WIEN 1918: Agonie der Kaiserstadt by Edgard Haider (review)

During the centennial remembrance of the outbreak of the First World War, Edgard Haider, the historian and former editorial journalist for ORF, published his contribution to understanding the Great War’s origins in his work WIEN 1914: Alltag am Rande des Abgrunds. His book opens on New Year’s 1914 and proceeds, more or less chronologically, through that fateful year, painting a picture of Vienna unknowingly at the brink of war. Both the opulence of the fin-de-siècle world of the imperial capital of the Habsburg Empire and the dismal social conditions of most of its two million inhabitants, as well as the general euphoria that summer at the outbreak of the war, are brought vividly to mind through contemporary newspapers and journals. Four years later, Haider has added a companion piece to this period of Austria’s history with WIEN 1918: Agonie der Kaiserstadt. This bracketing of Viennese history picks up where Frederic Morton’s works of historical non-fiction A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 (1980) and Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914 (2014) left off. Whereas Morton, an acclaimed author, presented his history in a novelistic style, Haider, the historian, allows the contemporary witnesses to dominate the narrative. This is no overstatement, considering that the endnotes show 455 citations from newspapers and journals of the time, primarily the Neue Freie Presse, the Reichspost, the Neues Wiener Journal, and the Arbeiterzeitung. The quotations often span many pages.

Depending so heavily from the press of the time, Haider might be criticized for not corroborating his historical construction with the multitude of evidence to be found in government archives, personal accounts, and the wealth of research in the secondary literature. He draws heavily from the perspective of the fourth estate, which at the time was operating under censorship.

One advantage of this approach to a historical period is that the modern reader experiences a turbulent period through the same medium available to the people at the time. The flourishes of a particular journalistic language rich with detailed descriptions and reflective of the norms of the Viennese bourgeoisie add to the historical understanding of the reader. While the newspapers are drawn from both the liberal and conservative (Catholic) organs, the citations appear to have been chosen for its coverage of the topic in question and not for representing a particular segment of society. The exception, however, is evident in the views of the Arbeiterzeitung, which even under censorship maintains the oppositional voice of the proletariat. Haider’s commentary, which links and provides transitions between citations, mimics the writing style of his sources, so much so that at times it is even difficult to distinguish when one is reading the words of the author or of an actual feuilleton. For instance, in leading into a piece written in 1918 by Ludwig Hirschfeld on the contrast between a Heurigen outing in the pre-war days and the war-weary hardships, Haider writes: “Da muss man sich schon mit Zündhölzern begnügen, wenn man durch die Gänge der Waggons geht. Ein jämmerliches Bild bieten auch die Schaffner. Hager, in schlotternden abgetragenen Uniformen fordern sie missmutig Fahrgäste zum Vorweisen der Fahrkarten auf. Jeder der Reisenden presst sein Gepäck, vor allem aber seine Lebensmittelpakete ängstlich an sich, als würde er das Familiensilber mit sich führen. Und dann erst die Fahrtdauer! . . . Ein Glück, wenn die Lokomotive unterwegs nicht ihren Geist aufgibt!” (289).

As in WIEN 1914, this sequel begins in the first few days of the new year, with Vienna suffering from a particularly cold winter and the weariness of four years of war. The structure of the book is essentially chronological in terms of the events covered, but the chapters are grouped according to topics showing the precipitous decline in all social strata, from the Kaiser and his imperial court, the aristocrats, the merchants, shopkeepers, laborers and then to the most vulnerable, the poor and children. The extremity of this decline is revealed in mundane changes...