Professor Cates

C/I 101 C Vienna: City of Dreams

November 17, 2006

The political atmosphere in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna was a very trying time. Many figures

emerged during this period, and they all represented very different ideologies, from liberalism to

anti-Semitism, to Zionism. Three of these figures were Crown Prince Rudolf von Habsburg, heir

to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Georg von Schönerer, leader of the anti-Semitic Pan-Germans,

and Theodor Herzl, eventual leader of the Zionist movement. These men represent very

contrasting ideals and yet they appear to share a certain characteristic, their frustration with a city

not willing to help put their plans to action. Although Schönerer, Herzl, and the Crown Prince

seem to be very different men, they are actually quite similar.

The Crown Prince Rudolf von Habsburg had a very difficult time trying to espouse his

liberal thought upon Vienna. He had to channel it through symbolic speeches and secret writings

for the Wiener Tagblatt, a leading liberal newspaper in Vienna at the time. To accomplish this,

Rudolf would send his trusty servant Nehammer through the streets of Vienna zigzagging as he

went, to shake any tails he might pick up along the way. (Morton p.36) Moritz Szeps would read

Rudolf’s articles, and then publish them by an unnamed author. Rudolf had to do things this way

because his father would not let him intrude on the politics that the Empire was involved in. This

sad existence that the Crown Prince of Austria had to write in secret so his father would not find

out may have been a stimulus for his suicide. However, fear of his father was not the only cause;

his frustration with his city, Vienna, and its people may have also led him to take his life. Rudolf

pled with his countrymen to look to the future and see what lay ahead, but he felt all along as if

they were only looking at him, as Morton puts it, as their “Prince Charming”. “His whole life
was lived out behind a smokescreen of gossip, which had plenty to feed on in his last two years,

but the brooding morbidity was well-concealed.” (Crankshaw p.283) Rudolf tried to get his

message across, but all the people saw was his well groomed hair and finely tailored clothes.

They did not want to hear about his politics, they wanted to gossip about the parties he was

attending, the balls he was dancing at, and how he did hunting at his estate in Mayerling. The

Crown Prince was the city’s playboy, yet he did not want to be seen in this light. In his speeches

to Vienna, “He exhorted his Viennese to progress. They loved the lecturer all the more for the

peculiarity of his lecture. They adored his arm, the comeliness of its angle, the fashionability of

its sleeve, but adroitly ignored the future to which it kept pointing.” (Morton p.37) But Rudolf

had a message, and that was for his Viennese subjects to “progress”; it is sad that no one heeded

his advice, for perhaps his empire could have been saved. “Rudolf admired the telephone’s use

abroad, not least its facilitation of stock-market-business between widely separated cities.

Particularly in America this let more and more of the common people participate in transactions

heretofore limited to millionaires.” But the Viennese were confused by this invention. Telephone

calls from Vienna to Mayerling, the only line in Austria, were limited to ten minutes in which

bureaucratic process took up over half the time. Though they were not listening to Rudolf, many

people did want a change in the system. There were fantastic dreamers who all came up with

ideas to fight the establishment, but “The difference between Rudolf and other dreamers was that

to him would fall the power to make these dreams come true. There was no escape from this.

Others may dream and sigh for power, knowing they will never hold it; free, thus, to blame for

every failure those who have the power. Rudolf’s position was less comfortable: it was, indeed,

intolerable.”(Crankshaw p.286) Rudolf was not yet in a situation where he could change things,

nor, as fate would have it, would he ever be. He knew his position in society and was trying to
use it to get things done. These attempts were futile and must have caused him great inner

turmoil. How angry he must have been that his future subjects were not paying him any attention

and neither was his father. This isolation from the world, and from the very people he was trying

to save, frustrated him until he could no longer take it. And so on January 31, 1889 the people of

Vienna awoke to a shocking headline in papers all around the city “OUR CROWN PRINCE

DEAD!” (Morton p.243) Many of the papers printed cause of death as natural, heart-attack,

stroke etc. but on February 1st, the Wiener Tagblatt officially announced suicide by gunshot as

the cause of death. (Morton p.243) Rudolf’s ideas for a new Vienna, his liberal thoughts,

everything he could have accomplished were all gone, with the death of Rudolf came the

beginning of the end of the Austro-Hungarian, Habsburg Empire.

