Roundup of links to Austro-Hungarian outposts

'David. S. Luft’s evocative translations in Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea: Selected Essays and Addresses 1906-1927 are a welcome addition to the lost literature of Central European modernism.'

From Strange Flowers: 'Trakl was born in Salzburg in 1887, his mother’s drug addiction meaning he was largely raised by a French nanny. Named Marie Boring, she was clearly anything but, introducing her young charge to poets such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud.'

More from Strange Flowers: Alfred Kubin took 'anti-industrialist visionary ideologies' and 'stretch[ed] them ad absurdum'. Kubin's entry at the Weird Fiction Review.

Abstract for an article by Genese Grill: 'Robert Musil’s 1937 address «Über die Dummheit» ['On Stupidity'] navigated a challenging subject in a treacherous climate for free speech and simultaneously affirmed Musil’s conception of the necessary symbiosis of aesthetics and ethics. This paper argues for a reading of the address and its preparatory notes wherein Musil’s gendered «Stupidity» (Die Dummheit) represents the ethical role of the artist, as poetic, non-conscripted voice – and, thus, of Musil himself – in a period of totalitarian brutality.'

Wera Ouckama-Knoop (1900-1919)

Source of above photo. Wera Ouckama-Knoop was a dancer who died young. Rilke, a friend of her parents, dedicated his Sonnets to Orpheus to her.

Adam Kirsch on a new translation of Hilda Spiel's biography of Fanny von Arnstein: 'It soon becomes clear, however, that Fanny von Arnstein is more the occasion for Spiel’s book than its subject. That subject is really the experience of the Jews during the German Enlightenment—say, between 1776, when the 18-year-old Fanny moved from her native Prussia to Austria, and 1814, the year of Napoleon’s downfall, when her house became one of the most glamorous meeting-places during the Congress of Vienna.'

From the publisher's site for the von Arnstein biography: 'Soon Fanny hosted an ever more splendid salon which attracted the leading figures of her day, including Madame de Staël, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Nelson, his lover Lady Hamilton and the young Arthur Schopenhauer.'

From Weird Fiction Review, Larry Nolen on Bruno Schulz: 'The dissolution of states at the end of World War I can be discerned in symbolic form, as the old order has collapsed and something new and chaotic has emerged to take its place.  Yeats in “Easter, 1916” might have proclaimed that a “terrible beauty is born,” but for Schulz there is more the sense of monstrosities being birthed.' From the same site, John Curran Davis' translation of Schulz's 'The Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass'.

From Jacob Mikanowski's 2012 piece on Schulz in the LA Review of Books: 'The fiction of Bruno Schulz is alive with dead things. His stories all take place in the narrow landscape of his childhood: the small, provincial town of Drohobycz in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire.'

Gregor von Rezzori on his roots (from a 1988 interview in Bomb Magazine): 'I was born in Bukovina, Rumania. Before Rumania went into the war it was given to the Russians so I was already more or less a Russian although I still had a Rumanian passport and was living in Vienna at that time. When Bohemia was taken by the Russians I went to our ambassador in Berlin, who was a friend of the family, and I said, “What shall I do, what am I supposed to do?” He said, “Well, you are supposed to go home and find a new identity because you don’t exist."'

Rezzori (as Sir Roderick Crawford) with Johanna von Koczian in Bezaubernde Arabella (1959)

Source of above image. Rezzori's filmography at IMDb.

From Gregg Morris' review of Rezzori's Orient-Express: 'Rezzori is one of those unfashionable intellects whose rootlessness lead him to universalism rather than rancor. Though he now resides in Tuscany, he has published most of his work in German. During the Second World Was he was a broadcaster for British radio and parts of what is perhaps his best-known work, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, he composed in English.'

From last year's item (by Lorna Scott Fox) on Rezzori in The Nation: 'Von Rezzori’s father was an Italo-Austrian nobleman, proficient in chemistry and the arts, with a sinecure in Bukovina, where after 1919, when the region passed to Romania, he pretended to uphold a teetering bastion of civilization but really stayed on for the hunting.'

