THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY
Stefan Zweig
Chapter I
THE WORLD OF SECURITY
Still und eng und ruhig auferzogen
Wirft man uns auf einmal in die Welt;
Uns umspülen hunderttausend Wogen
Alles reizt uns, mancherlei gefällt
Stund’ zu Stunden
Schwankt das leichtunruhige Gefühl;
Wir empfinden, und was wir empfunden
Spült hinweg das bunte Weltgefühl.
Goethe: An Lottchen.
When I attempted to find a
simple formula for the period in which I grew up, prior to the First World War
I hope that I convey its fulness by calling it the Golden Age of Security.
Everything in our almost thousand year-old Austrian monarchy seemed based on
per- manency, and the State itself was the chief guarantor of this stability.
The rights which it granted to its citizens were duly confirmed by parliament,
the freely elected representative of the people) and every duty was exactly
prescribed. Our currency, the Austrian crown circulated in bright gold pieces
an assurance of its immutability. Everyone knew how much he possessed or what
he was entitled to what was permitted and what forbidden. Everything had its
norm its definite measure and weight. He who had a fortune could accurately
compute his annual interest. An official or an officer for example, could
confidently look up in the calendar the year when he would be advanced in rank,
or when he would be pensioned. Each family had its fixed budget, and knew how
much could be spent for rent and food, for holidays and entertainment; and what
is more, invariably a small sum was carefully laid aside for sickness and the
doctor's bills, for the unexpected. Whoever owned a house looked upon it as a
secure domicile for his children and grandchildren; estates and businesses were
handed down from generation to generation. When the babe was still in its
cradle, its first mite was put in its little bank, or deposited in the savings
bank, as a "reserve” for the future. In this vast empire everything stood
firmly and immovably in its appointed place, and at its head was the aged
emperor; and were he to die, one knew (or believed) another would come to take
his place, and nothing would change in the well-regulated order. No one thought
of wars, of revolutions, or revolts. All that was radical, all violence, seemed
impossible in an age of reason.
This feeling of security was
the most eagerly sought-after possession of millions, the common ideal of
life. Only the possession of this security made life seem worth while, and
constantly widening circles desired their share of this costly treasure. At
first it was only the prosperous who enjoyed this advantage, but gradually the
great masses forced their way towards it. The century of security became the
golden age of insurance. One's house
was insured against fire and theft, one's field against hail and storm, one's
person against accident and sickness. Annuities were purchased for one's old
age, and a policy was laid in a girl's cradle for her future dowry. Finally
even the workers organized, and won standard wages and workmen's compensation.
Servants saved up for old-age insurance and paid in advance into a burial fund
for their own interment. Only the man who could look into the future without
worry could thoroughly enjoy the present.
Despite the propriety and the
modesty of this view of life, there was a grave and dangerous arrogance in this
touching confidence that we had barricaded ourselves to the last loophole
against any possible invasion of fate. In its liberal idealism, the nineteenth
century was honestly convinced that it was on the straight and unfailing path
towards being the best of all worlds. Earlier eras, with their wars, famines,
and revolts, were deprecated as times when mankind was still immature and
unenlightened. But, now it was merely a matter of decades until the last
vestige of evil and violence would finally be conquered, and this faith in an
uninterrupted and irresistible "progress" truly had the force of a
religion for that generation. One began to believe more in this "progress"
than in the Bible, and its gospel appeared ultimate be-cause of the daily new
wonders of science and technology. In fact, at the end of this peaceful
century, a general advance became more marked, more rapid, more varied. At
night the dim street lights of former times were replaced by electric lights,
the shops spread their tempting glow from the main streets out to the city
limits. Thanks to the telephone one could talk at a distance from person to
person. People moved about in horseless carriages with a new rapidity; they
soared aloft, and the dream of Icarus was fulfilled. Comfort made its way from
the houses of the fashionable to those of the middle class. It was no longer
necessary to fetch water from the pump or the passage, or to take the trouble
to build a fire in the fireplace. Hygiene spread and filth disappeared. People
became hands9mer, stronger, healthier, as sport steeled their bodies. Fewer
cripples and maimed and persons with goiters were seen on the streets, and all
of these miracles were accomplished by science, the archangel of
progress. Progress was also made in
social matters; year after year new rights were accorded to the individual,
justice was administered more benignly and humanely, and even the problem of
problems, the poverty of the great masses, no longer seemed insurmountable.
The right to vote was being accorded to wider circles, and with it the
possibility of legally protecting their interests. Sociologists and professors
competed with one another to create healthier and happier living conditions for
the proletariat. Small wonder, then, that this century sunned itself in its own
accomplishments and looked upon each completed decade as the prelude to a
better one. There was as little belief in the possibility of such barbaric
declines as wars between the peoples of Europe as there was in witches and
ghosts. Our fathers were comfortably saturated with confidence in the unfailing
and binding power of tolerance and conciliation. They honestly believed that
the divergences and the boundaries between nations and sects would gradually
melt away into a common humanity, and that peace and security, the highest of
treasures, would be shared by all mankind.
