The World of Yesterday (3 page)

There inevitably comes a moment in every man’s life when he sees his father reflected in himself. That preference for privacy, for an anonymous way of life, is beginning to develop in me more and more strongly as the years go by, though in fact it runs contrary to my profession, which is bound to make my name and person to some extent public. But out of the same secret pride as his, I have always declined any form of outward honour, never accepted any decoration or title, or the presidency of any association. I have never been a member of an academy, nor have I sat on the board of any company or on any jury panel. Attending a festive occasion is something of an ordeal for me, and the mere thought of asking someone a favour is enough—even if my request were to be made through a third party—to make my mouth dry up before uttering the
first word. I know that such inhibitions are out of tune with the times, in a world where we can remain free only through cunning and evasion, and where, as Goethe wisely said, “in the general throng, many a fool receives decorations and titles.” But my father in me, with his secret pride, makes me hold back, and I cannot resist him. After all, it is my father I have to thank for what I feel is, perhaps, my one secure possession: my sense of inner freedom.

My mother, whose maiden name was Brettauer, was not of the same origin. Hers was an international family. She was born in Ancona in Italy, and Italian and German had both been the languages of her childhood. When she was discussing something with her mother, my grandmother or her sister, and they did not want the servants to know what they were saying, they would switch to Italian. From my earliest youth I was familiar with risotto, artichokes (still a rarity in Vienna at the time) and the other specialities of Mediterranean cookery, and whenever I visited Italy later I immediately felt at home. But my mother’s family was not by any means Italian, and saw itself as more cosmopolitan than anything else. The Brettauers, who had originally owned a bank, came from Hohenems, a small town on the Swiss border, and spread all over the world at an early date on the model of the great Jewish banking families, although of course on a much smaller scale. Some went to St Gallen, others to Vienna and Paris. My grandfather went to Italy, an uncle to New York, and these international contacts gave the family more sophistication, a wider outlook, and a certain arrogance. There were no small tradesmen in the family, no brokers, they were all bankers, company directors, professors, lawyers and medical doctors; everyone spoke several languages, and I remember how naturally the conversation around my aunt’s table in Paris moved from one language to
another. It was a family that thought well of itself, and when a girl from one of its poorer branches reached marriageable age, everyone contributed to providing her with a good dowry so that she need not marry ‘beneath herself’. As a leading industrialist, my father was respected, but my mother, although theirs was the happiest of marriages, would never have allowed his relations to consider themselves the equals of hers. It was impossible to root out the pride of their descent from a ‘good family’ from the Brettauers, and in later years, if one of them wanted to show me particular goodwill, he would condescend to say, “You’re more of a Brettauer really”, as if stating approvingly that I took after the right side of my family.

This kind of distinction, claimed for themselves by many Jewish families, sometimes amused and sometimes annoyed my brother and me, even as children. We were always hearing that certain persons were ‘refined’, while others were less so. Enquiries were made about any new friends of ours—were they from a ‘good family’?—and every ramification of their origins in respect of both family and fortune was investigated. This constant classification, which was in fact the main subject of all family and social conversations, seemed to us at the time ridiculous and snobbish, since after all, the only difference between one Jewish family and another was whether it had left the ghetto fifty or a hundred years ago. Only much later did I realise that this idea of the ‘good family’, which seemed to us boys the farcical parody of an artificial pseudo-aristocracy, expresses one of the most mysterious but deeply felt tendencies in the Jewish nature. It is generally assumed that getting rich is a Jew’s true and typical aim in life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Getting rich, to a Jew, is only an interim stage, a means to his real end, by no means his aim in itself. The true desire of a Jew, his inbuilt ideal, is to rise to a higher social plane by becoming an intellectual. Even among Orthodox Eastern Jews, in whom the failings as well as the virtues of the Jewish people as a whole are more strongly marked, this