Scott Walters on the English translation of Count Miklós Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy: 'Translator Patrick Thursfield, in his preface to the Arcadia edition, recounts learning about them by chance from his neighbor in Tangiers, Bánffy’s daughter Katalin Bánffy-Jelin, who had begun an English translation consisting of loosely bound pages partially mangled by her cat. A collaboration began, and the resulting publication, with a foreword by Patrick Leigh Fermor, won the 2002 Oxford-Weidenfeld prize.'

Andrew Cusack on Bánffy, 'The Tolstoy of Transylvania'. The 2010 entry on Bánffy at Neglected Books. From Max Egremont's 2013 review in the Wall Street Journal: 'Bánffy died destitute in Soviet-dominated Budapest in 1950. His life is a grim parable of central Europe's 20th century.'

Hilde Spiel & Thomas Bernhard  (1988)

 The source of the above photo has a translation of Spiel's impressions of her friendship with Bernhard.

A note on Jay Kirk's new article 'Bartók’s Monster' (in the Oct. issue of Harpers), which is about the Transylvanian roots of some of Bartók’s music: 'The tiny, teetotaling Bartók took his recording machine—the monster—across the sheep trails and into village courtyards of Maramureş and Székely Land, where he would “suck the songs” from the peasant fiddlers. He was entranced by the "indeterminate content structure” of the music. “Like Rumpelstiltskin,” writes Kirk, “he hurried back to Budapest to spin the bales of itchy straw into chaotic threads of Lydian gold.”'

'In Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution, biographer John Gribbin follows the thread through the Austrian physicist’s fascinating, often eyebrow-raising life alongside scientific milestones.'

'Erich Wolfgang Korngold, born on 29 May, 1897 in Brno as the younger son of fierce Neue Presse music critic Julius Korngold, was a Wunderkind and shooting star of the declining Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. ... He left for Hollywood, to write first for Max Reinhardt and then under contract for Warner Brothers, a true musical “Romantic”, who is credited with creating the Hollywood sound.'

Recently sighted shades of central Europe

Adolf Loos (photo by Trude Fleischmann)

From 2003, a long article by Robert von Dassanowsky situating The Sound of Music in its historical context

From last August, John Gray on Elias Canetti's best work of fiction, his autobiography. Here's Geoffrey Hill's poem prompted by one of Canetti's other works, 'On Reading Crowds and Power'.

From last April, a new book on Musil, published by Continuum (and relating his work to recent continental theorists). It's reviewed by David Winters.

Mr. Waggish reflects on a paper by Burton Pike about Musil and language; and reflects on Ernest Gellner's Words and Things.

Daniel Hartley reflects on love in Rilke's Duino Elegies.

I didn't know that Ludwig Boltzmann took his own life while vacationing in Duino.

From A Common Reader, a note on the movie version of Joseph Roth's Legend of the Holy Drinker (which features Rutger Hauer), and a series of posts on Roth's Radetzky March.

From Philosophers Zone, Paul Mendes-Flohr on the work of Martin Buber.

The UNC Press blog has an article on Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation.

Leoš Janáček's Sinfonietta features prominently in Murakami's IQ84.

From the New York Public Library, Edmund de Waal in conversation with Paul Holdengraber:

Austro-Hungarian subjects

Mia Slavenska

Otto von Habsburg's obituary: 'He died a happy man, right about almost everything, if usually too early.'

'“Only silence is innocent”: Zagajewski on Rilke, irony, and the future of poetry'

Brett Foster reviews Edward Snow's new translation of some Rilke poems (here's an excerpt from Zagajewski's introduction to Snow's translations)

Mark Harman's translation of Kafka's 'Message From the Emperor'

Isotropic Films is making a film of Kafka's Metamorphosis (the father's packin' heat -- I wonder if the bug will shoot electric rays from its antennae)

At Three Percent, Bill Marx goes to bat for Ernst Weiss's novel, Georg Letham, and Brady Evan Walker reviews Joseph Roth's Job, and Chad W. Post introduces Gregor von Rezzori's Ermine of Czernopol

Tom Nairn reviews a new biography of Ernest Gellner 

Otto Preminger one-ups Letterman:



Freud's cocaine thing. Here's a pdf about Freud's cocaine thing (and the much worse drug habits of renegade psychoanalyst Otto Gross, who had radical ideas about sex and free love, and who had an affair with Frieda von Richtofen, who later married D. H. Lawrence and might've presented to him [Lawrence] Gross' ideas about sex and free love ...).