It is reasonable that we, who
have long since struck the word "security" from our vocabulary as a
myth, should smile at the optimistic delusion of that idealistically blinded
generation, that the technical progress of mankind must connote an unqualified
and equally rapid moral ascent. We of
the new generation who have learned not to be surprised by any outbreak of
bestiality, we who each new day expect things worse than the day before, are
markedly more skeptical about a possible moral improvement of mankind. We must
agree with Freud, to whom our culture and civilization were merely a thin layer
liable at any moment to be pierced by the destructive forces of the
"underworld". We have had to accustom ourselves gradually to living
without the ground beneath our feet, without justice, without freedom, without
security. Long since, as far as our existence is concerned, we have denied the
religion of our fathers, their faith in a rapid and continuous rise of
humanity. To us, gruesomely taught, witnesses of a catastrophe which, at a
swoop, hurled us back a thousand years of humane endeavour, that rash optimism
seems banal. But even though it was a delusion our fathers served, it was a
wonderful and noble delusion, more humane and more fruitful than our watchwords
of to-day; and in spite of my later knowledge and disillusionment, there is
still something in me which inwardly prevents me from abandoning it entirely.
That which, in his childhood, a man has drawn into his blood out of the air of
time cannot be taken from him. And in spite of all that is daily blasted into
my ears, and all that I myself and countless other sharers of my destiny have
experienced in trials and tribulations, I cannot completely deny the faith of
my youth, that some day things will rise again-in spite of all. Even in the
abyss of despair in which to-day, half-blinded, we grope about with distorted
and broken souls, I look up again and again to those old star-patterns that
shone over my childhood, and comfort myself with the inherited confidence that
this collapse will appear, in days to come, as a mere interval in the eternal rhythm
of the onward and onward.
To-day, now that the great storm has long since smashed it, we
finally know that that world of security was naught but a castle of dreams; my
parents lived in it as if it had been a house of stone. Not once did a storm,
or even a sharp wind, break in upon their warm, comfortable existence. True,
they had a special protection against the winds of time: they were wealthy
people, who had become rich gradually, even very rich, and that filled the
crevices of wall and window in those times. Their way of life seems to me to be
so typical of the so-called "good Jewish bourgeoisie", which gave
such marked value to Viennese culture, and which was requited by being
completely uprooted, that in telling of their quiet and comfortable existence I
am actually being quite impersonal: ten or twenty thousand families like my
parents lived in Vienna in that last century of assured values.
My father's family came from Moravia. There the Jewish
communities lived in small country villages on friendly terms with the peasants
and the petty bourgeoisie. They were entirely free both of the sense of
inferiority and of the smooth pushing impatience of the Galician or Eastern
Jews. Strong and powerful, owing to their life in the country, they went their
way quietly and surely, as the peasants of their homeland strode over the
fields. Early emancipated from their
orthodox religion, they were passionate followers of the religion of the time,
'progress", and in the political era of liberalism they
supported the most esteemed representatives in parliament. When they moved from their home to Vienna,
they adapted themselves to the higher cultural sphere with phenomenal rapidity,
and their personal rise was organically bound up with the general rise of the
times. In this form of transition, too, our family was typical. My grandfather
on my father's side was a dry-goods dealer. In the second half of the century
the industrial turn of the tide began in Austria. The mechanical weaving looms and spinning machines imported from
England brought, through rationalization, a tremendous lowering of prices as
compared with the accustomed hand weaving; and with their gift of commercial
insight and their international view, it was the Jewish merchants who were the
first in Austria to see the necessity and the advantage of a change-over to
industrial production. Usually with but limited capital, they founded the
quickly improvised factories, at first run only by water power, which gradually
grew into the mighty Bohemian textile industry that dominated all Austria and
the Balkans. Whereas my grandfather, as a typical representative of the earlier
era, was engaged in the trade in finished goods, my father determinedly went
over into the new era, and in his thirtieth year founded a small weaving mill
in Northern Bohemia, which, in the course of the years, slowly and methodically
developed into a considerable undertaking.
