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in
The Man Without Qualities
, was the product of that rivalry, and also of the disastrous alliance between the newly formed German Empire (always seen by Austria as something of a parvenu) and the Habsburg realm, the old centre of the European spirit—that is to say of German civilisation and language. Before 1918 ‘Austria’ was a cultural and idealistic concept that could embrace people in the most remote parts of this realm, like the people of the Bukovina commemorated by Gregor von Rezzori, or people like my grandparents, German-speaking Hungarians, Jews and Bohemians, who saw themselves as citizens of this world despite its many hatreds, rivalries and exclusions.
    The paradox of contemporary Austria is that it has been obliged to transfer that imperial dream, its conviction that it is the leader of peoples and nations, into an entirely non-political sphere, or at least into a dubious political and cultural idealism. The people strolling around the immaculately swept streets of this theme park are, in a way, just as much displaced persons, exiled from their birthright, as those former citizens who were driven to the farthest corners of the world by fear, enmity and hate, people who elaborated a mythology of this golden world in countless cafés and espresso bars in Sydney and Melbourne, in Buenos Aires and Rio, in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
    Vienna is wholly immersed in its past. The repertoire of the Vienna State Opera, that glamorous and prestigious establishment, is the most conservative in the world, with almost no departure from standard Italian and German works. Even in the visual arts, ‘modern’ in Vienna means Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oscar Kokoschka, artists firmly embedded in the culture of the
fin-de-siècle
. Concert-goers still consider Mahler a difficult modern composer. In no other city of Europe, not even in the architecturally richer cities of Italy, is the tendency to conserve, that is, to live in history, so evident as it is here.The extraordinary number of dwellings Mozart occupied—generally because of his difficulties in paying rent—in the last ten years of his life are meticulously marked throughout the inner city. You may stay in this pension, where he wrote
The Abduction from the Seraglio
, or take coffee on the ground floor of a building where the G minor symphony was composed. Meanwhile the living culture of the German-speaking people is conducted elsewhere, in the cities of the newly reunified Germany, the world that Habsburg pride used to regard with undisguised contempt. To the citizens of Munich or to the inhabitants of the newly reunited Berlin (half glitz, half grot) Vienna is a cultural mausoleum dedicated to the old and hopelessly outdated fantasy of Kakania.
    As you walk around the streets of Vienna, that world—the world of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert—seems to be a living reality. In the narrow passages of the old city the baroque palaces look down on the bustling world below with seemingly timeless serenity. Here is a sense of continuity, of the intimate and life-sustaining connections between the past and the present. A moment’s reflection should remind us, nevertheless, of the lessons of the theme park. Vienna was almost wholly obliterated during the Second World War. Most of the city’s famous landmarks were lovingly restored during the 1950s and the 1960s. My first memory of this city—for I do not remember the times I was taken there in my infancy to visit relatives or to spend a few days among the woody hills of the Wienerwald—is of the early winter of 1946, when my parents and I were making our way to our new life in Australia.
    We spent those weeks of anticipation in a small hotel in the inner city. The three of us slept in one room, which was cast into a constant gloom throughout the dark winter days and nights. No glass remained in the handsome windows that looked, or should have looked, down on