The House of Wittgenstein : a family at war Part 2

In the French capital, where they rented a luxurious flat on the Rue de la Faisanderie, Gretl signed up for another scientific course. "I cannot tell you how much I enjoy learning," she wrote to Hermine. "If only one could prescribe study to every human being. I am sure that it is a universal cure for all dissatisfaction and a good replacement for a husband and a child!" Six long years after the birth of Thomas, she and Jerome had a second son called John Jerome, whom they nicknamed Ji or Ji-Ji.

KARL'S LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Let us now return to the deathbed scene that was abandoned, some while back, with Hermine sitting by her father's side taking autobiographical dictation, as Karl's life dangled by a thread in an upstairs room at the Palais over Christmas 1912. When a person is unquestionably dying and everyone around him knows it, even those who love him most begin to hope that the final curtain will hurry up and fall. The Wittgensteins were growing impatient. Ludwig was eager to return to Cambridge, to his new friends and, above all, to his philosophy. "On arriving here I found my father very ill," he wrote to Russell. "There is no hope that he may recover. These circ.u.mstances have--I am afraid--rather lamed my thoughts & I am muddled although I struggle against it." But Karl, fragile as he was, somehow survived Christmas and Boxing Day and into the New Year. By January 6, 1913, Ludwig had to concede that he would not be able to get back to Cambridge for the start of the new term "as the illness of my poor father is growing very rapidly." To his moral science tutor he wrote four days later: "Although it is certain that he will not recover, one can not yet tell whether the illness will take a very rapid course or not. I will therefore have to stay here another ten days & hope I shall then be able to decide whether I may go back to Cambridge or must stay in Vienna, until the end." On the same day he informed Russell: He is not yet in any great pain but feels on the whole very bad having constant high fever. This makes him so apathetic that one cannot do him any good by sitting at his bed etc. And as this was the only thing that I could ever do for him, I am now perfectly useless here. So the time of my staying now depends entirely upon whether the illness will take so rapid a course that I cannot risk leaving Vienna.

This comedy of vanities, shuffling visitations and bedside vigils went on for another week until, on 20 January, Karl finally lost consciousness, and submitting to the inevitable, graciously breathed his last.

Dear Russell,My dear father died yesterday in the afternoon. He had the most beautiful death that I can imagine; without the slightest pain and falling asleep like a child! I did not feel sad for a single moment during all the last hours, but most joyful & I think that this death was worth a whole life. I will leave Vienna on Sat.u.r.day the 25th & will be in Cambridge either on Sunday night or Monday morning I long very much to see you again. asleep like a child! I did not feel sad for a single moment during all the last hours, but most joyful & I think that this death was worth a whole life. I will leave Vienna on Sat.u.r.day the 25th & will be in Cambridge either on Sunday night or Monday morning I long very much to see you again.Yours ever,Ludwig Wittgenstein

IN MEMORIAM K.W.

Karl Wittgenstein's obituaries, as all obituaries tended to be in those days, were dignified and complimentary. None of them mentioned his price-fixing, his cartels or his squeeze on the workers that had so vexed the left-wing press at the time of his grand resignation. Instead they dwelt upon his charitable giving, focusing especially on his legacy as a patron of the arts, without whose spontaneous generosity the famous Secession building on the Friedrichstra.s.se would never have been built. "Karl Wittgenstein was a man of unusually creative energy and strong organisational talent," reported the Neue Freie Presse. Neue Freie Presse. "The Austrian Iron industry, which thirty years ago was in a less than advanced state, had him to thank for its dramatic progress." The last paragraph was a warm tribute: "The Austrian Iron industry, which thirty years ago was in a less than advanced state, had him to thank for its dramatic progress." The last paragraph was a warm tribute: Karl Wittgenstein had a wild temperament and an extraordinarily rapid grasp of a subject, brilliantly quick-witted in discussions and a charming sense of humor. He was often irascible but never bore a grudge; always willing to help his friends and even those who held opposing views valued his traits of character. His charitable largesse was frequently carried out in secret; he promoted young talent and was always ready to support artistic endeavors.

The autobiographical notes that Karl had dictated to Hermine were in no fit state for publication. Instead the family decided to honor his memory with a privately printed edition of his politico-economic writings and pieces he had written about his travels. On January 25, 1913, he was buried in a plot long reserved for himself and his family, occupying a prime position in the grand, hierarchical cemetery and tourist center known as the Zentralfriedhof. The Wittgenstein family crypt, a crumbling octagonal edifice of once-modern design, can be located at a distance of forty paces from the graves of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Johann Strauss. Soon after Karl's death, his son Rudi's mortal remains were moved from their original place of burial to be next to his. Rudi is the only one of the five Wittgenstein sons to be interred here. Next to Karl now lies the body of Leopoldine, his wife, and on the other side that of an eagle-nosed servant who went by the name of Rosalie.

PAUL REVIEWED

Paul's concert debut on December 1, 1913, with which this story opened, was considered a huge success by his family, by his friends and perhaps also by the Palais servants, even before the first reviews started to appear in the papers. Albert Figdor, an eccentric billionaire cousin, wrote to him on the day after the concert to say that he was overjoyed by the success of it and that all of Vienna was praising him. "Please accept the enclosed joke as a small token of my affection." His present was an original autograph ma.n.u.script of a humorous canon by Felix Mendelssohn.

Paul was acutely sensitive to the opinions of others--furious about praise when he believed it to be unmerited, and indignant about negative criticism of any kind. He preferred his performances not to be discussed at all. Most of all he was allergic to the views of his younger brother, for though Ludwig conceded an admiration of Paul's technique, he was seldom enthusiastic about the manner of his interpretation. Ludwig was hypercritical of all musicians, even the best (he once interrupted the famous Rose String Quartet during one of their rehearsals to tell them they were playing a Schubert quartet all wrong), but his low opinion of Paul's musicians.h.i.+p, though typical of his fastidiousness, agitated his elder brother beyond endurance. While Paul was practicing at home one evening he suddenly stopped playing and rushed through to the next-door room where Ludwig was sitting minding his own business, and shouted at him, "I cannot play when you are in the house as I feel your scepticism seeping towards me from under the door."

"My opinion of your playing is, in and of itself, UTTERLY IMMATERIAL," Ludwig insisted, but Paul, who would never let the matter drop, came to the conclusion that his younger brother could not stand his musical performances.

In the Volksgarten Cafe on the Burgring, Ludwig once tried to explain his position. He began, as tactfully as he was able, by comparing Paul's piano playing to the performance of a fine actor who regards the text of a play as a springboard from which he can express to the audience aspects of his own personality, and went on to admit that Paul's musical interpretations were spoiled (for him at least) by the intrusion of too much ego into the music. "You do not, I believe, seek to hide behind a musical composition but want to portray yourself in it. If I wish to hear a composer speak (which I often do) I shall not turn to you."