So careful a manner of
expansion in spite of the tempting turn of affairs was entirely in keeping
with the times. Furthermore, it was indicative of my father's moderate and
entirely ungreedy nature. He was imbued with the credo of his epoch,
"safety first". It seemed important to him to own a "solid"
(another favourite word of the period), undertaking maintained by his own
capital, rather than to create a huge enterprise with the help of bank credits
and mortgages. His greatest pride during his lifetime was that no one had ever
seen his name on a promissory note or on a draft, and that his accounts were
always on the credit side of the ledger in the Rothschild bank, the
Kreditanstalt-needless to Say, the safest of banks. Any profit that entailed
even the shadow of a risk was against his principles, and throughout the years
he never participated in anyone else's business. If; none the less, he
gradually grew rich and richer, it was not due to incautious speculation or
particularly far-seeing operations, but rather thanks to his adapting himself
to the general methods of that careful period, namely, to consume only a
modest portion of one's income, and consequently to be able to add an
appreciably larger sum to one's capital from year to year. Like most of his
generation, he would have regarded a man who carelessly ate up half his income
without “thinking of the future"-this is another phrase of the age of
security-as a dubious wastrel. Thanks to the constant accumulation of profits,
in an era of increasing prosperity in which the State never thought of nibbling
off more than a few per cent of the income of even the richest, and in which,
on the other hand, State and industrial bonds bore high rates of interest, to
grow richer was nothing more than a passive activity for the wealthy. And it
was worth while. Not yet, as later at the time of the inflation, were the
thrifty robbed, and the solid business men swindled; while the patient and the
non-speculating made the best profit. Owing to his observance of the prevailing
system of his time, my father, at fifty, was counted among the very wealthy,
even by international standards. But the living conditions of my family kept
pace only haltingly with the always rapidly increasing fortune. We gradually acquired small comforts, we
moved from a smaller to a larger house) in the spring we rented a carriage for
the afternoons, travelled second-class in a sleeping-car. But it was not until
he was fifty that my father allowed himself the luxury of spending a month in
the winter with my mother in Nice. The principle of enjoying wealth, in having
it and not showing it) remained completely unchanged. Though he was a
millionaire, my father never smoked an imported cigar, but, like Emperor
Francis Joseph, he smoked the cheap "Virginia", the
government-monopoly "Trabuco", popular cheroots. When he played cards
it was always for small stakes. Unbendingly, he held fast to his comfortable,
discreet) and restrained manner of living. Although he was better educated and
socially more presentable than most of his colleagues-he played the piano
excellently, wrote well and clearly, spoke both French and English-he persistently
refused every honour and office; throughout his life he neither sought nor
accepted any title or dignity, though in his position as a large industrialist
these were often offered to him. That
he never asked anything of anyone) that he was never obliged to say
"please" or "thanks" to anyone, was his secret pride and
meant more to him than any external recognition.
Inevitably there comes into
the life of each one of us the time when, face to face with our own being, one
reencounters his father. That trait of clinging to a private, anonymous mode
of life now begins to develop more strongly in me from year to year, even
though it stands in marked contrast to my profession, which, to some extent,
forces both name and person before the public eye. And it is out of the same
secret pride that I have always declined every external honour; I have never
accepted a decoration) a title, the presidency of any association, have never
belonged to any academy, any committee) any jury. Merely to sit at a banquet
table is torture for me: and the thought of asking someone for something-even
if it is on behalf of a third person-dries my lips before the first word is
spoken. I know how outmoded such inhibitions are in a world where one can
remain free only through trickery and flight, and where, as Father Goethe so
wisely says, "decorations and titles ward off many a shove in the
crowd". But it is my father in me, and it is his secret pride that forces
me back, and I may not offer opposition; for I thank him for what may well be
my only definite possession-the feeling of inner freedom.
My mother, whose maiden name
was Brettauer, was of a different, more international Origin. She was born in
Ancona, in the south of Italy, and spoke Italian as well as German as a child;
whenever she discussed anything with my grandmother or with her sister, that
was not destined for the servants' ears, she reverted to Italian. From my earliest
youth I was familiar with risotto and artichokes, then still quite rare, as
well as other specialities of the Mediterranean kitchen; and later, whenever
Iwent to Italy, I always felt at home from the first moment of my arrival. But
my mother's family was by no means Italian, rather it was consciously
international. The Brettauers, who originally owned a banking business,
had-after the example of the great Jewish banking families, though on a much
smaller scale- early distributed themselves over the world from Hohenems, a
small place near the Swiss border. Some went to St. Gall, others to Vienna and
Paris, my grandfather to Italy, my uncle to New York; and this international
contact gave them a better polish, wider vision, and a certain family pride. There
were no longer any small merchants or commission brokers in this family, but
only bankers, directors, professors, lawyers, and doctors. Each one spoke
several languages, and I can recall how natural it was to change from one
language to another at table in my aunt's house in Paris. They were a family
who made much of solidarity, and when a young girl from among the poorer
relatives had reached the marrying age, the entire family collected a
considerable dowry to prevent her from marrying "beneath her". My father was respected because he was an
industrialist, but my mother, although she was most happily married to him,
would never have allowed his relatives to consider themselves on the same
plane with her own. This pride in coming from a "good" family was
ineradicable in all the Brettauers, and when in later years one of them wished
to show me his particular goodwill, he would say condescendingly, "You
really are a regular Brettauer," as if to say, "You fell out on the
right side."
This sort of nobility, which
many Jewish families arrogated to themselves, sometimes amused and sometimes
annoyed my brother and me, even when we were children. We were always being
told that these were "fine" people, that others were “not fine".
Every friend's pedigree was examined back to the earliest generation, to see
whether or not he came from a "good" family, and all his relatives,
as well as his wealth, were checked. This constant categorization, which
actually was the main topic of every familiar and social conversation, at that
time seemed to be most ridiculous and snobbish, because for all Jewish families
it was merely a matter of fifty or a hundred years earlier or later that they
had come from the same ghetto. It was not until much later that I realized that
this conception of "good" family, which appeared to us boys to be a
parody of an artificial pseudo-aristocracy, was one of the most profound and
secret tendencies of Jewish life. It is generally accepted that getting rich is
the only and typical goal of the Jew. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Riches are to him merely a stepping stone, a means to the true end, and in no
sense the real goal. The real determination of the Jew is to rise to a higher
cultural plane in the intellectual world. Even in the case of Eastern orthodox
Jewry, where the weaknesses as well as the merits of the whole race are more
intensely manifested, this supremacy of the will to the spiritual over the mere
material finds plastic expression. The holy man, the Bible student, is a thousand
times more esteemed within the community than the rich man; even the wealthiest
man will prefer to give his daughter in marriage to the poorest intellectual
than to a merchant. This elevation of the intellectual to the highest rank is
common to all classes; the poorest beggar who drags his pack through wind and
rain will try to single out at least one son to study, no matter at how great a
sacrifice, and it is counted a title of honour for the entire family to have
someone in their midst, a professor, a savant, or a musician, who plays a role
in the intellectual world, as if through his achievements he ennobled them all.
