. I can stay in my post.”

  Rheinhardt embraced the young doctor and emitted a deep, resonant chuckle. “Then we must celebrate!”

  They walked to the Café Landtmann and sat outside. Rheinhardt ordered mountains of food: zwiebelrostbraten, beef tenderloin with crisp onions; krautrouladen, cabbage stuffed with mincemeat, parsley, and pepper; saure nierndln, soured kidneys; and warme rahmgurken, warm cucumbers in cream sauce. He also ordered two bottles of red wine, one of which was consumed in a matter of minutes.

  “You know,” said Liebermann, “it’s most peculiar. I really wasn’t expecting the chancellor to vote in my favor. And the municipal councillor, Schmidt, seemed genuinely surprised, shocked almost. I could hear them arguing about it as I left.”

  “Well,” said Rheinhardt, scooping a tangle of onions onto his fork, “perhaps he had good reason.”

  “What do you mean? Good reason?”

  Rheinhardt pulled a face, a slightly pained expression.

  “I have a small confession to make.”

  “What?”

  “I wrote a note to the chancellor yesterday… and said that the security office intended to commend you to the emperor for an imperial and royal award. I mentioned that you recently helped us to foil a politically sensitive plot to foment racial discord.” Rheinhardt shoveled the onions into his mouth. “I indicated that the judgment of the hospital committee would not look very good if they dismissed a doctor so rewarded by the emperor.”

  “And is it true?” Liebermann asked. “Is the security office really considering putting my name forward?”

  “I raised the issue with the commissioner.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said he’d think about it.”

  “Then you lied, Oskar!”

  “Well,” said the inspector, “that’s a matter of opinion.” He drained his wineglass and pointed at one of the dishes. “Try those kidneys. They’re quite stupendous.”

  81

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF Dr. Max Liebermann

  I was passing through Judenplatz and stopped to consider the relief depiction of the baptism of Jesus Christ. I can remember my father pointing it out to me as a child and explaining the meaning of the Latin inscription beneath. He doesn’t read Latin, so he must have been recollecting what someone else—possibly his father—had told him. The translation he gave, as I remember it, was accurate enough. The inscription says, “By baptism in the River Jordan bodies are cleansed from disease and evil, so all secret sinfulness takes flight. Thus, the flame rising furiously through the whole city in 1421 purg
ed the terrible crimes of the Hebrew dogs. As the world was once purged by the flood, so this time it was by fire.” My father explained the nature of the event being commemorated and gave it a name: the first Viennese geserah.

  Jews were accused of desecrating churches and of ritual murder. Jewish property was appropriated by the monarchy. The old synagogue—I imagine it must have been like the Old-New Synagogue in Prague—was burned to the ground and Jews were forcibly baptized. Those who refused were put to death in a great fire on the Erdberg. My father said something like, “The city authorities have not seen fit to remove this monument.” I am not sure that then I understood what he meant. But it stayed with me because I was aware of his sadness and anger. Although it has taken six hundred years, progress has been made. Today, Jews may be insulted and abused, but they will never be consigned to the flames again. We Viennese are far too civilized.

  I have arranged to see Miss Lydgate on Tuesday. We are going to a lieder concert—Mathilde Leibnitz with Kronenberg at the keyboard. Gretchen am Spinnrade is on the program. There are three women in every man’s life. Wheels turn. Time passes. And she who is unattainable remains forever young, perfected by the inaccuracies of memory and unsatisfied desire.