Like most performing artists, Paul affected to despise professional critics, even though he later became one himself. "From an artistic point of view they are not important," he wrote to his agent. "What does it matter what so-and-so thinks or makes believe to think? Unfortunately though, from a practical point of view, they are of the utmost importance," and it was precisely for want of good press reviews that he had planned his Musikverein debut in the first place. Max Kalbeck, the distinguished sixty-three-year-old critic and Brahms scholar, was the first to appear with a highfalutin piece in the Neues Wiener Tagbhtt Neues Wiener Tagbhtt on December 6: on December 6: Any young man, a member of Viennese high society, who launches himself on the public in the year 1913 as a piano virtuoso with a concerto by John Field must either be a fanatical enthusiast or a very self-confident dilettante. But Herr Paul Wittgenstein--for it is he of whom we speak--is neither one nor the other but (better than either as far as we are concerned) a serious artist. He undertook this hazardous adventure without knowing quite how risky it was, driven by a pure love for the task and guided by the honourable intention of placing before the public a test, both reliable and rare, of his eminent skills.

Kalbeck's review winds on in verbose, affected prose that would be considered unprintable in modern times. It is perhaps for this reason that his Boswellian eight-volume biography of Brahms, written over fifteen years between 1898 and 1913, though still the seminal source of Brahms scholars.h.i.+p, has never been translated into English. Of Paul's concert the great critic continued: Under the fading light of our feelings, well-loved figures of antiquity hovered before us and initiated us into the secrets of poetic twilight. A dryly written composition had unexpectedly blossomed into a poem. Inside that immaculately clean technique, which seems to us today as cool as inorganic matter, lives a tender and sensitive soul and we felt its warm breath.

Kalbeck was a friend of the Wittgensteins--a regular guest at their Alleega.s.se music evenings--and his rave review of Paul's performance may have been biased. His description of Paul's "immaculately clean technique" and "the pure and faultless l.u.s.ter of the pianist's delicate, soft and sparkling touch" may be compared with comments from another unsigned review published in Das Fremdenblatt Das Fremdenblatt on December 10 which stated that "further practice would add greater perfection to his abilities and refine his performance," and that his playing was "particularly careful and exceedingly cautious." But the on December 10 which stated that "further practice would add greater perfection to his abilities and refine his performance," and that his playing was "particularly careful and exceedingly cautious." But the Fremdenblatt Fremdenblatt critic went on to add that "the force with which the notes were struck and the una.s.suming precision of a healthy rhythmical sense legitimise his performing in public" (hardly consistent with his point about "cautiousness"), and that the programme's considerable hurdles were "cleared by a performer who was obviously firm in the saddle." critic went on to add that "the force with which the notes were struck and the una.s.suming precision of a healthy rhythmical sense legitimise his performing in public" (hardly consistent with his point about "cautiousness"), and that the programme's considerable hurdles were "cleared by a performer who was obviously firm in the saddle."

Julius Korngold, the all-important critic of the Neue Freie Presse Neue Freie Presse who had mysteriously walked out of the concert after listening only to the first piece, eventually produced a short paragraph for his newspaper that attempted to justify his behavior: "The debut of the young pianist Paul Wittgenstein aroused lively interest... [his] freshly acquired technique, his sheer joy in music making and his cla.s.sically trained feeling for style could all be sympathetically indulged without the need for taking further risks." Korngold's review, appearing a full three weeks after the concert, refreshed the young pianist's confidence and bolstered him with renewed authority to continue in pursuit of his chosen career. Paul had fought hard against his family's objections, sometimes rebelling against and sometimes making concessions to his father's tyranny. On Karl's insistence he had enrolled at Vienna's Technical University in 1910 and soon afterward taken a job (much resented) as a banking apprentice in Berlin. Now at last he had secured a victory for his pianism. The Korngold review may have been late in coming and slapdash in its execution, but that did not matter, for it was a final and very public vindication of Paul Wittgenstein's talent that succeeded not only in filling him with hope and confidence but also in alleviating the gloom of a family Christmas which, that year, everyone had been dreading. who had mysteriously walked out of the concert after listening only to the first piece, eventually produced a short paragraph for his newspaper that attempted to justify his behavior: "The debut of the young pianist Paul Wittgenstein aroused lively interest... [his] freshly acquired technique, his sheer joy in music making and his cla.s.sically trained feeling for style could all be sympathetically indulged without the need for taking further risks." Korngold's review, appearing a full three weeks after the concert, refreshed the young pianist's confidence and bolstered him with renewed authority to continue in pursuit of his chosen career. Paul had fought hard against his family's objections, sometimes rebelling against and sometimes making concessions to his father's tyranny. On Karl's insistence he had enrolled at Vienna's Technical University in 1910 and soon afterward taken a job (much resented) as a banking apprentice in Berlin. Now at last he had secured a victory for his pianism. The Korngold review may have been late in coming and slapdash in its execution, but that did not matter, for it was a final and very public vindication of Paul Wittgenstein's talent that succeeded not only in filling him with hope and confidence but also in alleviating the gloom of a family Christmas which, that year, everyone had been dreading.

On December 3, 1913, two days after Paul's triumphant debut, a short piece appeared in the pages of Srbobran Srbobran, the Chicago journal for emigre Serbs in America: The Austrian Heir Apparent has announced his intention of visiting Sarajevo early next year. Every Serb must take note of this ... Serbs, seize everything you can lay your hands upon--knives, rifles, bombs and dynamite. Take holy vengeance! Death to the Hapsburg dynasty and eternal remembrance to the heroes who raise their hands against it.

MONEY MATTERS

Karl Wittgenstein's estate was divided equally between his wife and six surviving children. Gretl had opted for a hugh cash settlement and promptly bought herself a villa and a castle and some land at Gmunden for 335,000 Austrian kronen, but no sooner had she invited the architects and decorators to doll the place up than Jerome, restless as usual, was insisting on a move to England. So in April 1914 the s...o...b..roughs packed their bags and went to live in a Jacobean manor house at Besselsleigh near Abingdon in Oxfords.h.i.+re. Jerome, having slightly more experience of business than his wife, took command of her considerable investments, transferring the bulk of her liquid fortune to the American stock market. Paul and his other siblings divided among themselves their late father's Austrian properties as well as his large portfolio of foreign stocks held at the Central Hanover Bank in New York, the Kreditanstalt and Blankart depots in Zurich and at the Dutch bank Hope & Co. in Amsterdam.