A longish piece in Haaretz called 'Monk, Mystic, Mechanic' -- on a recent Berlin exhibit devoted to Wittgenstein

Alan Saunders' and Gavin Kitching's podcast on Wittgenstein's puzzlement

Wittgenstein's photos, and a 'Lost archive shows Wittgenstein in a new light'

Dave Maier on Wittgenstein and meaning: "Can I say 'bububu' and mean 'If it doesn't rain I shall go for a walk'?" 

Humpty Dumpty

Fergus Johnston reviews the new translation of Jens Malte Fischer's 2003 biography of Mahler, and here's Rupert Christiansen's review

And M. Werbowski reviews Norman Lebrecht's Why Mahler?

Bob Duggan reviews a Neue Galerie show on fin-de-siècle Vienna: 'How Vienna in 1900 gave birth to modernity' -- '“In his life, Klimt clearly divided women into those he respected, even exalted, and those he slept with,” [Jill] Lloyd acknowledges, but also “Klimt’s images of women are acknowledged as complex representations with a symbolic force; as such, they embody allusions to the ‘women question’ that are far from straightforward".'

Mattel's new 'Gustav Klimt Barbie doll echoes the artist's portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, reflecting the painting's Byzantine mosaics and Egyptian motifs. She wears a halter gown with silvery trim, draped chiffon sleeves and bustle .... She is a magnificent muse.'

The world's first mobile internal combustion engine was made in Vienna

Mahler, with Glenn Gould conducting, Maureen Forrester singing: 

From Altschwabing to Manitoba

Schwabing lay at the heart of Munich's artistic creativity in the years before and after WWI. In about two minutes one can walk past the former Schwabing residences of Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Karl Wolfskehl (a poet and playwright who belonged to Stefan George's circle). These artists all lived on Ainmillerstrasse and on Römerstrasse. By clicking on the next links, you can see my photos of Rilke's place, Klee's old building, Kandinsky's home, and Wolfskehl's place around the corner from them.

Kandinsky reminisced fondly about his days in Munich in a letter that he wrote to Hanna and Karl Wolfskehl on Nov. 6, 1926, in which Kandinsky recalls

the old times -- Ainmiller-Römerstrasse -- I still have in good memory. Those were in general good, exciting, hopeful times that promised more than has been realized till now. (Quoted from Peg Weiss's book, Kandinsky in Munich: the Formative Jugendstil Years,  p. 82)

Karl Wolfskehl

Munich's creative ferment sustained many such interconnections across the arts, connections not just between individual talents but among whole creative circles as well. Kandinsky, for instance, was at the centre of the Blue Rider painters while Wolfskehl (the 'Zeus of Schwabing') belonged to the Kosmikerkreis (Cosmic Circle). There was also a musical influence on the Blue Rider, for Kandinsky was much inspired by the work of the Viennese musician (and painter) Arnold Schoenberg.

One surprise for me in reading about the creative milieu of Munich in the early 20th century is its long hidden connection to Canadian literature. One of the early Canadian novelists was Frederick Philip Grove. Apart from being a novelist, Grove turns out to have been an accomplished fabulist. He appeared in Manitoba in 1912, claiming to be from Russia. He became a teacher and eventually a principal, lived near the North Dakota border, and wrote stories about prairie life. It turns out that Frederick Grove, prairie storyteller, was really Felix Paul Berthold Friedrich Greve, a Prussian who had moved to Munich in 1901 and associated with members of Stefan George's circle (esp. Friedrich Gundolf). In Munich, Greve affected the mannerisms of Oscar Wilde, which apparently undermined Greve's attempt to ingratiate himself with Wolfskehl. Greve ran up a big debt, was sent to prison, faked his own suicide and moved to Kentucky and then Canada. [Correction (July 15): After Munich, Greve moved to Berlin and began a relationship with Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. She helped him to fake his suicide and followed him to America, but he parted company with her in Kentucky.] So, this seemingly somewhat boring old figure in Canadian, prairie literature turns out to have arrived here from the fin de siècle's hippie central in Schwabing, Munich.



Sources consulted (besides those mentioned above): München: Literarische Streifzüge by Margarete Graf; Only in Munich by Duncan J. D. Smith.

