by Frank Tallis
Liebermann placed his long fingers together.
“His face, his distinctive features. They are a form of stigmata… but stigmata that have nothing whatsoever to do with Lombroso's speculations about the relationship between physiognomy and criminality.”
Rheinhardt was beginning to lose patience again. “Max, I haven't a clue what you're talking about. Please speak plainly.”
“The sunken bridge of his nose, the creases around his mouth, his odd teeth. It was only when I was up close that I realized their significance. They are all symptoms. Herr Olbricht has congenital syphilis.”
Liebermann paused, allowing Rheinhardt to absorb his revelation.
“What? He was born… syphilitic?”
“Indeed, and once I had established this fact, I immediately grasped the nature of his history. What kind of mother might have syphilis? A prostitute! Why might Olbricht despise other nationalities so much? Because these were her clientele: down-at-heel Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, and Jews, newly arrived in Vienna. These were the men who took her away from him. Why had The Magic Flute acquired such special significance for Olbricht? He had heard it being sung incessantly as a child-how could anyone forget those glorious melodies? And how might the son of a prostitute get to hear opera? His mother must have rented a room next to a folk theater. The German nationalist doctrine of race hate provided the adult Olbricht with a rationale for many of his attacks, but his real motivation was much deeper. An angry, jealous child was still raging silently in the darkest recesses of his psyche.”
Rheinhardt twirled his mustache. “All of this suggests that he loved his mother. Yet he chose to attack women who suffered the same fate, those poor Galician girls.”
“Ambivalence, Oskar! Professor Freud has taught us that the roots of motivation are profoundly deep and hopelessly tangled. In the unconscious, love and hate coexist, as comfortably as sewer people and archdukes in our beloved city! Olbricht loved his mother-but hated her at the same time. Hated her for being a prostitute, hated her for neglecting him… and most of all, I suspect, hated her for not being Aryan. It would not surprise me in the least if in due course we discovered that Olbricht's mother was Galician herself! Maybe even a Galician Jew.”
Rheinhardt puffed out his cheeks and let the air escape slowly.
“Congenital syphilis,” Liebermann continued, “also explains Olbricht's ghastly predilection for genital mutilation. In a way, he was attacking the very source of his infantile anguish.”
“And his dreams? How did you know he was tormented by dreams of animals?”
“The infant Olbricht must have occasionally awoken to see his mother practicing the…” Liebermann hesitated before selecting a euphemism. “Requirements of her profession. Clearly, this would have been a highly disturbing experience. I have good reason to believe that such traumatic memories are transformed in dreams. Defensive mechanisms come into play, turning people into animals. In particular, dogs and wolves.”
Rheinhardt raised his eyebrows. “I have dreamed of dogs on many occasions, and I am certain that I-”
Liebermann shook his head. “I wasn't suggesting that all dreams featuring dogs disguise a traumatic memory of this kind! Sometimes a dog is just a dog!”
“I am much relieved to hear that,” said Rheinhardt, fidgeting uncomfortably. “Please continue.”
“Congenital syphilis can remain latent for decades but typically, at some point, it will attack the central nervous system. The brain tissue softens, causing either progressive paralysis, insanity, or both. Grandiosity and irrational rage are very typical of syphilitic insanity. As Olbricht gradually lost touch with reality-and learned more from List's writings-the delusional belief that he was the Teutonic Messiah may have become more established.” Liebermann picked up his glass of slivovitz and turned it in his hand. “Moreover, as his inner world became more and more chaotic, The Magic Flute would have acquired increasing significance as an organizing principle for the expression of his violent emotions, which had become directed-again under List's influence-toward anything un-Germanic. I am also of the opinion that after his execrable exhibition attracted the critical scorn it deserved-”
“You know,” Rheinhardt interrupted, “I really didn't think some of his paintings were all that bad.”
Liebermann ignored his friend's comment and continued. “His creative urge became-as it were-redirected. The opportunistic murder of Sarastro and Tamino would have completed a kind of grim masterwork. Among Nationalists, his name would have passed into legend.”