Each of the siblings was made exceedingly rich by their father's demise, but the money, to a family obsessed with social morality, brought with it many problems. Each was generous, donating large sums, often secretly, to the arts, to medicine, to friends and to other worthy causes. Ludwig distributed 100,000 kronen among various Austrian "artists." These included the architect Adolf Loos, the painter Oskar Kokoschka and the poets Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl. The last of these killed himself with an overdose of cocaine in the following year. Seventeen other recipients wrote thank-you letters to Ludwig, most of which he repudiated as "extremely distasteful" on account of their "ign.o.ble almost fraudulent tone." Hermine, in a muddled quasi-philosophical way, tried to draw some distinction between the sort of money that she called "ethical" and the sort she labeled "bourgeois." Gretl dreamed longingly of a life without any money at all. "It would be healthy," she wrote in her diary, "if destiny would kick me off the high life from which I could never voluntarily depart. Maybe, but only maybe, I would then become a human being. But I am not brave enough. As things stand now I can see the right path clearly in front of me but I cannot decide to take it."

Paul believed that strong government was more important than any amount of personal wealth and gave large sums to anticommunist and anti-anarchist political organizations. For a rich young man wanting to make his way as a concert pianist, things were not as easy as they may have seemed. When people in the cla.s.sical music business smell money (which isn't very often), they are drawn to it like wasps to a jam pot. If a performer is rich enough to stage his own concerts, however good he is at playing his instrument, he will find himself in the dispiriting position of being invited to play only on a no-fee basis, or in consideration of sponsors.h.i.+p. This was to prove a problem for Paul that lasted the whole of his performing life. In the months following his debut promoters and agents buzzed around eager to partake of his fortune, but on the advice of his blind and wise mentor, Dr. Labor, he held them at bay: Nothing [said Labor to Alma Schindler] is more dangerous for a young talent than not allowing it to mature. For all young artists the example of Rubinstein and Goldmark should be held up as the direst warning--two such talents--ruined because they did not wait until they were ready. Rubinstein bestowed his spring buds upon us all, but never brought forth fruit.

In the six months following his debut Paul played no more than a handful of concerts. There was an evening of chamber music by Mendelssohn and Labor with the well-known violinist and friend of the family Marie Soldat-Roeger. Hermine, in attendance with her mother and sisters, wrote to inform Ludwig that Paul had played "very beautifully and had received praise from all sides." At Graz, in February 1914, he gave a solo recital, which was complimented by the fastidious critic of the Grazer Tagespost. Grazer Tagespost. Another chamber concert in March was followed, three weeks later, by a second high-profile outing at the Musikverein. This time the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the Slovakian pianist and composer Rudolph Reti, played Josef Labor's Variations on a Theme of Czerny, an anodyne nocturne by Field and a handful of studies by Chopin. These scattered events may appear insignificant, but to Paul they were the necessary rungs in a ladder of experience that he hoped might lead him towards his long-cherished goal of a busy international career. But neither Paul nor anyone else in the complacent, easy-going, coffeehouse atmosphere of Habsburg Vienna had reckoned on that summer's catastrophic interruptions. Another chamber concert in March was followed, three weeks later, by a second high-profile outing at the Musikverein. This time the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the Slovakian pianist and composer Rudolph Reti, played Josef Labor's Variations on a Theme of Czerny, an anodyne nocturne by Field and a handful of studies by Chopin. These scattered events may appear insignificant, but to Paul they were the necessary rungs in a ladder of experience that he hoped might lead him towards his long-cherished goal of a busy international career. But neither Paul nor anyone else in the complacent, easy-going, coffeehouse atmosphere of Habsburg Vienna had reckoned on that summer's catastrophic interruptions.

PRELUDE TO WAR

When news reached Vienna, on June 28, 1914, that the heir to the Haps-burg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had been shot in the neck by a juvenile anarchist at the Bosnian town of Sarajevo, there was no wailing or rending of veils. The Austrians, by and large, took it on the chin, for the Emperor's nephew had never been popular. The reasons for this were neither political nor considered, but instinctive and emotional--the people had long ago made up their minds that he was fat and ugly and ungracious. The Archduke had married morganatically, that is to say he had espoused a woman deemed by Hapsburg house law to be too lower cla.s.s to attend state occasions and too lower cla.s.s to bear future heirs to the Imperial throne. In order to marry her, Franz Ferdinand had been forced to renounce the right of any future issue to the Austrian throne. The public knew that the Emperor disliked his nephew intensely, and since the old man's life had been full of woe--his brother was put to death by firing squad in Mexico, his sister-in-law lost her marbles, his wife was murdered by a rough brute in Geneva, and his only son was the Prince Rudolf who had apparently shot himself in a suicide pact with his mistress--public sympathy was all with the Emperor against his ponderous and overbearing heir. Stefan Zweig, who on several occasions observed the Archduke in his box at the theater, remembered his sitting "broad and mighty, with cold fixed gaze."

He was never seen to smile and no photographs showed him relaxed. He had no sense of music and no sense of humour, and his wife was equally unfriendly. They were both surrounded by an icy air; one knew that they had no friends and also that the old Emperor hated him with all his heart because he did not have sufficient tact to hide his impatience to succeed to the throne.

In a photograph taken on that fatal day at Sarajevo the Archduke and his wife are both, contrary to Zweig, depicted with broad grins on their faces, but their last, perhaps their only, smiles came too late to warm the hardened hearts of the Viennese, as did the news of Franz Ferdinand's last utterance, gasped at his Archd.u.c.h.ess as she sat grim-faced and upright behind him in their carriage: "Sopherl! Sopherl! Don't die! Keep alive for the children ... It is nothing! It is nothing! It is nothing!" She could not hear him, for she was already dead.

Historians have suggested that within the psyche of the men and women of all German-speaking lands was a will to war, that the artists and composers and writers were demonstrating a restless predilection for the destruction of their states. This instinct drove them to an atavistic, primeval savagery. Shortly after the outbreak of war the German writer Thomas Mann explained: This world of peace, which has now collapsed with such shattering thunder--had we not all of us had enough of it? Was it not foul with all its comfort? Did it not fester and stink with the decomposition of civilisation? Morally and psychologically I felt the necessity of this catastrophe and that feeling of cleansing, of elevation and liberation, which filled me, when that which one had thought impossible really happened.

