FROM EDIFICE COMPLEX TO RED VIENNA: HISTORICAL AMNESIA
HE SAYS:
Greetings and farewell from Vienna.
Austria and Vienna both suffer from historical amnesia,
but for different reasons. The Austro-Hungarian Empire with its Edifice Complex
fractured after 600 years, like the Czarist Empire in Russia, under the weight of
WW I. Geo-politically the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a shell of its former
self and considerably smaller. Fredric Morton’s marvellous book, The Nervous
Splendor, about Austria and Vienna more specifically, during the 1890s captures
the spirit of that stratified and sexually hypocritical and ossified
middle-class society.
Since the 1880s there has always been an ugly racialist
anti-Semitism that has permeated Austrian, and especially, Viennese society. Some
cultural and social historians have argued that anti-Semitism was more
pervasive in Austria that Germany.
Few people know or remember that between 1900 –1938,
Vienna was known as Red Vienna, and with good reason. Vienna in that period had
elected the first serious left-wing Marxist municipal government in all of
Europe. These were not just slightly red
pinkos, but were serious Marxists affiliated with the revolutionary Second
International. They had a vision of the future and the role of the working
class in that future.
Vienna was the first city in Europe to provide municipal
hospitals, as well as municipal housing; social services and culture flourished
and were meant for all people. Red Vienna was viewed as a model city for
progressive social programming.
This came to a brutal end with the rise of fascism in
Europe, and Austria’s own native Nazi party. Things came to a head during the
so-called February 1934 revolution when the left wing of the Social Democratic
Party, left socialists, fought it out with the Nazis in the streets of Vienna.
For the first time people were prepared to use armed force to prevent the Nazis
from taking power, unlike Germany. The Schutzbund was the armed resistance
league, the army units of the SDP. They made their last stand against the
Austrian Nazis in the Karl Marx Hof housing project in the Ottakreig, the
working class west end of Vienna; they were shelled into submission. And the
Nazis took power. All this is recounted
in Lillian Hellman's famous novel, Julia, and the marvellous film with Vanessa
Redgrave and Jane Fonda.
Today the Karl Marx Hof is a small park and no one seems
to know about or remember the February 1934 revolution or the Schutzbund.
People here do not want to remember their willful support
and collaboration with Hitler’s Third Reich. There is no doubt that German
Austrians supported the incorporation of Austria into the German Reich. Look at
the adoring crowds that greeted Hitler here in Vienna. Austria provided the
German army with over a half million men. And the grim fact remains that the
Austrians, and the Balts, did the German’s dirty work in the camps. A death
camp could be run with 7 SS officers, the rest were Austrians.
Austria, like Japan, has never undergone a formal de-Nazification
program as happened in Germany. And people still openly condemn those who
fought in the anti-Nazi underground because they sabotaged the German war
effort. Kurt Waldheim, who became president of Austria (and later head of the
UN) was a SS officer.
Here in Vienna no one that I talked with knew of Red
Vienna or of the Schutzbund. Evidently, they are not studied in high school
history courses. That history is off limits, and is best forgotten. History has
been air brushed. Those events did not happen because they are not remembered.
History has been sanitized. Have another strudel….
These are the ghosts of Vienna. In the morning we walked
down part of the Ringstrasse. It was fun to imagine all the famous people who also
walked down these same streets, everyone from Mozart and Beethoven, to Freud,
to Brahms and Mahler, to Adler. Vienna
is an historical museum. It was quite a thrill. Ancient Athens, Renaissance Florence
and late 19th century Vienna are the pivotal lynchpins of Western
European intellectual history. When I return I want to study the history of
salon and café society and their role in disseminating ideas in 19th
and 20th C society.
Vienna is a city of culture, coffee and good food. One
feels safe here. But beneath the veneer
of glitter and polish it suffers from historical amnesia.
Farewell Vienna….This has been a busy and exhausting
holiday, but not quite the relaxing vacation we expected. We will file our summary blog from Ottawa. We
fly tomorrow morning.
