The Hare With Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal [95]
Viktor is seventy-eight and looks exactly like his father – and like the portrait of his cousin Charles printed with his obituary. I think of Swann in his old age, when all his features have become larger: the Ephrussi nose is resplendent. I look at a picture of Viktor with his neatly trimmed beard and realise that he looks like my father does now, and wonder how long I’ve got before I too start to look like this.
Viktor is so anxious that he reads several of the papers each day. He is right to be anxious. There have been years of overt pressure and covert funding by Germany of the Austrian National Socialists. Hitler has now demanded that the Austrian Chancellor, Schuschnigg, release members of the Nazi Party from prison and let them participate in government. Schuschnigg has complied. The pressure has increased and now he has had enough. He has decided to hold a plebiscite on Austria’s independence from the Nazi Reich on 13th March.
When Viktor goes to the Wiener Club on the Kärtner Ring on Thursday 10th March for lunch with his Jewish friends (out the door, turn left, 500 yards on the left) the afternoon disappears in smoky debate about what is happening. History is not helping Viktor.
Part Three
VIENNA, KÖVESCES, TUNBRIDGE WELLS, VIENNA 1938–1947
24. ‘an ideal spot for mass marches’
On 10th March 1938 the hopes for the plebiscite were high. The previous evening in Innsbruck the Austrian Chancellor had given a ringing speech invoking an old Tyrolean hero: ‘Men – the hour has struck!’ It was a gorgeous winter day, bright and clear. There were leaflets everywhere, scattered from trucks, and posters illustrated with a dramatic ‘Ja!’ on them. ‘With Schuschnigg for a free Austria!’ There were the crosses of the Fatherland Front painted in white on the walls of buildings and on pavements. There were crowds in the streets and columns of youth groups chanting ‘Heil Schuschnigg! Heil Liberty!’ And ‘Red-White-Red until Death!’ The radio played endless broadcasts of Schuschnigg’s speech. The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde put up the huge sum of 500,000 schillings – $80,000 – to help towards the campaign of support: the plebiscite was a bastion for the Jews of Vienna.
Before dawn on Friday 11th the head of the Vienna police woke Schuschnigg to tell him of troop movements on the German border. Rail traffic had been stopped. It was another bright and sunny morning. It was the last day of Austria, a day of ultimata from Berlin, desperate attempts from Vienna to see if London or Paris, or Rome, would support them against the increasing German demands for the Chancellor to resign in favour of a pro-Hitler minister, Artur von Seyss-Inquart.
On 11th March the IKG added an extra 300,000 schillings to Schuschnigg’s campaign. There were rumours that columns of troops had crossed over the border from Germany, rumours that the plebiscite might be postponed.
The radio – a huge English radio – brown and impressive, with a dial with names of capital cities on it, is kept in the library, and Viktor and Emmy spend the afternoon there, listening. Even Rudolf joins them. At half-past four Anna brings in Viktor’s tea in a glass with the porcelain dish bearing a slice of lemon and the sugar, and Emmy her English tea and the little blue Meissen box with the pills for her heart condition. There is coffee for Rudolf, who is nineteen and contrary. Anna puts the tray on the library table with its book rest. At seven o’clock Radio Vienna reveals the postponement of the plebiscite and then, a few minutes later, the resignation of the entire cabinet except for the Nazi-sympathising Seyss-Inquart, who is to stay on as Interior Minister.
At ten to eight Schuschnigg broadcasts: ‘Austrian men and women! This day has brought us face to face with a serious and decisive situation . . . The Government of the German Reich presented an ultimatum to the Federal President demanding that he choose a candidate chosen by the Reich Government to the office of Chancellor. . . or . . . German troops would begin to cross our frontiers