And yet in the immediate aftermath of the Sarajevo a.s.sa.s.sination the public showed itself to be more concerned with the funeral arrangements--particularly the vexed question of whether the Archd.u.c.h.ess's corpse was grand enough to be buried with that of her husband in the Kapuzinergruft, or Imperial Crypt--than with the possibility or probability of any war proceeding from it. On a higher, governmental level, however, things were a little different. Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf, Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, and Foreign Minister Leopold Berch-told seized upon the Archduke's murder as an opportunity to humiliate Serbia and strengthen Austro-Hungarian influence in the Balkans. The Serbian government, they claimed, had had a hand in the a.s.sa.s.sination and must therefore be punished. The inevitable rejection, by the Serbs, of an unacceptable Austrian ultimatum on July 25 led to Vienna's declaration of war against Serbia on the 28th.

The rest--an extraordinary scrimmage of nations roused to action in the name of honor--is, as they say, history. On July 31, Germany declared war on the Russians, who were mobilizing troops in Serbia's defense; France, in honor of its agreement with Russia, moved against Germany; Germany, to protect itself against the French, invaded Belgium, whereupon the British (who had not the slightest interest in the Serbian quarrel) declared war on Germany in defense of Belgium's neutrality. On August 5, Austro-Hungary declared war on Russia; on August 6, Serbia on Germany; and the day after that Montenegro declared itself against the Austro-Hungarians and the Germans. On August 10, France declared war on Austro-Hungary and on August 12 Great Britain did the same. By August 23 j.a.pan, thousands of miles away, had pitched in against Germany with the immediate effect that Austro-Hungary, in honorable defense of its ally, declared war on j.a.pan. On August 28, two short months after the Sarajevo shootings, Austro-Hungary declared war on Belgium. More countries would follow, for events were proceeding at a horrifying pace, but even before the last of these belligerent nations had time to throw itself into the ruckus, disaster had struck the House of Wittgenstein.

SIGNING UP

With regard to their conscription, the circ.u.mstances of the three surviving Wittgenstein brothers--Kurt, Paul and Ludwig--were each very different. Kurt was thirty-six years old when war broke out and was living in New York. He had arrived aboard the newly built German liner Imperator Imperator on April 9, 1914, with the purpose of exploring opportunities for investment in the American and Canadian steel business. For a while he stayed at the Waldorf Hotel, before moving to the Knickerbocker Club on East 62nd Street. He made friends in high society, bought himself a luxurious automobile, took several holidays at the Virginia spa resort of Hot Springs and settled into his New World lifestyle with apparent ease. When the news of war in Europe reached him, he was on his way back to New York from Cranbrook, a steel-manufacturing town in British Columbia, intending to sail back to Austria at the beginning of July, but the American authorities would not let him leave. When he presented himself at the Austrian Consulate in Manhattan he was put to work by the Consul General, Alexander von Nuber, in the organization's propaganda department, whose task it was to persuade the American people, the American press and more importantly the American administration to support the Austro-Hungarian cause in the war. on April 9, 1914, with the purpose of exploring opportunities for investment in the American and Canadian steel business. For a while he stayed at the Waldorf Hotel, before moving to the Knickerbocker Club on East 62nd Street. He made friends in high society, bought himself a luxurious automobile, took several holidays at the Virginia spa resort of Hot Springs and settled into his New World lifestyle with apparent ease. When the news of war in Europe reached him, he was on his way back to New York from Cranbrook, a steel-manufacturing town in British Columbia, intending to sail back to Austria at the beginning of July, but the American authorities would not let him leave. When he presented himself at the Austrian Consulate in Manhattan he was put to work by the Consul General, Alexander von Nuber, in the organization's propaganda department, whose task it was to persuade the American people, the American press and more importantly the American administration to support the Austro-Hungarian cause in the war.

Paul and Ludwig were with their sisters and their mother at Hochreit, the family's mountain retreat, when news of war reached them. In a rapture of patriotism, they rushed back to Vienna to find the popular mood on the streets frenzied and excitable. Every butcher and cobbler, every doctor and teacher was experiencing what Stefan Zweig described as "an exaltation of his ego," imagining himself a hero. Women were urging their husbands into uniform, cla.s.s barriers were falling, people spoke warmly to strangers in the shops and joked heartily over the imminent demise of the Serbs.

Ludwig wanted to sail for Norway but, when he found his exit from Austria barred, volunteered for civilian duties instead. Unlike his brothers Paul and Kurt, Ludwig had managed to avoid military service. In 1868 the Austrian government had introduced a compulsory conscription of three years for every young male, but the costs had proved exorbitant. Instead of revoking the law, all kinds of formulations were devised (including the drawing of lots) whereby a man might wriggle out of this irksome duty. In the event only one in five eligible men ever made it into uniform and, of those, only a small proportion served the full three-year term demanded by the law. With no previous service record, Ludwig had no regiment to which he could report, and since he had suffered two hernias in his groin the previous year he was, in any case, deemed unsuitable for active service. Determined to play his part, he decided to enlist as a volunteer soldier, and on August 7 was called up as a private in a garrison artillery troop that was to form part of the Austro-Hungarian First Army, destined for the borders of Hapsburg Poland and Russia known as the Galician front.

Like many of the young German men of 1914, Ludwig was spiritually exhausted and in need of theater. Early that year he had fallen out with Bertrand Russell and had written to him insisting that their friends.h.i.+p be terminated. "My life has been one nasty mess so far--but need that go on indefinitely?" He had also, by his frantic manner, lost the friends.h.i.+p of the Cambridge philosopher George Moore, and was uncertain even about the future of his relations.h.i.+p with his closest companion, David Pinsent. "I keep on hoping that things will come to an eruption once and for all so that I can turn into a different person," he wrote, and so the war, which on June 28 seemed little more than an inconvenience to Ludwig, was transformed, within a matter of days, into a welcome opportunity for challenge and personal liberation. "I knew very well," Hermine wrote, "that Ludwig was not only concerned with defending his fatherland, but that he felt an intense desire to burden himself with some difficult task, and to accomplish something other than purely intellectual work."

If he was refreshed by the outbreak of hostilities, Ludwig nevertheless entertained little hope of the great Austro-Hungarian victory that the ma.s.ses, on both sides of the conflict, were predicting with the oft-repeated phrase: "It'll all be over by Christmas." In a scribbled note written shortly after the war had begun, Ludwig admitted that the situation was "terribly sad." "It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England. The English--the best race in the world--cannot lose. We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year, then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly." lose. We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year, then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly."

David Pinsent wrote in his diary of Ludwig's volunteering for the army: "I think it is magnificent of him to have enlisted--but extremely sad and tragic ... He writes praying we may meet again some day. Poor fellow--I hope to G.o.d we shall." They never did. Pinsent was killed in an airplane crash in France in May 1918.