SHE SAYS:
Our last day in Vienna!
After 5 days steeped in the history and all the “shoulds” of Vienna that
the guide books directed us to, we decided to spend our last few hours away
from the usual tourist haunts and end on a much lighter note.
We’ve already mentioned the Film Festival that’s being
held at the Rathaus, or city hall, a short walk from the hotel. We visited it
a few nights ago and drooled over the fabulous food
stalls, but went to a restaurant nearby for our dinner because the crowds and
the lineups were crazy. Last night, we
decided to fight the crowds like everyone else, and went back for dinner. For me, the most interesting thing about the
food was that there was very little of what we think of as fast food: no French
fries, burgers, pizza, nachos. Instead,
they had meat stews, interesting salads, huge sausages, schnitzels, giant
pretzels, all kinds of African, Japanese and Chinese dishes, Austrian
specialties that we’d never heard of before made with noodles, meats, and
chopped veggies. The booths were sponsored by local restaurants, and we would
have happily managed to find something great to eat at every one. Since we had to make up our minds eventually,
we decided on a huge fresh salad topped with fresh grilled garlic-infused
calamari, and a “Tyrolean plate” of dumplings, sauerkraut, and what looked like
hunks of roast pork and ham in a sausage casing, washed down with Austrian
beer.
As luck would have it, a table emptied just as we got our
food, so we grabbed it and started to work our way through the two gigantic
plates of food. Fabulous! A young
Korean tourist asked if he could share the table, so as we ate, we talked with
him. He’s spending 6 weeks travelling
alone through Europe, getting home just in time to start his final year of
university. I asked him if it was lonely
travelling alone. “Sometimes,” he said,
“but it is good for me. When I travel
alone, I get to meet myself.” Well said,
I thought.
This morning, we
took the Vienna subway for the first time to visit the Riesenrad, a giant
ferris wheel that’s over 100 years old.
It’s probably the model for the London Eye, which is larger and obviously
much newer, but the one here has been well-maintained, and it gave us a great
view of the city. Instead of little
2-seater cars like a regular ferris wheel, this one has red wooden cars that
hold about 10 people. You can sit on the
wooden bench in the centre of the car or stand up and walk around to see a
lovely 360 degree panorama of Vienna.
Just like on the London Eye, people are apparently able to book private
cars for celebrations of different kinds.
We saw one car filled with silver and white balloons, and a couple of
them had tables with white cloths, ready with glasses and champagne bottles for
the guests.
The ferris wheel is set in the centre of a permanent
amusement park with all kinds of great rides, but I didn’t even suggest a
roller coaster or bumper cars afterwards; the ferris wheel (along with the café
visits) was my thank you for the culture overdose I’ve been exposed to in the
past few days. I wasn’t going to push my
luck! We walked around the park and ate
ice cream, and that was almost as good as more rides, especially since it was
such a great place for people-watching.
Just like at home, the kids ranged from the ultra-hyper ones who want to
do everything at once, to the quiet ones with the huge eyes and wide smiles who
are just so thrilled to be there that they don’t have a clue what they want to
do…with a few contrary ones thrown in for fun, who won’t be happy no matter
what they do.
Of course, there were all kinds of souvenirs for sale at
the fair grounds: everything from cheap plastic toys to pieces of crystal and
fine china. One t-shirt stood out: a
picture of a kangaroo with a line through it and the words NO KANGAROOS IN
AUSTRIA. I asked the saleslady if people
actually come to Austria thinking they’re visiting Australia, and she said,
“Oh, yes. More than you’d believe.” Weird!
We took the subway back to our hotel to pack, with a side trip to have our last
Viennese coffee. OK, I admit it: we
shared an apple strudel, too. Dinner
tonight will probably be another of those dinner-plate sized schnitzels, and
then it’s home tomorrow to do laundry and get serious about our diet.
It’s been fun!
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