Subconsciously something in the Jew seeks to escape the morally dubious, the
distasteful, the petty, the unspiritual, which is attached to all trade, and
all that is purely business, and to lift himself up to the moneyless sphere of
the intellectual, as if-in the Wagnerian sense-he wished to redeem himself and
his entire race from the curse of money. And that is why among Jews the impulse
to wealth is exhausted in two, or at most three, generations within one family,
and the mightiest dynasties find their sons unwilling to take over the banks,
the factories, the established and secure businesses of their fathers. It is
not chance that a Lord Rothschild became an ornithologist, a Warburg an art
historian, a Cassirer a philosopher, a Sassoon a poet. They all obey the same
subconscious impulse, to free themselves of cold money-making, that thing that
confines Jewry; and perhaps it expresses a secret longing to resolve the
merely Jewish-through flight into the intellectual-into humanity at
large. A "good" family
therefore means more than the purely social aspect which it assigns to itself
with this classification; it means a Jewry that has freed itself of all defects
and limitations and pettiness which the ghetto has forced upon it, by means of
adaptation to a different culture and even possibly a universal culture. That
this flight into the intellectual has become as disastrous for the Jew, because
of a disproportionate crowding of the professions, as formerly his confinement
in the purely material, simply belongs to the eternal paradoxes of Jewish
destiny.
There was hardly a city in Europe where the drive towards
cultural ideals was as passionate as it was in Vienna. Precisely because the monarchy, because
Austria itself for centuries had been neither politically ambitious nor
particularly successful in its military actions, the native pride had turned
more strongly towards a desire for artistic supremacy. The most important and
the most valuable provinces, German and Italian, Flemish and Walloon, had long
since fallen away from the old Habsburg empire that had once ruled Europe;
unsullied in its old glory, the capital had remained, the treasure of the
court, the preserver of a thousand-year-old tradition. The Romans had laid the
first stones of this city, as a castrum, a fortress, an advance outpost
to protect Latin civilization against the barbarians; and more than a thousand
years later the attack of the Ottomans against the West shattered against these
walls. Here rode the Nibelungs, here
the immortal Pleiades of music shone out over the world, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Johann Strauss, here all the streams of
European culture converged. At court, among the nobility, and among the people,
the German was related in blood to the Slavic, the Hungarian, the Spanish, the
Italian, the French, the Flemish; and it was the particular genius of this city
of music that dissolved all the contrasts harmoniously into a new and unique
thing, the Austrian, the Viennese. Hospitable and endowed with a particular
talent for receptivity, the city drew the most diverse forces to it, loosened,
propitiated, and pacified them. It was sweet -to live here, in this atmosphere
of spiritual conciliation, and subconsciously every citizen became
supranational, cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world.
This talent for assimilation, for delicate and musical
transitions, was already apparent in the external visage of the city. Growing slowly through the centuries,
organically developing outward from inner circles, it was sufficiently
populous, with its two millions, to yield all the luxury and all the diversity
of a metropolis, and yet it was not so oversized as to be cut off from nature,
like London or New York. The last
houses of the city mirrored themselves in the mighty Danube or looked out over
the wide plains, or dissolved themselves in gardens and fields, or climbed in
gradual rises the last green wooded foothills of the Alps. One hardly
sensed where nature began and where the city: one melted into the other without
opposition, without contradiction. Within, however, one felt that the city had
grown like a tree that adds ring upon ring, and instead of the old
fortification walls the Ringstrasse encircled the treasured core with its
splendid houses. Within, the old palaces of the court and the nobility spoke
history in stone. Here Beethoven had 'played at the Lichnowskys', at the
Esterhazys' Haydn had been a guest; there in the old University Haydn's Creation
had resounded for the first time, the Hofburg had seen generations of
emperors, and Sch5nbrunn had seen Napoleon. In the Stefansdom the united lords
of Christianity had knelt in prayers of thanksgiving for the salvation of
Europe from the Turks; countless great lights of science had been within the
walls of the University. In the midst of all this, the new architecture reared
itself proudly and grandly with glittering avenues and sparkling shops. But the
old quarrelled as little with the new as the chiselled stone with untouched
nature. It was wonderful to live here, in this city which hospitably took up
everything foreign and gave itself so gladly; and in its light air, as in
Paris, it was a simple matter to enjoy life. Vienna was, we know, an epicurean
city; but what is culture, if not to wheedle from the coarse material of life,
by art and love, its finest, its most delicate, its most subtle qualities?