Liebermann sipped his slivovitz and his face clouded with dissatisfaction. “What troubles me, however, is that I cannot explain why he chose to initiate his campaign when he did. Something must have acted as a trigger, but I cannot say what. I strongly suspect that the answer may be connected with the location of the Eddic Literary Association: Mozartgasse. One day, I hope, the answer will present itself, and we shall be able to add a little footnote of explanation to this most interesting case.”
The two men shared a moment of silence before Rheinhardt said, “You have yet to finish your story.”
“There is little more to tell. I managed to hold off Olbricht's final attack until the door was broken down and I was saved by my friend and his Masonic brothers. Had my rescue been delayed a moment longer…” Liebermann smiled. “Well, perhaps it is best not to dwell on such things.”
Rheinhardt shook his head and the rings under his eyes seemed deeper, darker, and heavier. The simple gesture communicated much: reprimand, disapproval, admiration, and concern. There was something distinctly parental about Rheinhardt's mien. The sad resignation of fathers who-motivated by love-must admonish their foolish, headstrong, exuberant sons, and who know, at the very same time, that their words are wasted, having been young once themselves.
“I trust that you now have enough for your report,” said Liebermann.
Rheinhardt looked mournfully at his blank sheet of paper.
“I daresay that I shall be able to produce something by the time Commissioner Brugel arrives.”
“And I sincerely hope you will respect my wishes concerning my promise to the Masons.”
Rheinhardt nodded.
Looking up at the clock, Liebermann added, “I am expected at the hospital at eight o'clock and would very much like to go home. I must change out of these ridiculous clothes and get a few hours’ sleep.”
“You are free to leave, Herr Doctor.”
Liebermann placed his unfinished glass of slivovitz on Rheinhardt's desk, stood up, and walked to the door.
“Oh, I forgot to mention,” he said as he took his top hat from the stand. “Some time ago I ordered several volumes of Russian songs from a publisher in Moscow. They never came, and to tell the truth, I'd quite forgotten about it. Well, that is, until last week, when they actually arrived.”
“My Russian isn't very good.”
“Nonsense. When we performed those Tchaikovsky romances, I thought that Fyodor Chaliapin himself had stolen into the room! Perhaps your dear wife would be willing to forgo your company tomorrow evening?”
“With respect to tolerating my absences, she is nothing less than a saint.”
“Good. Tuesday, then.”
Before Liebermann could close the door, Rheinhardt called out, “Oh, and Max.” Liebermann halted, expecting the inevitable debt of gratitude. “If you ever act on your own like this again, so help me God, I'll…” The inspector mimed the violent strangulation of a young doctor, his jowls wobbling as he throttled the column of air beneath his desk lamp, creating a whirlpool of starry motes.
Liebermann feigned indignation and, placing the top hat on his head at a decidedly impudent angle, made a swift exit.
88
Liebermannfound his mind occupied by thoughts of Miss Lydgate. The image of her seated, reading her book in the Natural History Museum, returned to interrupt his concentration throughout the day: a vaporous impression of her flame hair, burning like a beacon. While unde
rtaking his medical duties, he had silently acknowledged his need to see her, and resolved to visit the university. He suspected that he was more likely to find her there than at home. His decision to see her was not without a convenient justification.
I must tell her that her microscopy results were correct. Yes, it is only right that she should know.
But even as the justification presented itself, Liebermann found it unconvincing. The words were hollow and the sentiment disingenuous. The undercurrent of desire was too strong to ignore. It flowed through his being like an electric charge, thrilling his nerves and heightening his senses.
The memory of Olbricht's blade still exerted a ghostly pressure over his heart, reminding him that nothing in life should be taken for granted and no opportunity should be ignored. It would be unforgivable, he mused, to die harboring regrets.
Liebermann promptly placed his case files in his drawer, turned the key, and left the hospital.