Yet while Rudolf was contemplating suicide, another figure of the Fin-de-Siecle era had

just begun his jail sentence for “wreaking havoc upon the Neues Wiener Tageblatt, breaking the

presses and beating up the staff.”(Janik, Toulmin p.56) Georg Ritter von Schönerer, the Knight

of Rosenau, was a German nationalist and leader of the anti-Semitic pan-Germans. Schönerer

was proud that, of all the anti-Semitic groups in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna, only the Pan-Germans had

a strictly nationalist program, wanting the Austrian Empire broken up and for the German

speaking states to join the German Empire. Georg was the son of self-made man Mathias Ritter

Schönerer. Mathias received a patent of nobility in 1860 for his work with the Rothschilds and

Baron Simon Sina on the Empress Elizabeth Railway, the first train railway in Austria. (Schorske

p.121-2) The young Rosenau had a very interesting childhood, switching schools many times.

First starting at Oberrealschule then changing to the school of commerce in Dresden and finally

finishing his education in two agricultural academies. (Schorske p.123) After completing his

education Georg entered into an apprenticeship under “one of Austria’s greatest aristocratic
entrepreneurs, Johann Adolf Prince Schwarzenberg.” (Schorske p. 124) Schönerer spent some

time as grand seigneur under Prince Schwarzenberg but Schorske puts forth that during this time

he was gradually preparing to rebel against all that his father had built: “Habsburg loyalty,

capitalism, interracial tolerance, and financial speculation.” (Schorske p. 124) Georg waited for

the perfect moment to unleash himself upon the world, and it came in 1881. “The process of

transformation of the Knight of Rosenau into a nationalist demagogue proceeded slowly and was

completed only after his father’s death in 1881. Thanks to his fortune, his energy, and his

practical knowledge of rural needs, Schönerer first established in his home district a firm base for

a political career.” (Schorske p.125) Forming agricultural associations and volunteer fire

departments, Schönerer gained the loyalty of the small-town folk. He chose the Volkskaiser,

people’s king, Joseph II as his constituent symbol to show the rural people that he too was

committed to “bring the fruits of science to the land and to build a strong peasantry.”(Schorske p.

125) But like Rudolf, Schönerer did not gain a strong following. “His (Schönerer) infamous

legacy was the explicit rejection of the ideals of reason and progress, and their replacement by

the politics of the will to power.”(Janik,Toulmin p.55-6) Schönerer’s roots no doubt figured into

his politics.

Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin’s statement from Wittgenstein’s Vienna best describes

Schönerer’s political life in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. “Of the four figures who most reflect the

atmosphere on the political scene in Vienna before World War One, Schönerer was the least

charismatic and the only one who never achieved a mass following.” (Janik,Toulmin p.55-6)

Schönerer became too edgy for the people. They liked him at first when he sweet talked them

about being a man of the people, but the people soon realized he was not the nice boy they

thought he was. “His effect was, rather, to introduce the politics of violence into the city; the
characteristic marks of his brand of nihilism were violent rhetoric and street fighting.”

(Janik,Toulmin p.55-6) In truth, Schönerer was no man of the people, he was a man of ideology.

He saw Germans as a superior race to all those around them and “As with so many among their

number, he feared that Taaffe’s “Iron Ring” was destined to produce an encirclement of the

culturally superior and enlightened Germans by the inferior and barbarous Slavs. This would be

especially damaging to the Germans of Bohemia and would orient foreign policy toward the Tsar

and away from Schönerer’s ideal of Germanic superiority, Bismarck.” (Janik,Toulmin p.55-6)

This fear of encirclement caused him and others to produce a draft of the Linz Program in 1882

and would later add a twelfth point “pledging that the nationalist faction of the Liberal party

would work for “the removal of Jewish influence from all sections of public life…indispensable

for carrying out the reforms aimed at it.” (Janik,Toulmin p.56) The Linz Program combined

“radical democracy, social reform, and nationalism in a manner resembling the contemporaneous

phenomenon of populism in the United States.” (Schorske p. 126) But Schönerer was not

satisfied with just this program. He longed to be a part of Germany, which many of his fellow

country men disagreed with wholly: “Schönerer’s fellow nationalists in 1882 had not reached the

point where they would wish to dissolve the Habsburg Empire entirely, and most of them never

would.” (Schorske p. 126) This probably frustrated Schönerer immensely, and this also points to

why he never gained a huge following. He had big plans for Austria but they would never be

fully implemented for many reasons. First he would never have convinced Austria to give up its

statehood, and second his incarceration seven years later and suspension from politics for five

more years dealt a death blow to his political life. “[O]n March 8, 1888 the Knight of Rosenau

gave his concept of nationalism a thorough practical demonstration, when he and his companions

wrought havoc in the offices of the Neues Wiener Tageblatt, breaking the presses and beating up
the staff.”(Janik,Toulmin p.56) Most of the workers were Jewish, which was one reason why