Gourmets in culinary matters, much occupied with a good wine, a dry fresh beer,
sumptuous pastries and cakes, in this city people were also demanding with
regard to more subtle delights. Making music, dancing, the theatre,
conversation, proper and urbane deportment, these were cultivated here as
particular arts. It was not the military, nor the political, nor the
commercial, that was predominant in the life of the individual and of the
masses. The first glance of the average Viennese into his morning paper was not
at the events in parliament, or world affairs, but at the repertoire of the
theatre, which assumed so important a role in public life as hardly was
possible in any other city. For the Imperial theatre, the Burgtheater, was for
the Viennese and for the Austrian more than a stage upon which actors enacted
parts; it was the microcosm that mirrored the macrocosm, the brightly-coloured
reflection in which the city saw itself the only true corligiano of good
taste. In the court ac for the spectator saw an excellent example of how one
ought to dress, how to walk into a room, how to converse, which words one might
employ as a man of good taste and which to avoid. The stage, instead of being
merely a place of entertainment, was a spoken and plastic guide of good behaviour
and correct pronunciation, and a nimbus of respect encircled like a halo
everything that had even the faintest connection with the Imperial theatre. The
Minister-President or the richest magnate could walk the streets of Vienna
without anyone turning round, but a court actor or an opera singer was recognized
by every shopgirl and cabdriver. Proudly we boys told one another when we had
seen one of them pass by (everyone collected their pictures and autographs);
and this almost religious cult went so far that it even attached itself to the
world around them. Sonnenthal's barber, Josef Kainz's cabdriver were persons to
be respected and secretly envied, and elegant youths were proud to have their
clothes made by an actor's tailor. Every jubilee and every funeral of a great
actor was turned into an event that overshadowed all political occurrences. To
have one's play given at the Burgtheater was the greatest dream of every
Viennese writer, because it meant a sort of lifelong nobility and brought with
it a series of honours such as complimentary tickets for life and invitations
to all official functions. One virtually became a guest in the Imperial
household. I can still recall the imposing way in which my own introduction
took place. In the morning, the director of the Burgtheater had asked me to
come to his office, to tell me-after having congratulated me-that my drama had
been accepted by the Burgtheater; when I got home that night, his visiting card
was in my room. He had paid me, a twenty-six-year-old, a formal return visit,
for I, merely by being accepted as an author of the Imperial stage, had become
a "gentleman", whom the director of the institution had to treat as a
peer. And whatever happened in the theatre indirectly touched everyone, even
those who had no direct connection with it. I can remember, for example, that
once when I was very young our cook ran into the room with tears in her eyes.
She had just been told that Charlotte Wolter-the most prominent actress of the
Burgtheater-had died. The grotesque thing about this wild mourning of hers was
the fact that this old, semi-illiterate cook had never once been in the
fashionable Burgtheater, and that she had never seen Wolter either on the stage
or elsewhere; but a great national actress was the collective property of the
entire city of Vienna, and even an outsider could feel that her death was a
catastrophe. Every loss, for instance the departure of a beloved singer or
artist, was immediately transformed into national mourning. When the "old"
Burgtheater, in which Mozart's Marriage of Figaro was first given, was
torn down, all Vienna society was formally and sorrowfully assembled there;
the curtain had hardly fallen when everybody leapt upon the stage, to bring
home at least a splinter as a relic of the boards which the beloved artists had
trod; and for decades after, in dozens of bourgeois homes, these insignificant
splinters could be seen preserved in costly caskets, as fragments of the Holy
Cross are kept in churches. We ourselves did not act much more sensibly when
the so-called Bösendorfer Saal was torn down. In itself; this little concert
hall, which was used solely for chamber music, was a quite unimposing,
unartistic piece of architecture, the former riding-academy of Count
Liechtenstein, unpretentiously remodelled for music use with wooden panelling.
But it had the resonance of an old violin, it was a sanctuary for lovers of
music, because Chopin and Brahms) Liszt and Rubinstein had given concerts
there, and because many of the famous quartets had made their first appearance
there; and now it was to make way for a functional building. It was incomprehensible to us, who had
experienced such unforgettable hours there. When the last measure of Beethoven,
played more beautifully than ever by the Rose' quartet, had died away, no one
left his seat. We called and applauded, several women sobbed with emotion, no
one wished to believe that this was a farewell. The lights were put out in the
hall in order to make us leave. Not one of the four or five hundred enthusiasts
moved from his place. A half hour, a full hour, we remained as if by our
presence we could save. the old hallowed place. And when we were students, how
we fought with petitions, with demonstrations, and with essays to keep the
house where Beethoven died from being demolished ! Every one of these historic
buildings in Vienna was a bit of our soul that was being torn out of our body.
