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By Root 1296 0

Fanny Loewenstein has spent her childhood living all over Europe and speaks the same run of languages as Elisabeth. They are both seventeen and very keen on poetry: they write constantly. To their great excitement, both the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the composer Richard Strauss are staying too, as are Hofmannsthal’s two sons. The other house-guests include the historian Joseph Redlich, who, Elisabeth wrote sixty years later, ‘impressed us very unfavourably with his predictions of the impending defeat of Austria and Germany while Fanny and I still believed the official communiqués of a victorious outcome’.

In October the Reichspost claims that there is an international conspiracy against Austria–Hungary and that Lenin and Kerensky and Lord Northcliffe are all Jews. President Woodrow Wilson is also acting ‘under the influence’ of the Jews.

On 21st November, the anniversary of the late Emperor’s demise, all schoolchildren get a day off.

In the spring of 1918 things are very difficult indeed. Emmy, ‘the dazzling centre of a distinguished society circle’, according to Kraus in Die Fackel, is more dazzling than ever. She has a new lover, a young count in one of the cavalry regiments. This young count is the son of family friends, a regular guest at Kövesces, where he brings his own horses. He is also extremely good-looking and is far closer to Emmy in age than to Viktor.

In the spring a book is published for the schoolchildren of the Empire, Unser Kaiserpaar. It describes the new Emperor and his wife and son at the funeral of Franz Josef. ‘The illustrious parental couple arranged it that their first-born child was introduced at the hand of his mother. From this picture arose quite magically a bond of understanding between the ruling pair and the people: the tender gesture of the mother captivated the empire.’

On 18th April Elisabeth and Emmy go to see Hamlet at the Burgtheater with the impossibly handsome Alexander Moissi in the title role. ‘Der grösste Eindruck meines Lebens’ – the greatest experience of my life – Elisabeth notes in her green notebook. Emmy is thirty-eight and two months pregnant.

It is in this spring that there is good family news. Both Emmy’s younger sisters are engaged to be married. Gerty, twenty-seven, is to be married to Tibor, a Hungarian aristocrat with the family name of Thuróczy de Alsó-Körösteg et Turócz-Szent-Mihály. Eva, twenty-five, is to be married to Jenö, the less fantastically named Baron Weiss von Weiss und Horstenstein.

In June there is a wave of strikes. The flour ration is now just 35 grams a day, enough to fill a coffee-cup. Numerous bread trucks are ambushed by large crowds of women and children. In July milk disappears. It is meant to be saved for nursing mothers and the chronically sick, but even they find it difficult to get hold of. Many Viennese can only survive by foraging for potatoes in the fields outside the city. The government debates the carrying of rucksacks. Should city dwellers be allowed to carry them? If they do, should they be searched at the rail stations?

There are rats in the courtyard. These are not ivory rats with amber eyes.

There are also increasing numbers of demonstrations against the Jews. On 16th June there is a German People’s Assembly that meets in Vienna to swear fealty to the Kaiser and reaffirm the goal of pan-German unity. One speaker has a solution to the problems: a pogrom to heal the wounds of the State.

On 18th June the Prefect of Police asks permission of Viktor to station men in the courtyard of the Palais, where the car stands, unused for want of petrol. The police will be on hand in the case of unrest, but out of sight. Viktor agrees.

Desertions multiply. More of the Hapsburg army surrender than want to fight: 2,200,000 soldiers are taken prisoner. This is seventeen times the number of British soldiers who are prisoners of war.

On 28th June Elisabeth receives her end-of-year report from the Schottengymnasium. Seven ‘sehr gut’ for religious study, German, Latin, Greek, geography and history, philosophy and physics. One ‘gut’ for