DISASTERS

Paul went along with the majority of his Austrian compatriots in supporting the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, believing that his moral and civic duty was to defend the honor of the Hapsburgs for which he would, if necessary, lay down his life. But, like his younger brother, he was not so easily swept by the tide of national optimism. He too nursed a fatalistic view of Austria's prospects, and openly a.s.serted what the Emperor had said in private to his Chief of Staff just days before signing his declaration of war, that "if the Monarchy must perish it should at least perish with decency." War for Paul offered no opportunity for self-improvement but was a question of personal and national honor. His sister Gretl, however, welcomed the international crisis on Paul's behalf. "Aid has come to us from an unexpected quarter," she wrote to Hermine on August 22. "If they come back in one piece, this war will have done many of those I know a lot of good--and that includes Paul and [my friend] Willi Zitkovsky"

Paul had completed his military service five years before the declaration of hostilities, pa.s.sing as a junior officer in the Reserves, attached to the same smart cavalry regiment as his brother Kurt. On the whole, his military reports had been creditable. In the winter of 1907 he was issued with four demerits and fined for "lack of attention in the riding school and laziness in theoretical instruction," but his final report of 1909 had concluded that, as a cadet officer--"single, finances in order, with a monthly allowance of 600 kronen"--he was of "most honourable, firm character, quiet, serious and good-natured."

Four hectic days after Austria's declaration against Serbia, Paul found himself once again dressed in the colorful regimental garb of the 6th Dragoons. As a second lieutenant he was ent.i.tled to a black crested helmet, trimmed in bra.s.s, embossed on the front with the badge of the Imperial Eagle and, on either side, with images of a lion in violent disagreement with a serpent. His breeches were of madder red and his tunic pale blue but beaded in red, denoting his officer status. He wore a red cartridge belt (another sign that he was an officer), black leather thigh-length "butcher's boots" and a large, dark brown, double-breasted greatcoat. His weaponry, which like his uniform was indicative of rank, consisted of a Roth-Steyr pistol, a Mannlicher carbine rifle, a saber in a steel scabbard and a bayonet. Paul and his fellow officers may have looked splendid perched on their saddles, in all this colorful regalia, but the kit of both man and animal were relicts of a previous century, unsuitable for the exigencies of modern combat. Their s.h.i.+ny metal badges and bright colors were easily visible to the enemy; their rifles and sabers too heavy; their jackets and coats (in comparison to those of other armies) badly st.i.tched; even their saddles were thoughtlessly constructed. Designed to give the cavalry a good seat on parade, they rubbed hard against the skin of the horses' backs, so that within the first week of engagement a large section of the Austrian cavalry was put out of action as hundreds of officers were forced to return from their sorties on foot, leading their horses by the reins.

The Austro-Hungarian army of 1914 was ill equipped, incompetent, ill trained, undersized, unready and yet overenthusiastic for battle. The soldiers' contagious eagerness to start fighting right away led to many grave errors. In the first few days of engagement they managed to shoot down three of their own airplanes, so that the order had to be repeatedly given that no planes should be fired upon. At Jaroslawice on August 20, two Austrian cavalry divisions advancing in parallel lines wheeled around and started fighting each other. Too proud or too exhilarated to stop, the Austrians carried on with their battle till interrupted by the arrival of a Russian infantry unit that put them all to flight. Nothing, however, compares to the dithering of Conrad von Hotzendorf over where he should send his army in the first days of mobilization. His problem--hard to solve--is at least easy to explain. The Austrians had to fight a two-front war. In the northeast the Russians had fifty infantry divisions ranged against them. In the south, Serbia had eleven. The total strength on the Austro-Hungarian side was only forty-eight divisions. Thus Hotzendorf's army was too small for the war that he had elected it to fight--smaller even than it had been in 1866 at the time of its crus.h.i.+ng defeat at the hands of the Prussians, and this, despite a total population increase of twenty million since that date. Hotzendorf needed therefore to decide whether first to smash up the Serbs with say twenty divisions, posting the rest of his army to Galicia to hold the Russians, or to send a greater force against the Russians, leaving a smaller defense force in the south to contain the Serbs. In the end he chose the latter course but not before changing his mind more than once and, in so doing, throwing the whole railway system of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into disarray.

Paul and Ludwig were both dispatched to the Galician front in the north, Paul with the Fourth Army, Ludwig with the First. But Hotzen-dorf's indecision meant that both of them reached their unloading stations (in Paul's case the wrong one) nearly a week after they were supposed to be there. Several trains shunted along at less than walking speed. Others broke down. One took forty hours to get from Vienna to the San, three times longer than normal; several stopped for six-hour lunch breaks despite having mobile kitchens on board. In the confusion at least one signalman shot himself, and one train, packed with soldiers, was returned to the very station from which, days earlier, it had departed amid the clamor of trumpets, bunting, waving hands and fond farewells.

Ludwig reached his posting on August 19 and was immediately a.s.signed to minor tasks aboard a captured Russian riverboat, the Gophtidj Gophtidj patrolling the Vistula. Paul was supposed to have arrived at Zolkiew, near Lwow (or Lemberg), on August 12, but owing to the confusion was not unloaded until August 20 some sixty miles west at Jaroslaw on the San. From there he proceeded on horseback in a northeasterly direction with the soldiers of the 5th Cavalry Brigade under the command of Major General Otto Schwer von Schwertenegg, reaching Lubaczow on the morning of August 20 and Zamosc two days later on the evening of the 22nd. Hotzendorf, aware that Wenzel von Plehve (a Russian commander of German descent) was mobilizing 350,000 soldiers of the Russian Fifth Army westward to stop them, continued blithely predicting a swift advance of Austro-Hungarian troops into Russian territory. patrolling the Vistula. Paul was supposed to have arrived at Zolkiew, near Lwow (or Lemberg), on August 12, but owing to the confusion was not unloaded until August 20 some sixty miles west at Jaroslaw on the San. From there he proceeded on horseback in a northeasterly direction with the soldiers of the 5th Cavalry Brigade under the command of Major General Otto Schwer von Schwertenegg, reaching Lubaczow on the morning of August 20 and Zamosc two days later on the evening of the 22nd. Hotzendorf, aware that Wenzel von Plehve (a Russian commander of German descent) was mobilizing 350,000 soldiers of the Russian Fifth Army westward to stop them, continued blithely predicting a swift advance of Austro-Hungarian troops into Russian territory.

On August 23, Paul's fourth day in Galicia, he and six men under his command were ordered north across undulating wooded terrain toward the village of Izbica. Their mission was to reconnoiter enemy positions and report back to the squadron commander, Captain Erwin Schaaf-gotsche, at a field camp located between Izbica and Krasnystaw. After a few miles Paul and his men turned east to Topola and then proceeded to move cautiously in the direction of the Russian border and the fast-a.s.sembling ranks of enemy troops.