  Acknowledgment And Sources

  I WOULD LIKE TO THANK: Hannah Black, Clare Alexander, and Steve Matthews for their valuable comments on the first and subsequent drafts of Vienna Secrets, Nick Austin for a thorough copyedit; Rebecca Shapiro, Jennifer Rodriguez, and Bara MacNeill for their assistance in preparing the U.S. edition; Simon Dalgleish for identifying German errors in the text; Luitgard Hammerer for conducting research on my behalf and providing a very good taxi service to Stift Klosterneuburg and the delightful Heurigen of Bisamberg; Penny Faith for casting a Jewish eye over the text; Dr. Julie Fox for describing the clinical signs associated with terminal syphilis; Dr. Yves Steppler, consultant pathologist, for lengthy and detailed discussions on the topics of decapitation and other aspects of pathology of interest to a crime writer; Her Excellency Dr. Gabriele Matzner-Holzer for assistance with establishing some helpful contacts in Vienna; Professor Karl Vocelka (University of Vienna) for providing me with a comprehensive list of the plague columns; and Nicola Fox—for comments, criticism, early proofreading, preliminary editing, and the odd plot contribution.

  Das Vaterland was a real Catholic periodical, although I believe it might have been discontinued by 1903. Liebermann’s explanation (to his father) of how dreams work can be found in Lecture 14 (Wish Fulfilment) of Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. The idea of a collective unconscious was current many years before Jung made the idea popular. Freud, and many others, considered the possibility of its existence throughout the nineteenth century (see The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry by Henri F. Ellenberger). Lurian cosmology is paraphrased and quoted from two scholarly works on Jewish mysticism: Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction by Joseph Dan and On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism by Gershom Scholem. The subjects of demonology and animation are also considered in these works. The rite for keeping Lilith away from the marriage bed is quoted by Scholem in the chapter titled “Tradition and New Creation in the Ritual of the Kabbalists.” More specific information about Isaac Luria, his ministry, and the practice of metoposcopy can be found in Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos by Lawrence Fine. Information about B’nai B’rith was based on passages in Jewish Origins of the Psychoanalytic Movement by Professor Dennis Klein. The golem legend and its variants are described in The Prague Golem: Jewish Stories of the Ghetto (a miscellany including the writings of Chajim Bloch) and The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague by Yudl Rosenberg. The idea that Freud was a closet kabbalist (or at least a secret enthusiast) is explored in Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition by David Bakan. The 1965 edition contains a revised introduction by the author that suggests that Freud owned a collection of Judaica including kabbalistic writings (absent from the official Freud Library catalogue). There were two waves of pogroms in Russia. The first was between 1881 and 1884. The second started in 1903 (the year in which Vienna Secrets is set) and went on until 1906. All the atrocities described by Professor Priel are based on authentic accounts. Moreover, all the references to anti-Semitism are historically accurate (see Karl Lueger: Mayor of Fin de Siècle Vienna by Richard Geehr). The wall inscription celebrating the Holocaust of 1421 can be found at Judenplatz 2. Anna Katzer and Olga Mandl’s description of their women’s refuge is based on Bertha Pappenheim’s lecture “Welfare for Female Youth at Risk,” an excerpt of which can be found in The Enigma of Anna O: A Biography of Bertha Pappenheim by Melinda Given Guttmann. Other facts relating to prostitution and the white slave trade are also drawn from the same source. Miss Lyd -gate’s account of the building of Santa Maria del Fiore and “On the Tranquility of the Soul” borrows substantially from Brunelleschi’s Dome by Ross King. Song translations (including the poem “Silent Grief” by Ernst Koch) were taken from Richard Stokes’s The Book of Lieder. Freud’s speech on thumb-sucking is an almost exact transcription of a passage in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Freud’s views on Mozart’s Magic Flute can be found in the celebrated Ernest Jones biography. Ivo Poppmeier’s condition has been documented by physicians for centuries but is known today as couvade syndrome, a term first coined by Tylor (1865) in an anthropological context. The article that Schmidt reads in the Wiener Tagblatt—concerning Arthur Schnitzler—is an almost verbatim transcription from a real article published on January 14, 1903. Schnitzler’s anecdote about Director Lautenburg is taken—with slight changes—from his memoir My Youth in Vienna.