supreme desire to be an intellectual finds graphic expression going beyond merely material considerations—the devout Biblical scholar has far higher status within the community than a rich man. Even the most prosperous Jew would rather marry his daughter to an indigent intellectual than a merchant. This high regard for intellectuals runs through all classes of Jewish society, and the poorest pedlar who carries his pack through wind and weather will try to give at least one son the chance of studying at university, however great the sacrifices he must make, and will consider it an honour to the entire family that one of them is clearly regarded as an intellectual: a professor, a scholar, a musician. It is as if such a man’s achievements ennobled them all. Unconsciously, something in a Jew seeks to escape the morally dubious, mean, petty and pernicious associations of trade clinging to all that is merely business, and rise to the purer sphere of the intellect where money is not a consideration, as if, like a Wagnerian character, he were trying to break the curse of gold laid on himself and his entire race. Among Jews, then, the urge to make a fortune is nearly always exhausted within two or at most three generations of a family, and even the mightiest dynasts find that their sons are unwilling to take over the family banks and factories, the prosperous businesses built up and expanded by the previous generation. It is no coincidence that Lord Rothschild became an ornithologist, one of the Warburgs an art historian, one of the Cassirer family was a philosopher, one of the Sassoons a poet; they were all obeying the same unconscious urge to liberate themselves from the mere cold earning of money that has restricted Jewish life, and perhaps this flight to the intellectual sphere even expresses a secret longing to exchange their Jewish identity for one that is universally human. So a ‘good’ family means more than a mere claim to social status; it also denotes a Jewish way of life that, by adjusting to another and perhaps more universal culture, has freed itself or is freeing itself from all the drawbacks and constraints and
pettiness forced upon it by the ghetto. Admittedly, it is one of the eternal paradoxes of the Jewish destiny that this flight into intellectual realms has now, because of the disproportionately large number of Jews in the intellectual professions, become as fatal as their earlier restriction to the material sphere.
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In hardly any other European city was the urge towards culture as passionate as in Vienna. For the very reason that for centuries Austria and its monarchy had been neither politically ambitious nor particularly successful in its military ventures, native pride had focused most strongly on distinction in artistic achievement. The most important and valuable provinces of the old Habsburg empire that once ruled Europe—German and Italian, Flemish and Walloon—had seceded long ago, but the capital city was still intact in its old glory as the sanctuary of the court, the guardian of a millennial tradition. The Romans had laid the foundation stones of that city as a
castrum
, a far-flung outpost to protect Latin civilization from the barbarians, and over a thousand years later the Ottoman attack on the West was repelled outside the walls of Vienna. The Nibelungs had come here, the immortal Pleiades of music shone down on the world from this city, Gluck, Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Johann Strauss, all the currents of European culture had merged in this place. At court and among the nobility and the common people alike, German elements were linked with Slavonic, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, French and Flemish. It was the peculiar genius of Vienna, the city of music, to resolve all these contrasts harmoniously in something new and unique, specifically Austrian and Viennese. Open-minded and particularly receptive, the city attracted the most disparate of forces, relaxed their tensions, eased and placated them. It was pleasant to live here, in this atmosphere of intellectual tolerance, and unconsciously every citizen of Vienna also became a supranational, cosmopolitan citizen of the world.