From the woods outside Topola the view extends for several miles eastward across the plain of Grabowiec. From here a vast number of Russian troops could be observed mobilizing rapidly in a southwesterly direction toward Zamosc. Paul and his men took careful note of their numbers, their armaments and the direction in which they were headed. The citation for the medals that Paul received for his role in this action indicates that they were awarded not only in consideration of the usefulness of the information he had gleaned, but for outstanding personal valor. He bravely rescued two of his men when they came under fire from a forward-placed Russian scout troop or sniper team and ordered a counterattack to delay the Russians while the positions of their army were being surveyed. "As regards my allegedly heroic deeds," he later wrote to his mother, "there was nothing of that about them. You won't believe it but I know it."

During the encounter Paul was wounded--hit by a bullet that shattered the elbow of his right arm. Later he could recall nothing between the sensation of a sharp and excruciating pain and his waking up on a field-hospital camp bed, but his men had pulled him back to safety, retreating quickly through the woods until they were out of range of enemy fire. There they applied a makes.h.i.+ft tourniquet to Paul's upper arm to staunch the bleeding. The journey back to Izbica was several miles and they needed urgently to find an ambulance corps or a field hospital on the way. At some point either Paul or some of his men succeeded in pa.s.sing to Captain Schaafgotsche the crucial military intelligence that they had gleaned at Topola--information that later proved vital to the Austrian defense of Zamosc.

By the time he was brought into the field hospital, situated within the walls of the fortress town of Krasnystaw, six miles north of Izbica, Paul had already lost consciousness. Either that or the shock subsequently obliterated his memory of events and helped him to forget any medical consultation or warning that most of his right arm would have to come off. All that he remembered was that when he regained consciousness the shock of discovering the mutilation to his arm was compounded by another, perhaps equally disturbing, shock: that during the course of his operation, as the doctors were filling his lungs with anesthetic doses of morphine, scopolamine, nitrous oxide or ethyl chloride, as they were slicing a circular incision round the skin of his upper arm, as they rolled back the flesh to create a flap, as they sawed through the exposed bone, discarded the amputated limb, folded and st.i.tched the loose flaps back over the end of the stump--as all these things were carrying on, the Russian Fifth Army in its first major incursion into Hapsburg-Polish territory was storming the walls of Krasnystaw, so that by the time Paul regained consciousness the enemy had taken the town and was swarming with loaded guns and harsh hysterical voices through the corridors and wards of his hospital. Paul, his fellow patients, the surgeons, doctors, orderlies and nurses were being held at gunpoint as prisoners of war, now in the power of a hostile government, and soon to be bustled across enemy lines, thousands of miles from their homes, to prison camps in Russia and Siberia.

PRISONER OF THE RUSSIANS

There were no train lines and few roads on the vast exposed lands stretching eastward out of Krasnystaw. Those captives deemed fit enough to march were forced to do so, sometimes up to fifteen miles a day, sometimes at the point of a Cossack saber, nourished only by one slice of bread and a bowl of cabbage soup, served in the morning of each day. For two or three weeks they marched until they reached a depot from which transport by rail could begin. In their first Galician offensive the Russians took 100,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war. These, added to the large numbers of their own wounded and the straggling h.o.a.rds of displaced Poles wandering hither and thither in search of food and shelter, created a vast, untidy migration of despairing people for whom the Russians were unprepared and ill equipped to cater.

Surviving accounts of the long march to the interior attest to the kindness and consideration of the Russian doctors, to the help, also, of the Russian peasantry who often took pity, giving bread and clothing to bedraggled Austrian and German POWs as they pa.s.sed through their villages, but many report as well on the cruelty, crookedness and avarice of the rank-and-file Russian soldier. Article 4 of the Hague Convention, to which all belligerent nations were bound, stipulated that prisoners of war were to be treated humanely. They were to be held in the power of the hostile government, not in that of the individuals or corps who had captured them. With the exception of arms, horses and military papers, all personal belongings were to remain the property of the captured soldier. In reality, soldiers of the Russian army, themselves underpaid, underfed and terrified, ransacked the pockets of their prisoners, removing money, letters, watches, notebooks, cutlery and anything else that took their fancy. At POW hospitals, Russian guards made away with any clothing that they could lay their hands on--coats, s.h.i.+rts, boots and even blankets disappeared from the patients' wards and, since hospitals received payments based on the number of patients coming in and going out, dishonest clerks saw to it that even the most severely sick prisoners were moved needlessly about from one hospital to another, crawling sometimes barefoot and at night (so that the Russian people might be spared the sight of them) to freezing railway and tram stations, shuttling for weeks between Russian cities, often only to be returned to the very hospital from which they had started out.

In this way Paul found himself, in the long months after he was taken prisoner, shunted from Chelm to Minsk to Kiev, to Orel, to Moscow, to Petrograd and to Omsk in the cramped, overcrowded, foul-smelling and vermin-ridden conditions of the tjeploshki. tjeploshki. These were the boxcars, wagons and cattle trucks, forty to fifty of which, linked together, formed a typical POW transport train. In the middle of each stood an iron stove and a bucket for a lavatory. Two rows of plank bunks were fixed to either side, and a separate s.p.a.ce, with its own bunk, was provided for the armed guard. Typically each car held thirty-five to forty-five prisoners, sleeping often six to a bunk. As one Austrian POW remembered it: "Everybody had to face either to the left or to the right side, squeezed tight to one another. Turning over had to be done all at once, for only by keeping our bodies in strictly parallel formation could we all fit the available s.p.a.ce." These were the boxcars, wagons and cattle trucks, forty to fifty of which, linked together, formed a typical POW transport train. In the middle of each stood an iron stove and a bucket for a lavatory. Two rows of plank bunks were fixed to either side, and a separate s.p.a.ce, with its own bunk, was provided for the armed guard. Typically each car held thirty-five to forty-five prisoners, sleeping often six to a bunk. As one Austrian POW remembered it: "Everybody had to face either to the left or to the right side, squeezed tight to one another. Turning over had to be done all at once, for only by keeping our bodies in strictly parallel formation could we all fit the available s.p.a.ce."

There was little to cheer Paul as he lay on the bare board of a tjeploshka tjeploshka trundling across 7,000 miles of alien terrain. For days on end he lay, pressed against other prisoners, the wound festering on his arm, his eyes wide open, in a carriage filled with vermin. He remembered with particular repulsion the rats running over his body and confided years later to a close friend "how they still recurred as my sporadic nightmare and how grateful I am that my blood was immune from insect bites. Other prisoners had found bugs and lice intolerable but I could brush them away unstung." trundling across 7,000 miles of alien terrain. For days on end he lay, pressed against other prisoners, the wound festering on his arm, his eyes wide open, in a carriage filled with vermin. He remembered with particular repulsion the rats running over his body and confided years later to a close friend "how they still recurred as my sporadic nightmare and how grateful I am that my blood was immune from insect bites. Other prisoners had found bugs and lice intolerable but I could brush them away unstung."