  Freud’s Secret Books

  SIGMUND FREUD WASN’T A very good Jew. He opposed his wife’s desire to establish a Jewish home, and his son Martin wrote that the Freud children were raised “without any traces of… or instruction in Jewish ritual.” None of them, as far as Martin could remember, ever attended synagogue. Even worse, the Freud family celebrated Easter and Christmas! Freud dismissed religion as an illusion, published a critical work on Judaism at a time when thousands of Jews were being transported to concentration camps, and was concerned that psychoanalysis might become a parochial branch of medicine practiced only by Austrian Jews. He didn’t want psychoanalysis to become—as he put it—a “Jewish national affair.” Indeed, this concern led him to name Carl Gustav Jung (known in psychoanalytic circles as the Teuton) as his successor.

  Yet Freud had another, rather different side. He was an active member of a Jewish lodge, B’nai B’rith, played cards with Jews every Saturday night, and loved Jewish jokes. He is remembered today, of course, as a great “Jewish” thinker.

  Where then did Freud really stand on the subject of his own religion?

  In biographies of Freud, the word ambivalence appears repeatedly in this context. But really, there was nothing truly ambivalent about Freud’s position. He thought religion was nonsense but at the same time had many of what Dr. Dennis B. Klein of Kean University has described as Jewish attachments. These attachments were encouraged and strengthened by the anti-Semitism that had become so widespread in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Freud once remarked that Jews had “no choice but to band together” for as long as they were being persecuted. Thus, his “Jewishness” was largely expedient rather than natural.

  Yet, commentators have often remarked that it is impossible to think of Freud without registering—at some level—that he was a Jew, and psychoanalysis is frequently described as a Jewish phenomenon. The laws of motion would have been the same whatever creed Sir Isaac Newton had professed. If he had been a Hindu, then force would always equal mass times acceleration, and no one would ever have described the second law as an example of “Hindu physics.” The same, however, cannot be said of Freud. Even though he rejected Judaism, the fact that he was a Jew still seems relevant to his system of psychology. There is undeniably something about psychoanalysis that “feels” Jewish. This isn’t a racist propositi
on. Many historians of psychoanalysis have made this point, and Freud himself would have agreed, which is why he wanted Jung—the Teuton—to legitimize psychoanalysis for global consumption.

  So what are we talking about here? What’s so Jewish about psychoanalysis? It’s relatively easy to identify resonances between psychoanalytic theory and Jewish stereotypes. Take, for example, the Oedipus complex and the attitude of Jewish mothers toward their sons. The following Jewish joke illustrates the point:

  How do we know that Jesus was Jewish? He lived at home until he was thirty, he went into his father’s business, and his mother thought he was God.

  The Jewish roots of psychoanalysis may, however, be far deeper. To explain the Jewishness of psychoanalysis, we must get beyond superficial stereotypes and journey into the world of Jewish mysticism.

  Although Freud was a rational man, he was fascinated by religions and the myths of antiquity. That is why his consulting room was crammed with ancient figurines and statuettes—little gods and goddesses. He also wrote works on the origins of religious thought, Moses, totemism, the supernatural, and a seventeenth-century case of demonological neurosis. It should come as no surprise, therefore, to discover that such an individual was acquainted with the kabbala—a body of Jewish esoteric teachings dating back to the twelfth century.

  When David Bakan’s Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition was first published in 1958, the author wrote a preface in which he argued that we cannot fully appreciate the development of psychoanalysis unless we view it against the history of Jewish mystical thought. There are indeed many similarities between kabbalistic writings and psychoanalysis: dream interpretation, symbolism, an interest in sexuality, and close attention to language. Kabbalists study the texts of holy books in much the same way as psychoanalysts study people. In both cases, small things—minute details—matter. Bakan’s problem, however, was that there wasn’t much direct evidence to support his thesis. That is, until he was contacted by Chaim Bloch, an eminent student of Judaism, kabbalah, and Hasidism, and a one-time acquaintance of Sigmund Freud.