This fanaticism for art, and
for the art of the theatre in, particular, touched all classes in Vienna. Vienna, through its centuries-old tradition,
was itself a clearly ordered, and-as I once wrote a wonderfully orchestrated
city. The Imperial house still set the tempo. The palace was the centre, not
only in a spatial sense but also in a cultural sense, of the supranationality
of the monarchy. The palaces of the Austrian, the Polish, the Czech, and the
Hungarian nobility formed as it were a second enclosure around the Imperial
palace. Then came "good
society", consisting of the lesser nobility, the higher officials,
industry, and the “old families", then the petty bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. Each of these social strata lived in its own circle, and even in
its own district, the nobility in their palaces in the heart of the city, the
diplomats in the third district, industry and the merchants in the vicinity of
the Ringstrasse, the petty bourgeoisie in the inner districts-the second to
the ninth-and the proletariat in the outer circle. But everyone met in the
theatre and at the great festivities such as the Flower Parade in the Prater,
where three hundred thousand people enthusiastically applauded the “upper ten
thousand" in their beautifully decorated carriages. In Vienna
everything-religious processions such as the one on the feast of Corpus
Christi, the military parades, the ~ music-was made the occasion for celebrations,
so far as colour and music were concerned. Even funerals found enthusiastic
audiences and it was the ambition of every true Viennese to make a “lovely
corpse", with a majestic procession and many followers; even his death
converted the genuine Viennese into a
spectacle for others/In this receptivity for all that was colourful, festive
and resounding, in this pleasure in the theatrical, whether it was on the stage
or in reality, both as theatre and as a mirror of life, the whole city was at
one.
It was not difficult to mock
this “theatromania” of the Viennese, and their following up to the most minute
details of the lives of their darlings often was more than grotesque. Our
Austrian indolence in political matters, and our backwardness in economics as
compared with our resolute German neighbour, may actually be ascribed in part
to our epicurean excesses. But culturally this exaggeration of artistic events
brought something unique to maturity-first of all, an uncommon respect for
every artistic presentation, then, through centuries of experience, a
connoisseurship without equal, and finally, thanks to that connoisseurship, a
predominant high level in all cultural fields. The artist always feels at his
best and at the same time most inspired where he is esteemed or even
over-estimated. Art always reaches its
peak where it becomes the life-interest of a people. And just as Florence and
Rome in the Renaissance drew the artists and educated them to greatness, each
one feeling that he was in constant competition and obliged to outdo the others
and himself in the eyes of the people, so the musicians and the actors of
Vienna were conscious of their importance in the city. In the Vienna Opera and
in the Burgtheater, nothing was overlooked; every flat note was remarked, every
incorrect intonation and every cut were censured; and this control was
exercised at premieres not by the professional critics alone, but day after day
by the entire audience, whose attentive ears had been sharpened by constant
comparison. Whereas in politics, in administration, or in morals, everything
went on rather comfortably and one was affably tolerant of all that was
slovenly, and overlooked many an infringement, in artistic matters there was no
pardon; here the honour of the city was at stake. Every singer, actor, and
musician had constantly to give his best or he was lost. It was wonderful to be
the darling of Vienna, but it was not easy to remain so; no let-down was forgiven.
And this knowledge and the constant pitiless supervision forced each artist in
Vienna to give his best, and gave to the whole its marvellous level. Every one
of us has, from his youthful years, brought a strict and inexorable standard of
musical performance into his life. He who in the opera knew Gustav Mahler's
iron discipline, which extended to the minutest detail, or realized the
Philharmonic's matter-of-fact energetic exactitude, to-day is rarely satisfied
by any musical or theatrical performance. But with it we also learned to be
strict with ourselves at every artistic presentation; a certain level was and
remained exemplary, and there are few cities in the world where it was so
inculcated into the developing artist. But this knowledge of rhythm and energy
went deep into the people, for even the little bourgeois seated at his Heurigen
demanded good music from the band as he did good wine from the innkeeper.
Again, in the Prater the crowds knew exactly which military band had the best
"swing", whether it was the Deutschmeister or the Hungarians;
whoever lived in Vienna caught a feeling of rhythm from the air. And just as
this musicality was expressed by us writers in carefully wrought prose, the
sense of rhythm entered into others in their social deportment and their daily
life. A Viennese who had no sense of art or who found no enjoyment in form was
unthinkable in "good society". Even in the lower circles, the poorest
drew a certain instinct for beauty out of the landscape and out of the merry
human sphere into his life; one was not a real Viennese without this love for
culture, without this sense, aesthetic and critical at once, of the holiest
exuberance of life.
Adapting themselves to the
milieu of the people or country where they live is not only an external
protective measure for Jews, but a deep internal desire. Their longing for a
homeland, for rest, for security, for friendliness, urges them to attach
themselves passionately to the culture of the world around them. And never was
such an attachment more effective-except in Spain in the fifteenth century were
happier and more fruitful than in Austria. Having resided for more than two
hundred years in the Imperial city, the Jews encountered there an easy-going
people, inclined to conciliation, under whose apparent laxity of form lay
buried the identical deep instinct for cultural and aesthetic values which was
so important to the Jews themselves. And in Vienna they met with more: they
found there a personal task. In the last century the pursuit of art in Austria
had lost its old traditional defenders and protectors, the Imperial house and
the aristocracy. Whereas in the eighteenth century Maria Theresa had Gluck
instruct her daughters in music, Joseph II ably discussed his operas with
Mozart, and Leopold III himself composed music, the later emperors, Francis II
and Ferdinand, had no interest whatever in artistic things; and our Emperor
Francis Joseph, who in his eighty years had never read a book other than the
Army List, or even taken one in his hand, evidenced moreover a definite
antipathy to music. The nobility, as well, had relinquished its erstwhile role
of protector; gone were the glorious days when the Esterhazys harboured a
Haydn, the Lobkowitzes and the IKinskys and Waldsteins competed to have a
premiere of Beethoven in their palaces, when a Countess Thun threw herself on
her knees before the great demigod, begging him not to withdraw Fidelio
from the Opera. But Wagner, Brahms, Johann Strauss, and Hugo Wolf had not
received the slightest support from them. To maintain the Philharmonic on its
accustomed level, to enable the painters and sculptors to make a living, it was
necessary for the people to jump into the breach, and it was the pride and
ambition of the Jewish people to cooperate in the front ranks to carry on the
former glory of the fame of Viennese culture. They had always loved this city
and had entered into its life whole-heartedly, but it was first of all by their
love for Viennese art that they felt entitled to full citizenship, and that
they had actually become true Viennese.