Harder to dispel were the physical and psychological traumas Paul suffered in the weeks and months after his operation--traumas that were amplified by the practical difficulties that he had to face in adapting his disability to everyday life. Suddenly he was unable to tie his shoelaces, to cut his food or dress himself in the morning. Geza Zichy, an acquaintance of Paul's who lost his right arm in a hunting accident at the age of fifteen, recalled his first attempts to dress himself: "It took three hours, but I did it. I used the door k.n.o.b, the furniture, my feet and my teeth to achieve it. At meals I ate no food that I could not cut myself, and today I peel apples, clip my fingernails, ride, I am a good shot and have even learned to play the piano a little."

The causes of a disorder known as phantom limb pain, which affects all amputees, are still not clearly understood by the medical profession. Some believe that the brain continues to operate from a blueprint of the whole body even when parts of it have been removed. Others that the brain, frustrated at receiving no response from the missing limb, bombards it with too many signals, thus aggravating the nerves that originally served it. Whatever the cause, the symptoms are acute--a searing pain in the missing limb, a sensation that the absent fist or elbow is clamping tighter and tighter until it is about to explode, or that the whole limb is somehow inextricably twisted or bent. Looking to see that the arm is no longer there does not relieve the victim, for the pain will persist even when his eyes have confirmed that it cannot possibly be.

It was not until three weeks after his capture that Paul was permitted to write home for the first time. All prisoners' letters were subject to Russian censors.h.i.+p, but it was not for this reason that they tended to a cheerful tone. Quite apart from the obvious motive of not wis.h.i.+ng to upset their families with details of their desperate state, many prisoners felt shame, even guilt, for having betrayed or dishonoured their families and comrades in arms by leaving the front line. The Swedish Red Cross nurse Elsa Brandstrom, known as the Angel of Siberia, did more than anyone to alleviate the suffering of Austro-Hungarian POWs, and told in her memoirs the pitiful story of one Austrian cadet: "A young man lay in the corner. No dumb animal in his father's farm had ever perished in such filth. 'Give my love to my mother; but never tell her in what misery I died' were his last words."

The reluctance of prisoners to tell the truth about the grueling circ.u.mstances of their captivity led to further problems with the mail, for all outgoing letters were checked not only by the Russians but also by the Kriegsuberwachungsamt, or KUA, the censors.h.i.+p department of the War Supervisory Office in Vienna. With so many cheerful missives arriving from Russia (75,000 in the month of December), an order was given out on Christmas Eve 1914: Letters have been received lately from our prisoners of war in enemy countries. In some of these letters the writers describe life in captivity in a very favourable light. The spreading of such news among the troops and recruits is undesirable. The military censors are therefore to be instructed that such letters of our prisoners of war as may, by their contents, exercise an injurious influence are to be confiscated and not to be delivered to their addressees.

From the middle of August until the first week of October Mrs. Wittgenstein had remained in an anxious state. She had recently suffered an acute attack of phlebitis and her doctor had ordered her to hold her legs in a horizontal posture at all times. This prevented her playing the piano--the best method she knew for calming her nerves. Of Paul she had heard nothing for six weeks, his last letter being a complaint that none of hers were getting through to him. It was not until October 4 that she finally received, in barely legible scrawl, the news that he was still alive. Paul's letter to his mother has been lost, but Mrs. Wittgenstein's letter, in which she relays the news to Ludwig, survives: My dear beloved LudwigI have written you many letters and cards with my thanks for all yours and for the telegram. I do hope that they have reached you at last. They bring you the most tender greetings and kisses from me, and all your sisters' love; and a.s.sure you that we are all well here and in Gmunden. A terrible misfortune has befallen our poor Paul who lost his right arm in one of the battles at the end of August [sic]. He wrote to me himself with his left hand on 14 September from the officers' hospital in Minsk and his news arrived three days ago. He also wrote that he was being looked after extremely well. You can imagine how I feel not being able to go to him. G.o.d protect you, my beloved child. I wish you could sense it whenever I think of you. For all your dear letters, be tenderly embraced by your Mama. right arm in one of the battles at the end of August [sic]. He wrote to me himself with his left hand on 14 September from the officers' hospital in Minsk and his news arrived three days ago. He also wrote that he was being looked after extremely well. You can imagine how I feel not being able to go to him. G.o.d protect you, my beloved child. I wish you could sense it whenever I think of you. For all your dear letters, be tenderly embraced by your Mama.

Leopoldine's card failed to reach Ludwig on his riverboat until October 28, by which time she had already posted him another: "I've not heard any more from Paul since the 4th," she wrote, "the day on which, after six weeks of waiting in vain, I received his letter from Minsk with the news of his serious injury. I imagine you must have received the card I wrote telling you that the poor boy has lost his right hand." Ludwig's immediate response can be found in his diary of October 28: Received a lot of mail today, incl. the sad news that Paul has been seriously wounded and is in captivity in Russia--but, thank G.o.d, being taken good care of. Poor, poor Mama!!! ... At last a letter from Norway in which I am asked for 1,000 kronen. Is it possible for me to send it to him? Now that Norway has joined with our enemies!!! This is, in any case, a frightfully sad business. I keep having to think of poor Paul who has so suddenly lost his career! How terrible. What philosophy is needed to get over it! If only this can be achieved in any other way than suicide!! ... Your will be done.

On the following day Ludwig recorded: "Headache and tiredness in the morning. Thought a lot about Paul," while in Vienna his mother and sisters augmented their panic by imagining that Paul might now try to kill himself.

