Vienna

Today, I started reading Eric Hobsbawn's, "Interesting Times" on the train from Suzhou to Nanjing. Hobsbawn I know as a Marxist Historian of the ilk that only bourgeoisie societies can tolerate. Still, his books, "The Age of Revolution", "The Age of Capital", "The Age of Empire" and "The Age of Extremes" are written in tolerable prose and, despite certain shortcomings, they are not devoid of a thinking Historian's logic when attempting to answer very pertinent questions. It is not the place of this piece to get bogged down with those questions. However, "Interesting Times" appears to be a bit different from those four books, it is of a more autobiographical nature. It was his description of Vienna between the two world wars that kept me occupied for about one and a half hours of a one hour forty five minute trip. After the Treaty of St.Germain in 1919 Vienna was situated in a very different world to the one it had inhabited prior to that treaty. Nevertheless, the impression created is of a city that didn't only try to but actually succeeded in keeping up appearances. It is this Vienna that I know today.
After 1919, Vienna was at the centre of fragile democracy and then, after the Civil War of February 1934, of a clerical dictatorship and from March 1938 until the end of the Second World War it was to continue its existence as the main city of the "Ostmark" in Hitler's Germany. After that war it was to establish itself as the capital of the second Austrian republic. That The Republic of Austria suffers at times from a sort of schizophrenia and at times from a collective amnesia is, I suppose, perfectly natural considering its inconsistent past. Yet, I do get the impression that at least Vienna doesn't suffer too much from its identity crisis; when I walk through the city's streets I am, just as I am when I walk through parts of Prague or Budapest, transported to a bygone day, to a time when "Mitteleuropa" was lived. The illusion is of continuity and a "heile Welt". It is 'Schloss Schonbrunn', the 'Stephansdom', the 'Hofburg', the cafes, the bars and the general ambience, it is the centre of Europe and Vienna is one of those places where you are really aware of what Europe was, is and can be.
The picture above is of the city centre in Vienna.