The fohn was still having its curious effect on the climate. It wasn't like a winter's evening at all. Indeed, it was more like early spring. Chairs and tables had been put out in front of the coffeehouses, most of which were already decked with seasonal lights and decorations. The streets vibrated with laughter and conversation. On Alserstrasse a group of singers were caroling, accompanied by cymbolom and a rustic violin. The air was fragrant with an intoxicating heady mixture of roast chestnuts, honey, and cigar smoke. The whole city seemed to be in a festive mood: middle-aged men with short gray beards, women in long dresses and feathered hats, soldiers, street vendors, artists- fashionably wearing their coats loosely draped over their shoulders- students, businessmen, bohemians-with thick hair and purposeful, glowing eyes-light-footed teachers from the dancing academy, priests, lawyers, and chorus girls. Liebermann inhaled the air and felt a thrill of excitement. It was wonderful to be alive.
Outside the university he stopped under a streetlamp and waited. As the students began to spill out beneath the massive triple-arched entrance and descend the wide stone stairs, he willed Miss Lydgate to be among them. She would be easy to identify-a woman, among so many men.
The streetcar to the Kahlenberg was pulling away, its overhead cables flashing like lightning. When it had passed, he could see Miss Lydgate standing beneath the central arch, investigating the contents of her reticule. It seemed to Liebermann that although she was surrounded by people, she was somehow alone. A hazy light seemed to collect around her, making her stand out from the crowd.
“Miss Lydgate!”
The Englishwoman raised her head and peered down the stairs. Something of the cable flashes seemed to have inexplicably remained in her eyes. It made her look wild, elemental-almost mythic. For a moment she showed no sign of recognition, but then, quite suddenly, her features softened, and she smiled.
I would like to thank Hannah Black and Oliver Johnson, and my agent, Clare Alexander, for their editorial comments, interest, and enthusiasm; Nick Austin for a thoughtful copyedit; Paul Taunton, Jennifer Rodriguez, and Bara MacNeill for their assistance in preparing the U.S. edition. Steve Mathews for the loan of his invaluable critical faculties; and Raymond Coffer for pointing me in the right direction with respect to numerous obscure issues pertinent for my research. Martin Cherry of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London, for being so very helpful with respect to my questions concerning the history of Freemasonry and Masonic symbols, and Dr. Otto Fritsch of the Grand Lodge of Austria for his scholarly letter concerning the practice of Freemasonry in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Helmut Portele of the Tram Museum, for answers to questions concerning the electrification of the Viennese streetcar system, Frauke Kreutzler of the Wien Museum for finding out where the Mozart monument was in 1902, and Mirko Herzog of the Technisches Museum for alerting me to the existence of the Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung. Nathalie Ferrier and Luitgard Hammerer for invaluable help with translations (and Bernardo for being patient while said translations were being undertaken). Clive Baldwin, for being generally knowledgeable on all things Austro-Hungarian, Dr. Julie Fox for advising me on the precipitin test and the symptoms and course of congenital syphilis. Finally, Nicola Fox, for accommodating Max into our lives since 2003-and for so much more. I quote directly from Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) and an article from The Lancet written in 1886. Foch's open letter to the Zeitung is a bowdlerization of Science Proves Women Inferior by Dr. Charles H. Heydemann, from Ives Scrapbook. All of these can be found in the excellent anthology 1900 (edited by Mike Jay and Michael Neve), published by Penguin in 1999. I also quote directly from Rituals of the Masonic Grand Lodge of the Sun, Bayreuth, translated from the German by Art deHoyos. All of Guido (von) List's works are real, with the exception of the pamphlet On the Secret of the Runes-A Preliminary Communication, which is loosely based on his book The Secret of the Runes (1907/1908). Frank Tallis London, December 2005
Freud, Repression, and the Dark Beginnings of National Socialism
Freud was rather fond of sphinxes. He was an avid collector of antiquities, and his rooms were crammed with statuettes, steles, and artifacts. Among this vast collection were numerous representations of Sphinxes: a seated Sphinx on a fragment of first-century Roman wall painting; another on a Greek water jar from the classical period; another in the form of a terra-cotta figurine; another in the form of a faience amulet. Hanging on the wall was a reproduction of a painting, Oedipus and the Sphinx, by Ingres. Freud's apartment was not the only place in Vienna you could find a Sphinx.
Vienna is full of Sphinxes: you can find them in the art history museum, in the public gardens of the Belvedere Palace, or more subtly, as molded cast-iron supports at the foot of streetlamps. Their presence suggests that Vienna is a city of secrets-a haven for conspirators, cabals, and secret societies.