In public life they exerted only a meagre influence; the glory of the Imperial
house overshadowed every private fortune, the leading positions in the
administration of the State were held by inheritance, diplomacy was reserved
for the aristocracy, the army and higher officialdom for the old families, and
the Jews did not even attempt ambitiously to enter into these privileged
circles. They tactfully respected these
traditional rights as being quite matter-of-course. I remember, for example,
that throughout his entire life my father avoided dining at Sacher's, not for
reasons of economy-the difference in price between it and the other large
hotels was insignificant-but because of a natural feeling of respect; it would
have been distressing or unbecoming to him to sit at a table next to a Prince
Schwarzenberg or a Lobkowitz. It was only in regard to art that all felt on
equal terms, because love of art was a communal duty in Vienna, and
immeasurable is the part in Viennese culture the Jewish bourgeoisie took, by
their co-operation and promotion. They were the real audience, they filled the
theatres and the concerts, they bought the books and the pictures, they
visited the exhibitons, and with their more mobile understanding,
little-hampered by tradition, they were the exponents and champions of all that
was new. Practically all the great art collections of the nineteenth century
were formed by them, nearly all the artistic attempts were made possible only
by them; without the ceaseless stimulating interest of the Jewish bourgeoisie,
Vienna, thanks to the indolence of the court, the aristocracy, and the
Christian millionaires, who preferred to maintain racing stables and hunts to
fostering art, would have remained behind Berlin in the realm of art as Austria
remained behind the German Reich in political matters. Whoever wished to put
through something in Vienna, or came to Vienna as a guest from abroad and
sought appreciation as well as an audience, was dependent on the Jewish
bourgeoisie. When a single attempt was made in the anti-semitic period to
create a so-called “national" theatre, neither authors, nor actors, nor a
public was forthcoming; alter a few months the "national" theatre
collapsed miserably, and it was by this example that it became apparent for the
first time that nine-tenths of what the world celebrated as Viennese culture in
the nineteenth century was promoted, nourished, or even created by Viennese
Jewry.
For it was precisely in the
last years-as it was in Spain before the equally tragic decline-that the
Viennese Jews had become artistically productive although not in a specifically
Jewish way; rather, through a miracle of understanding, they gave to what was
Austrian, and Viennese, its most intensive expression. Goldmark, Gustav Mahler, and Schonberg,
became international figures in creative music. Oscar Strauss, Leo Fall, and
Kalman brought the tradition of the waltz and the operetta to a new flowering,
Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Beer-Hofmann, and Peter Altenberg gave
Viennese literature European standing such as it had not possessed under
Grillparzer and Stifter; Sonnenthal and Max Reinhardt renewed the city's
universal fame as a home of the theatre, Freud and others great in science drew
attention to the long-famous University-everywhere, as scholars, as virtuosi,
as painters, as theatrical directors and architects, as journalists, they
maintained unchallenged high positions in the intellectual life of Vienna.
Because of their passionate love for the city, through their desire for
assimilation, they had adapted themselves fully, and were happy to serve the
glory of Vienna. They felt that their being Austrian was a mission to the
world; and-for honesty's sake it must be repeated-much, if not the most of all
that Europe and America admire to-day as an expression of a new, rejuvenated
Austrian culture, in literature, the theatre, in the arts and crafts, was
created by the Viennese Jews who, in turn, by this manifestation achieved the
highest artistic performance of their millennial spiritual activity. Centuries
of intellectual energy joined here with a somewhat effete tradition and
nurtured, revived, increased, and renewed it with fresh strength and by
tireless attention. Only the coming decades will show the crime that Hitler
perpetrated against Vienna when he sought to nationalize and provincialize this
city) whose meaning and culture were founded in the meeting of the most
heterogeneous elements) and in her spiritual supranationality. For the genius
of Vienna-a specifically musical one-was always that it harmonized all the
national and lingual contrasts. Its culture was a synthesis of all Western
cultures. Whoever lived there and worked there felt himself free of all
confinement and prejudice. Nowhere was it easier to be a European, and I know
that to a great extent I must thank this city, which already in the time of
Marcus Aurelius defended the Roman-the universal- spirit, that at an early age
I learned to love the idea of comradeship as the highest of my heart.