This art of adaptation, of gentle and musical transitions, was
evident even in the outward appearance of the city. Growing slowly over the centuries, developing organically from its centre, with its two million inhabitants Vienna had a large enough population to offer all the luxury and diversity of a metropolis, and yet it was not so vast that it was cut off from nature, like London or New York. The buildings on the edge of the city were reflected in the mighty waters of the Danube and looked out over the wide plain, merged with gardens and fields or climbed the last gently undulating green and wooded foothills of the Alps. You hardly noticed where nature ended and the city began, they made way for one another without resistance or contradiction. At the centre, in turn, you felt that the city had grown like a tree, forming ring after ring, and instead of the old ramparts of the fortifications, the Ringstrasse enclosed the innermost, precious core with its grand houses. In that core, the old palaces of the court and the nobility spoke the language of history in stone; here Beethoven had played for the Lichnowskys; there Haydn had stayed with the Esterházys; the premiere of his
Creation
was given in the old university; the Hofburg saw generations of emperors, Napoleon took up residence at Schönbrunn Palace; the united rulers of Christendom met in St Stephen’s Cathedral to give thanks for their salvation from the Turks, the university saw countless luminaries of scholarship and science in its walls. Among these buildings the new architecture rose, proud and magnificent, with shining avenues and glittering emporiums. But old Vienna had as little to do with the new city as dressed stone has to do with nature. It was wonderful to live in this city, which hospitably welcomed strangers and gave of itself freely; it was natural to enjoy life in its light atmosphere, full of elation and merriment like the air of Paris. Vienna, as everyone knew, was an epicurean city—however, what does culture mean but taking the raw material of life and enticing from it its finest, most delicate and subtle aspects by means of art and love? The people of Vienna were gourmets who appreciated good
food and good wine, fresh and astringent beer, lavish desserts and tortes, but they also demanded subtler pleasures. To make music, dance, produce plays, converse well, behave pleasingly and show good taste were arts much cultivated here. Neither military, political nor commercial matters held first place in the lives of individuals or society as a whole; when the average Viennese citizen looked at his morning paper, his eye generally went first not to parliamentary debates or foreign affairs but to the theatrical repertory, which assumed an importance in public life hardly comprehensible in other cities. For to the Viennese and indeed the Austrians the imperial theatre, the Burgtheater, was more than just a stage on which actors performed dramatic works; it was a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm, a bright mirror in which society could study itself, the one true
cartigiano
of good taste. In an actor at the imperial theatre, spectators saw an example of the way to dress, enter a room, make conversation, were shown which words a man of taste might use and which should be avoided. The stage was not just a place of entertainment but a spoken, three-dimensional manual of good conduct and correct pronunciation, and an aura of esteem, rather like a saint’s halo, surrounded all who had even the faintest connection with the court theatre. The Prime Minister, the richest magnate, could walk through the streets of Vienna and no one would turn to stare, but every salesgirl and every cab driver would recognise an actor at the court theatre or an operatic diva. When we boys had seen one of them pass by (we all collected their pictures and autographs) we proudly told each other, and this almost religious personality cult even extended to their entourages; Adolf von Sonnenthal’s barber, Josef Kainz’s cab driver were regarded with awe and secretly envied. Young dandies were proud to have their clothes made by the tailors patronised by those actors. A notable anniversary in a famous actor’s career, or a great actor’s funeral, was an event overshadowing all the political news. It was every
Viennese dramatist’s dream to be performed at the Burgtheater, a distinction that meant a kind of ennoblement for life and brought with it a series of benefits such as free theatre tickets for life and invitations to all official occasions, because you had been a guest in an imperial house. I still remember the solemn manner of my own reception. The director of the Burgtheater had asked me to visit his office in the morning, where he informed me—after first offering his congratulations—that the theatre had accepted my play. When I got home that evening, I found his visiting card in my apartment. Although I was only a young man of twenty-six, he had formally returned my call; my mere acceptance as an author writing for the imperial stage had made me a gentleman whom the director of that institution must treat as on a par with himself. And what went on at the theatre indirectly affected every individual, even someone who had no direct connection with it whatsoever. I remember, for instance, a day in my earliest youth when our cook burst into the sitting room with tears in her eyes: she had just heard that Charlotte Wolter, the star actress of the Burgtheater, had died. The grotesque aspect of her extravagant grief, of course, lay in the fact that our old, semi-literate cook had never once been to that distinguished theatre herself, and had never seen Charlotte Wolter either on stage or in real life, but in Vienna a great Austrian actress was so much part of the common property of the entire city that even those entirely unconnected with her felt her death was a catastrophe. Every loss, the death of a popular singer or artist, inevitably became an occasion for national mourning. When the old Burgtheater where the premiere of Mozart’s
The Marriage of Figaro
had been given was to be demolished, Viennese high society gathered there in a mood of solemn emotion, and no sooner had the curtain fallen than everyone raced on stage to take home at least a splinter from the boards that had been trodden by their favourite artists as a relic. Even decades later, these plain wooden splinters were kept in
precious caskets in many bourgeois households, just as splinters of the Holy Cross are preserved in churches.