Schönerer attacked in the first place. The attack devastated Schönerer’s following and his

political actions. “Consequently, he lost the city’s artisans and clerks to Lueger; his inability to

accomplish anything effective, reinforced by his anti-Catholic and anti-Habsburg rantings,

finally made him repulsive to that class of men, while his personal authoritarianism led

inevitably to a fragmentation of his following.” (Janik, Toulmin p.56) Schönerer fled after

completion of his jail term and sought a political following elsewhere. He turned to the German

nationalists in the industrial areas of Bohemia. His German followers feared displacement by

Czechs who were willing to work for lower wages. They soon became angered at the Social

Democrats in Bohemia who they believed had their ranks, as Janik and Toulmin put it, “ridden

with Jews”. (Janik,Toulmin p.56) Schönerer’s greatest sense of accomplishment came in 1901

“when twenty-one members of his Pan-German Union were elected to the Reichstag, within

twelve months of the 1901 elections the Pan-German Union had splintered, and his true legacy to

the politics of the Empire was his role in the 1897 demonstrations.” (Janik,Toulmin p.56-7)

Schönerer was finished, his party dissolved, his legal status as a politician still in limbo, he never

overcame these failures and all but disappeared. He died in 1921, but before his death he

arranged to be buried near the man he admired so much, Otto Von Bismarck. Schönerer’s legacy

did live on though. One of his admirers was Adolf Hitler, and Schönerer views went on to

influence both Hitler and the Nazi Party as a whole.

On the other end of the liberal spectrum was a Jewish man who would become one of the

men responsible for the creation of a Jewish state. His name was Theodor Herzl and he was born

in Budapest, Hungary in 1860. “Herzl was not a native Viennese. He was born in Budapest, but

not long after his arrival in Vienna in 1878 he, like so many other immigrants, had become, so to
say, more Viennese than the Danube. His family was Reform Jewish, politically liberal and

culturally German. The exclusion of all but a very few Jews from the aristocracy led them to

compensate by entering the cultural elite. For the purpose of the official census, which used

language as the criterion of nationality, Yiddish was treated as a German dialect, so the Jews had

for years been counted as Germans. So it need be no surprise that the Jews of Vienna should

have turned to German culture to create an aesthetic aristocracy, and so escape (as Herzl saw it)

from the lives of trade for which middle-class Jews were otherwise destined. Many a Jew found

himself an enthusiastic Wagnerite, like Viktor Adler, while Herzl was not alone among his race

in responding affirmatively to his first encounter with German nationalism.” (Janik Toulmin 58-

9) Herzl saw himself as a German, and indeed was ready to renounce Judaism to accept Christian

baptism, except he was scared to offend his parents. So he started off politics in favor of German

nationalism. But Herzl soon came face to face with anti-Semitism. “In 1891 he became Paris

correspondent for the New Free Press (Vienna), the influential liberal newspaper of the time.

Herzl was in Paris to witness the rise of anti-Semitism which resulted from the court martial of

Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, who was divested of his rank in a humiliating public

ceremony in January 1895, as a mob shouted "Death to the Jews." After considering a number of

possibilities, Herzl became convinced that the only solution to the Jewish problem was the mass

exodus of Jews from their places of residence. Originally he wrote that it didn't matter where

Jews went. He eventually realized that a national home in Palestine was the answer.” (“Herzl,

Theodor (1860-1904)”) He later did accept his Judaism de facto. In fact he accepted it with a

vengeance. “His Zionism was, in a real sense, the result of his own initial anti-Semitism and his

failure to escape, as he sorely desired, from his own Judaism.” (Janik,Toulmin p.59-60) So with

Herzl trapped in Judaism he decided to further the Jewish cause by publishing The Jewish State
in 1896. Only after this publication did “Zionism emerge[] as a strong political movement”

(Rozenbilt p.161) He would dedicate himself to Zionism for the next 8 years until his death in

1904. Zionism was a small grassroots effort until Herzl wrote his book. From there it took off

and almost fifty years later their goal was accomplished and a Jewish State established. At first,

“Herzl appealed to wealthy Jews such as Baron Hirsch and Baron Rothschild, to join the national

Zionist movement, but in vain. He then appealed to the people, and the result was the convening

of the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, on August 29-31, 1897.” (Theodor

(“Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl” 2006) Herzl soon found that trying to get money from the rich was

useless when the rich saw no need for his cause. The rich were not being persecuted. As Mayer

Amschel Rothschild once said “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care

not who makes its laws.” And so Herzl decided to go to the middle and lower classes to help gain

a Jewish state. This resulted in the aforementioned World Zionist Congress, the first of many

such congresses. Herzl worked with Kaiser Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany and at that time

Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Joseph Chamberlain to establish a Zionist State in Palestine.

