Jill Rees: Welcome Press

Vienna is the town of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, the Strauss’s, Beethoven, Freud, Klimt and Schiele; Schoenberg’s pupils Weber and Berg; Jung visited Freud here, Kafka came here to write, Lenin wrote pamphlets among the nascent Socialists at the turn of the last century.

Vienna was the hub of two great Empires, the Ottoman Empire which left the Austrians at war against the Turks for many centuries, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire which became the heart of European culture, and was only destroyed by the First World War. Most of Vienna’s celebrities are of Jewish origin, and were permitted to integrate in Vienna provided they converted to the dominant religion here, which is Catholicism. Between the Wars, Vienna became the catalyst for wonderful new discoveries and beginnings which lead our civilisation today. Schoenberg developed atonal music; Freud founded an entire science: psychiatry; artists like Kokoshka introduced Expressionist painting; the logician Wittgenstein changed our understanding of the world. Most of the city’s doctors and professionals were Jewish, the vibrant intellectual life of Vienna drawing wealthy professionals in from the provinces.

In a tourist industry that is so vocal about Mozart, Mahler is strangely overlooked. The young composer was offered a place in the famous conservatoire, providing he convert to Catholicism, as Jews were not permitted to study at the time. Without hesitation, he converted, saying his religion is that of ‘composer’. His horrified family never forgave him, and ironically, Vienna seems to have held his Jewish roots against him to this day, favouring the effervescent Salzburger, Mozart.

According to his pupil Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler was a saint. Schoenberg himself was under no illusions about the intentions of the Nazis, and encouraged his Austrian pupils to flee, having lost his Czech student Pavl Haas to Auschwitz. He was the only Jewish composer to perform in the Third Reich, in the Opera House in Munich. He was so famous the awe-inspired organisers failed to realise he was Jewish. It is said Hitler was furious when he found out, but by then Schoenberg had fled to the US, where he spent the rest of his days, tutoring American talent such as the modern twelve-tone composer John Cage.

As you walk through the city streets, your collar hunched up round your scarf-clad neck against the frosty air, the Viennese scowl and push past you with an impatient ‘Entschuldigung’. Cars scream across the crossings where pedestrians can be arrested for ‘jaywalking’ if they try to cross the road when the pedestrian light is still red! It is a strange mixture of a perfectly organised society where everyone feels the social duty to each other and there is no crime, and a deep-seated feeling of anger, of a society barely maintaining its cool. You can easily imagine the days when the new Austrian Nazis following the Anschluss, when the German army walked into Austria to the sound of cheering crowds, began to round up the Jews of Vienna and ship them out to concentration camps. The richest few may have managed to escape, if they could bring themselves to believe the rumours about the Nazi programme to annihilate every last one of them. The frail, elderly, cancer-ridden Sigmund Freud, after a lifetime as one of Vienna’s most eminent celebrities, was taken by friends to London, where he soon died a natural death, leaving his three sisters to be slaughtered in the camps. Within a few months, Vienna was emptied of its Jews. It’s somewhat gratifying now to realise the people here still have trouble finding a good doctor, and often cross the border to Hungary for a consultation.

Incredibly the Jewish population is returning, as it did once before when all the city’s Jews were driven out in 1420 to acquire their wealth.  They at least seem to believe it couldn’t happen again. There is a famous song, ‘Vienna Calling’, by Austria’s greatest rock star Falco, and indeed people are coming here. Austria has long-standing, largely unfriendly, relations with Turkey, and there is a substantial Turkish immigrant population working here. People have come from Greece, Vietnam and Korea too, and there are many ethnic foods on show in the Naschmarkt, where large Mediterranean women block your way through the fruit stalls saying,

‘Would you like to sample my olives?’  There are Croatians, weary and traumatised from the war in their country, Italians, because business is business, and the new arrivals from the most recent EU entrants, Romania and Bulgaria. The Roma people are the least welcome, their culture being noticeably different to the Austrians’, the gypsy-dressed women with their unkempt children, begging and offering lucky heather. I met one African, a young man from Cote d’Ivoire selling the ‘Bunte Zeitung‘newspaper for the homeless. Arriving with few skills, he has been unable to find work. There is, I am told, a notorious Nigerian, but I have not yet managed to find him!

            ‘The main problem is the immigrants,’ the schoolchildren told me, ‘Especially the Turks, who run round in gangs and beat us up’. I turned to the Turkish lad, who was smiling pityingly at the young racists.

            Is this true?’ I asked.

            ‘No,’ he gently replied, ‘Our parents wouldn’t let us’.

            I haven’t got anywhere to go, but the cold makes you walk faster. On the narrow pavements I seem to be continually overtaking old people with swollen feet, limping painfully home. Waiting yet again for the pedestrian signal to change to green, even though there is no visible traffic around, I wonder why there are so many foot problems. Perhaps it’s the diet. Apart from the Naschmarkt, with its peppers and papaya, the staple diet is Schweinfleisch, literally pig-meat. Austrians eat ham for breakfast and later a Vienerschnitzel, pork in breadcrumbs. Supper may be ham soup, more ham, or sausages. Potatoes go with everything and, although it has to be said the bread is delicious, not enough of it is eaten. The lack of vegetables and fruit in the diet must lead to deficiencies, and my theory is that their circulation is affected, especially with the cold winters.

Like Muslims, Jews don’t eat pork, and have kosher, or Halal, meat. This in itself must pose problems, as locals seem very offended when you say you don’t eat pork. You can’t rely on soup either, as the stock is made of the left-over meat. After half a day, or even less, you are heartily sick of Schnitzel. Luckily the Naschmarkt will come to the rescue, with its relief of kebabs, rice and noodles.

            ‘What is the best thing about Vienna?’ the children asked me.

            ‘The best thing about Vienna,’ I said, ‘Is your immigrants.’

            In the Kafka cafe, vegetarians are looked after with lentil soup and tofu burgers to go with the various teas and the posters about cultural and literary events. Kafka himself used to come here to write, and today you can come and sit with his ghost. The grand Opera House is filled with the memory of Mozart singing in glory to a forgotten empire, Klimt’s lovers still stand in their eternal embrace. Vienna is the city of ghosts, and even the newcomers have the whiff of nostalgia about them, as if they have been drawn here by the call of the ancients. And I am the same, sniffing round galleries looking for my Breughel paintings, largely indifferent to the living. So reality shifts, those who are really here and now feel like ghosts, and those long dead who hold the dynamic of the once-great city in their presence. And I almost wish I hadn’t come here, because now Vienna will always be calling, calling from my subconscious perhaps, that great ghost of Freud.

1280 words

© Jill Rees

13 February 2008

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