Freud's psychoanalytic movement started as a kind of secret society. He gathered around himself a small number of followers who would meet every Wednesday evening in the waiting room of his apartment, Bergasse 19. Beneath banks of cigar smoke, under the watchful, silent stare of his statuettes, they would discuss dreams and the mysterious workings of the human mind.
Max Graf, one of Freud's early acolytes, provides us with the following firsthand description: The gatherings followed a definite ritual. First, one of the members would present a paper… After a social quarter of an hour, the discussion would begin. The last and decisive word was always spoken by Freud himself. There was an atmosphere of the foundation of a religion in that room. Freud himself was its new prophet who made the heretofore prevailing methods of psychological investigation appear superficial… Freud's pupils-he was always addressed as “The Professor”-were his apostles…
At first, Freud's secret society had only a few members: himself, Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, Rudolf Reitler, and Wilhelm Stekel. However, over the next few years, the circle grew-welcoming names such as Otto Rank (in 1906) and Sandor Ferenczi and Viktor Tausk (in 1908). Among the early “guests” of the society were C. G. Jung and L. Binswanger, 6 April 1907; Karl Abraham, 8 December 1907; A. A. Brill (an Austrian emigre to the United States from the age of thirteen) and Ernest Jones, 6 May 1908; and M. Karpas of New York, 4 April 1909.
In the spring of 1908, the burgeoning psychoanalytic society had begun to assemble a library. This had grown, Ernest Jones tells us, “to impressive proportions” by 1938. Unfortunately, the early arcana of the psychoanalytic movement did not survive that year, which marked the arrival of the Nazis and the library's subsequent destruction.
The description that Graf gives us of the gatherings at Bergasse 19 (with their sacramental atmosphere) is usually taken out of context, particularly by critics of Freud, who use it to create an impression that psychoanalysis is-and always has been-a pseudoreligion rather than a scientific project. However, in Freud's Vienna, secret gatherings were thick on the ground. There was nothing unusual about Freud's group. Behind closed doors, the city was overburdened with earnest men, hunched around tables beneath
flickering gaslights, united by common beliefs and convinced that they might change the world. Unfortunately, not all of these societies were benign.
From about 1900, a number of secret societies began to coalesce around the sinister figure of Guido von List-a successful journalist and writer, beloved of the German literati. Eventually these disparate societies united under the banner of a single mystical association: Armanenschaft. The term Arman refers to a mythical tribe of pre-Christian nobles.
The Arman fraternities used a special sign by which they could recognize one another: the eighteenth rune, the fyrfos, or hooked cross. We would all know it by its other name: the swastika. Von List was obsessed with the superiority of the German-speaking peoples and preserving the purity of German bloodlines. He divided humanity into two groups: the Aryan masters, and the “herd people,” by which he mostly meant the Jews and southern races. He wrote of the coming of a German Messiah-The Invincible, the strong one from above, a Wagnerian hero, who would establish a great northern alliance and reign as a god-man, subject to no law but his own.
It is noteworthy that the writings of Von List and his disciples are rarely referenced in twentieth-century histories. When they are referred to, they are usually dismissed as something of a joke, with accompanying remarks to the effect that Von List was not taken very seriously by his contemporaries.
Although we can be fairly sure that the liberal patrons of Vienna's coffeehouses-the likes of Schnitzler, Mahler, Klimt, or Freud-would have had little time for Von List's posturing, we can be absolutely certain that one person at least took Von List's writings very seriously indeed.
Little of Hitler's personal library remains, but some fragments and books have survived. One of these, a book on nationalism, contains a longhand dedication:
To Mr. Adolf Hitler, my dear Arman brother, B. Steininger.
The word Arman might have been employed here as a term of respect or honor, but it's far more likely that Hitler was associated with Von List's Armanenschaft-or a related organization called the High Armanic Order. Hitler would have first encountered Von List's ideas when he was a poverty-stricken artist in Vienna. We know that these ideas made a deep impression on him, because after his rise to power, Hitler incorporated whole passages of Von List's writings into his speeches.