But he was turned down, and the best offer he received was a temporary state in Uganda, for

Jews in immediate danger. When he brought this before the Zionist Congress in 1903, many of

the attendees were outraged and the suggestion almost caused a Zionist split. The idea was later

rejected in 1905 after Herzl’s death in 1904 “of pneumonia and a weak heart overworked by his

incessant efforts on behalf of Zionism. By then the movement had found its place on the world

political map. In 1949, Herzl's remains were brought to Israel and reinterred on Mount Herzl in

Jerusalem.” (“Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl” 2006) Herzl’s legacy lived on after his death

and even after the creation of Israel. He has numerous streets, a forest, a mountain and countless

other landmarks named for him throughout Israel.

 Herzl, Rudolf, and Schönerer were all very ideological men in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna.

They may seem three different men, but they are actually all quite similar. Each man tried to do

what he thought best for his countrymen. Rudolf tried to point his people towards the future. He

wanted his people to modernize and join the world in looking to the twentieth century. He saw

the idea of progressing as a way to gain power in international affairs and make his state truly

great. Schönerer on the other hand was more involved in intra-national affairs. He wanted to

nationalize the German speaking regions of the Habsburg Empire and join the German Reich

under Kaiser Wilhelm II and Otto von Bismarck. He saw the Jews and Slavic people as a plague

upon his Germanic brothers and sisters. While Schönerer was chastising the Jews, Herzl was

trying to save them. He saw that the best thing to do for his people was to create a Jewish state

which thus began his career in Zionism. All three of these men thought that what they were

doing was best for their people. Had they convened and worked together they might have been

able to save the people of Vienna and the Austrian Empire from the impending dissolution of

their state. But their differences of opinion and class kept them apart. These men were not

completely concerned with their people; they shared another similarity, focus on self and image.

Rudolf had to play the empire’s playboy; he had to be seen at operas, concerts, parties and such.

Schönerer could not be seen consorting with Jews, he had an image to maintain, and his hate

fueled this image. Herzl also showed no interest in working with others. He spent much of his

time alone trying to create the Jewish state. These three men worked so hard separately for their

country when, if they had come together they could have accomplished so much more. Some of

their ideals may be seen as irrational by their contemporaries, such as Schönerer’s rabid anti-

Semitism, or Rudolf’s progressive movement, or even Herzl’s idea to create a Jewish state, but

these ideas proved to shape the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All three ideas went on to
impress upon younger minds whether it was Adolf Hitler, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, or

the number of progressives influenced by Rudolf. Perhaps had these men or their respective

parties worked together, they could have prevented the tragedies caused by countless wars in the

name being right about God or race superiority. But sadly the world may never know what these

men could have accomplished together.

In Vienna near the end of the nineteenth century, three men emerged. They were destined

to be remembered for their causes, one’s name was marred, the other’s upheld, and still the other

remained neutral, almost forgotten by the sands of time. They came from different backgrounds,

different classes of life, different religions and races, yet they tried to better the future of their

country and their followers; this is not to say they were not in it for personal gain, no man is. But

they did do the best they could with what they had. They believed in a better Vienna, a better

place for their countrymen, a better place for the world as they saw it. But their efforts were

futile; their country was destined to take a different course. It took a course of war, strife and

finally dissolution. Their efforts did not better the chances of their nation to succeed, they only

prolonged the inevitable. They made a mad dash but came up short in the end. Perhaps the world

can learn from their mistakes, but the possibility is doubtful. Even today countries are struggling

to survive, militants are espousing their political beliefs through violence just like Schönerer.

Many people around the world look down upon them because they see these actions as “evil” but

these militants see themselves as heroes just like Schönerer. They believe they are saving their

country. Whether right or wrong both sides of these conflicts see themselves as right, and this is

why they must work together to solve their problems, as seen through Schönerer violence solves

nothing, it only prolongs the inevitable: the failure of whatever is trying to be achieved.
 Bibliography

Crankshaw, Edward. The Fall of the House of Habsburg. New York: The Viking Press,

November, 1963.

“Herzl, Theodor (1860-1904) Viennese journalist and founder of modern political

Zionism”. [Online] Available November 19, 2006.

http://www.jafi.org.il/education/jajz/100/people/BIOS/herzl.html

Janik, Allan, Stephen Toulmin. Wittgenstein’s Vienna. New York: Simon and Schuster,

1974.

Morton, Frederic. A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889. New York: Penguin Books,

1980.

Rozenbilt, Marsha L. The Jews of Vienna, 1867-1914: Assimilation and Identity. Albany,

NY: University of New York Press, 1983.

Schorske, Carl E. Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. New York: Random House Vintage Books

edition, January 1981.

“Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl” [online] Available November 19, 2006.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Herzl.html