One lived well and easily and
without cares in that old Vienna, and the Germans in the North looked with some
annoyance and scorn upon their neighbours on the Danube who, instead of being
"proficient" and maintaining rigid order, permitted themselves to
enjoy life, ate well, took pleasure in feasts and theatres and, besides, made
excellent music. Instead of German "proficiency", which after all has
embittered and disturbed the existence of all other peoples, and the forward
chase and the greedy desire to get ahead of all others, in Vienna one loved to
chat, cultivated a harmonious association, and lightheartedly and perhaps with
lax conciliation permitted each one his share without envy. "Live and let
live" was the famous Viennese motto, which to-day still seems to me to be
more humane than all the categorical imperatives, and it maintained itself
throughout all classes. Rich and poor, Czechs and Germans, Jews and Christians,
lived peaceably together in spite of occasional chafing, and even the political
and social movements were free of the terrible hatred which has penetrated the
arteries of our time as a poisonous residue of the First World War. In the old
Austria they still strove chivalrously, they abused each other in the news and
in the parliament, but at the conclusion of their ciceronian tirades the
selfsame representatives sat down together in friendship with a glass of beer
or a cup of coffee, and called each other Du. Even when Lueger, the
leader of the anti-semitic party, became burgomaster of the city, no change
occurred in private affairs, and I personally must confess that neither in
school nor at the University, nor in the world of literature, have I ever
experienced the slightest suppression or indignity as a Jew. The hatred of
country for country, of nation for nation, of one table for another, did not
yet jump at one daily from the newspaper, it did not divide people from people
and nations from nations; not yet had every herd and mass feeling become so disgustingly
powerful in public life as to-day. Freedom in one's private affairs, which is
no longer considered comprehensible, was taken- for granted. One did not look
down upon tolerance as one does to-day as weakness and softness, but rather
praised it as an ethical force.
For it was not a century of
suffering in which I was born and educated.
It was an ordered world with definite classes and calm transitions, a
world without haste. The rhythm of the new speed had not yet carried over from
the machines, the automobile, the telephone, the radio, and the aeroplane, to
mankind; time and age had another measure.
One lived more comfortably, and when I try to recall to mind the figures
of the grown-ups who stood about my childhood, I am struck with the fact that many
of them were corpulent at an early age. My father3 my uncle, my
teacher, the salesmen in the shops, the members of the Philharmonic at their
music stands were already, at forty, portly and "worthy" men. They
walked slowly, they spoke with measured accent, and, in their Conversation,
stroked their well-kept beards which often had already turned grey. But grey
hair was merely a new sign of dignity, and a "sedate" man consciously
avoided the gestures and high spirits of youth as being unseemly. Even in my
earliest childhood, when my father was not yet forty, I cannot recall ever
having seen him run up or down the stairs, or ever doing anything in a visibly
hasty fashion. Speed was not only thought to be unrefined, but indeed was
considered unnecessary, for in that stabilized bourgeois world with its
countless little securities, well palisaded on all sides, nothing unexpected
ever occurred. Such catastrophes as took place outside on the world's periphery
never made their way through the well-padded walls of "secure"
living. The Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Balkan War itself did not
penetrate the existence of my parents. They passed over all reports war in the
newspapers just as they did the sporting page. And truly, what did it matter to
them what took place outside of Austria, what did it change in their lives? In
their Austria in that tranquil epoch there were no State revolutions, no crass
destruction of values; if stocks sank four or five points on the exchange, it
was called a "crash" and they talked earnestly, with furrowed brows,
about the 'catastrophe". One complained more as a habit than because of
actual conviction about the "high" taxes, which actually, in
comparison with those of the post-war period, were no other than small tips to
the State. Exact stipulations were set down in testaments, to guard
grandchildren and great-grandchildren against the loss of their fortunes, as if
security were guaranteed by some sort of invisible promissory note by the
eternal powers. Meanwhile one lived comfortably and stroked one's petty cares
as if they were faithful, obedient pets of whom one was not in the least
afraid. That is why when chance places an old newspaper of those days in my
hands and I read the excited articles about some little community election,
when I try to recall the plays in the Burgtheater with their tiny problems, or
the disproportionate excitement of our youthful discussions about things that
were so terribly unimportant, I am forced to smile. How Lilliputian were all
these cares, how wind-still the time! It had better luck, the generation of my
parents and grandparents, in that it lived quietly, straight and clearly from
one end of its life to the other. But even so, I do not know if I envy them.
How blissfully unaware they remained of all the bitter realities, of the tricks
and forces of fate, how apart they lived from all those crises and problems
that crush the heart but at the same time marvellously uplift it! How little
they knew, as they muddled through in security and comfort and possessions,
that life can also be tension and profusion, a continuous state of being
surprised, and being lifted up from all sides; little did they think in their
touching liberalism and optimism that each succeeding day that dawns outside
our window can smash our life. Not even in their darkest nights was it possible
for them to dream how dangerous man can be, or how much power he has to
withstand dangers and overcome trials. We, who have been hounded through all
the rapids of life, we who have been torn loose from all roots that held us,
we, always beginning anew when we have been driven to the end, we, victims and
yet willing servants of unknown, mystic forces, we, for whom comfort has become
a saga and security a childhood dream, we have felt the tension from pole to
pole and the eternal dread of the eternal new in every fibre of our being.
Every hour of our years was bound up with the world's destiny. Suffering and joyful we have lived time and
history far beyond our own little existence, while they, the older generation,
were confined within themselves. Therefore each one of us, even the smallest of
our generation, to-day knows a thousand times more about reality than the
wisest of our ancestors. But nothing was given to us: we paid the price, fully
and unequivocally, for everything.