Cafe Imperial

I wasn't much interested in Cafe Imperial. It seemed to be just an extension of a ritzy hotel, so I didn't even venture inside. Too bad, since it turns out to have a very interesting history.

First, Elias Canetti gives a mean-spirited anecdote about his meeting there with Stefan Zweig. I don't believe this anecdote to be accurate -- Canetti's autobiography is not that reliable, especially when he's talking about someone he didn't like. He evidently didn't like Zweig. Here's the relevant quotation:

"Soon after my return I ran into [Stefan] Zweig at the Cafe Imperial. He was sitting alone in one of the back rooms, holding his hand over his mouth to hide the absence of teeth [due to dental work]. Though he did not like to be seen in that condition, he beckoned me over to his table and bade me be seated. 'I've heard the whole story from Broch,' he said. 'You've met Joyce. ... Get Joyce to write a preface. Then your book will get attention.'" (Elias Canetti, The Play of the Eyes, p. 186)

Cafe Imperial also appears in Robert Musil's Diaries, but (again) Musil doesn't have much of interest to say about a cafe: "Yesterday, or the day before yesterday, spent some time with Morgenstern in the Cafe Imperial." (Robert Musil, Diaries, entry for March 26, 1930, p. 366)

More interestingly, Ludwig Wittgenstein met at this cafe with Ludwig von Ficker during the latter's visit to Vienna (so that Wittgenstein could give away part of his family's fortune to worthy artists under Ficker's guidance). Here's Ficker's description of a meeting with Wittgenstein on July 24, 1914:

"We met in Cafe Imperial, where there ensued a somewhat strenuous, but positively stimulating conversation between [Ludwig Wittgenstein] and the hard-of-hearing builder [Adolf Loos] on the still contoversial Haus am Michaelerplatz on questions of modern architecture, which seemed to interest Wittgenstein." (Ludwig von Ficker describing a meeting on July 24, 1914 at Cafe Imperial; quoted from Wittgenstein in Vienna, Allan S. Janik & Hans Veigl [Springer, 1998], p. 123)

The cafe in the Hotel Imperial was initially called Cafe Frohner. It's mentioned by Fritz Wittels, a med student and budding psychoanalyst in Freud's circle. According to Edward Timms, Wittels was also part of Karl Kraus' circle in 1907-08. Timms summarizes Wittels' description as follows:

"Later they [Kraus and Wittels] would go on to the Cafe Frohner, situated in the luxurious Hotel Imperial. Kraus was a heavy smoker, but never took a drop of alcohol. He was a gifted conversationalist and on good days, Wittels recalls, he enchanted everyone. All kinds of people -- senior government officials as well as artists, actors, and attractive girls -- would come to his table; and Kraus made them feel they were the 'centre of the universe'. Later, feeling the need to escape from the stifling atmosphere of bourgeois coffee houses, Kraus and his circle would move on to lower-class cafes patronised by prostitutes and bookies." (Edward Timms, 'The 'Child-Woman': Kraus, Freud, Wittles, and Irma Karczewska', in Vienna 1900: from Altenberg to Wittgenstein, ed. E. Timms and R. Robertson [Edinburgh University Press, 1990], p. 88)

Cafe Imperial was favoured by musicians; Mahler was a regular, as were Schonberg, Berg and Webern. According to Janik and Veigl, the Imperial was also visited by Freud, Hofmannsthal, Werfel, Rilke, Bruckner, Wagner, Brahms and Trotsky -- which raises a question: Is there a Viennese cafe from Trotsky's time in the Habsburg capital in which he did not luxuriate, excogitate or vegetate?

Update: I just read that Stalin was in Vienna briefly in early 1913 with Lenin, Bukharin and Trotsky. I can't find evidence that Stalin frequented any cafes. In his excellent Stalin biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore reports that Stalin, like Hitler, liked to take walks in the park around the Schonbrunn Palace.

Montefiore quotes Trotsky's description of his first encounter with Stalin: "I was sitting at the table beside the samovar in the apartment of Skobelev ... in the ancient capital of the Habsburgs [...] when suddenly the door opened with a knock and an unkown man entered. He was short ... thin ... his greyish-brown skin covered in pockmarks ... I saw nothing in his eyes that resembled friendliness [...] Then, as silently as he had come, he left, leaving a very depressing but unusual impression on me." (Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin [Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2007], p. 275)