KURT WITTGENSTEIN IN AMERICA

For all her anxiety about the welfare of her sons, Mrs. Wittgenstein was equally concerned that the honor of the Wittgenstein family should at all times be upheld. She felt proud of Ludwig for having volunteered himself for the army and of Hermine and the s...o...b..roughs for volunteering themselves for hospital jobs. Her pride was also stirred by initial reports of Paul's heroism for which, she hoped, he might one day be decorated. In this she was encouraged by his former commanding officer, Colonel von Rettich: November 11, 1914My Dear Mrs. Wittgenstein,I have obtained your address from Erwin Schaafgotsche. As former Colonel of the 6th Dragoons, I would like to offer my sincerest sympathy to you over the severe wounding of your son. You may be proud of him because the information he obtained as leader of a military patrol frustrated the efforts of the Russians to attack us at Zamosc. He has rendered outstanding service, for which I sincerely hope he will receive official recognition in due course. This is however not possible at the present time, for though your son was captured owing to his being wounded, it must yet be proven that this was due to no fault of his own. As this fact appears to have been established already he should find no further obstacles on his return. I have learned that the healing of his wound is progressing satisfactorily.With my deepest respects, I remain, most sincerely yours,Alfred von Rettich Kurt, however, was a thorn. "Poor sidelined Kurt," as his mother referred to him, was not able to pull his weight on the front line. That he was safe in America was of no consolation to her or to her daughters in Vienna. In his letters home Kurt gave them the impression that he was doing everything in his power to return to Austria and reenlist in the army. Neither his age nor his less than satisfactory military service record counted against him. America's policy toward the conflict in Europe was officially neutral, so that U.S. residents (of whatever duration) were forbidden from actively taking sides in the European war. Kurt, as a reserve officer in the Austro-Hungarian 6th Dragoons, was consequently prohibited from leaving America as his stated intention was to rejoin the Austrian army.

He and his colleagues at the Austrian Consulate General involved themselves instead in a clandestine and illegal racket in false foreign pa.s.sports, using them to repatriate U.S.-resident Austrians who, like Kurt, had found themselves stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Kurt's letters home revealed none of this, only that his American work was dull and that he wished to G.o.d he were in Europe fighting like his brothers for his country. His mother and sisters--particularly Hermine--felt the dishonor of his absence keenly: "I am most anxious at the moment for Kurt," she wrote to Ludwig. "He will have a bad time if everyone else has played their part and suffered, except for him! He'll feel as though he has been permanently marked down." And later: "I'm always having to think of poor Kurt and how terrible it is that he is not experiencing these times as we are; you can hardly call what he is doing in America really living."

But Kurt's American existence may have been livelier than his sister had realized. His job--in what the Providence Journal Providence Journal described as "Consul General von Nuber's New York office of spies and tricksters"--presented him with varied opportunities. He played the piano, for instance, in a concert of Austrian and German folk music at the Aeolian Hall, hosted dinners at the Knickerbocker Club to raise money for a campaign to rouse Austrian expatriates, and gave interviews to American newspapers. But, despite his keenest efforts, American public opinion continued to swing to the side of the Entente Allies and away from Germany and the Central Powers. "It is not difficult to find a reason for the pro-British sentiment in America," Kurt indignantly told a reporter from the described as "Consul General von Nuber's New York office of spies and tricksters"--presented him with varied opportunities. He played the piano, for instance, in a concert of Austrian and German folk music at the Aeolian Hall, hosted dinners at the Knickerbocker Club to raise money for a campaign to rouse Austrian expatriates, and gave interviews to American newspapers. But, despite his keenest efforts, American public opinion continued to swing to the side of the Entente Allies and away from Germany and the Central Powers. "It is not difficult to find a reason for the pro-British sentiment in America," Kurt indignantly told a reporter from the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post in January 1915. "The British have been manufacturing sentiment over here in diverse ways ... I believe the American people are coming to realise their error, however." in January 1915. "The British have been manufacturing sentiment over here in diverse ways ... I believe the American people are coming to realise their error, however."

Not so one of them, an elderly lady of German extraction living on Manhattan's Upper East Side called Delia Steinberger (Jerome's widowed mother), who felt so strongly pro-British and anti-German that she had her surname changed (fifteen years after her son had done the same) to the more English-sounding s...o...b..rough, falsely claiming, on her U.S. census return, that both her parents had been born in England.

Kurt paddled bravely against the powerful current of American anti-German feeling: "The reports I have from home are entirely satisfactory," he told the Post Post, "and I am confident that we must win." The Russians had been "hammering away" at the "practically impregnable" fort of Przemysl for months to no effect and so long as Przemysl continued to hold out, the enemy stood "no chance." But his patriotic optimism was ill founded. At the time of his speaking the casualty rate among the original infantry units of the Austro-Hungarian army was 82 percent. Two months later on March 22 the Austro-Hungarian commander Hermann Kusmanek surrendered the fort at Przemysl, leading 119,000 of his men on the long march into Russian captivity.

Kurt kept his job in New York for another two years, despite surges of public pressure to have him and his colleagues at the Consulate expelled from America. First there was the scandal concerning fake pa.s.sports; this was followed by public outrage at the revelation of millions of dollars secretly channeled by the Germans to Austrian diplomats for war propaganda in America; and then a story that the Austrian Consulate was paying for advertis.e.m.e.nts that threatened the livelihood of Austrian workers in American munitions factories. These advertis.e.m.e.nts, which were printed in dozens of American newspapers, read as follows: The Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Emba.s.sy, acting under orders from the home Government, gives notice by this announcement to all Austrian and Hungarian citizens that all workmen who are employed in factories in this country which are making either arms or ammunition for the enemies of their country are committing a crime against the military safety of their fatherland. This crime is punishable by ten to twenty years' imprisonment and, in especially aggravating circ.u.mstances, with the penalty of death. Against those who violate this order, the whole weight of the law will be brought in the event of their return to their own country.

Each successive scandal renewed the calls to have all Austro-Hungarian diplomats expelled from the U.S. In 1915 the Austrian Amba.s.sador in Was.h.i.+ngton, Konstantin Dumba, was expelled, but nothing was done about the rest of them, until America joined the war in the spring of 1917, when all diplomatic relations between the two countries were finally severed.

On the afternoon of May 4 that year at Hoboken Pier, Kurt, along with Dumba's replacement as amba.s.sador, Count Adam Tarnowski, the Consul General from New York, Alexander von Nuber, and 206 so-called "enemy officials" under the surveillance of a cohort of American secret service agents, boarded the Holland-America liner Ryndam Ryndam bound for Holland. At Halifax the s.h.i.+p was held over for five days as British intelligence officers interrogated everyone on board. After that she was permitted to sail on to Rotterdam under a safe-conduct pa.s.s, proceeding north of the Faroe Islands to avoid the submarines and mined zones. bound for Holland. At Halifax the s.h.i.+p was held over for five days as British intelligence officers interrogated everyone on board. After that she was permitted to sail on to Rotterdam under a safe-conduct pa.s.s, proceeding north of the Faroe Islands to avoid the submarines and mined zones.

Mrs. Wittgenstein, who seems to have known nothing of her son's American expulsion and had not heard a word from him in several months, was as surprised as she was delighted to read his telegram of May 17: ARRIVED ROTTERDAM TODAY IN GOOD HEALTH. WEDNESDAY VIENNA. KURT.

Hermine, bored stiff in her voluntary job as a supervisor at an outpatient clinic, greeted the news of her brother's return with enthusiasm. "I've just learned that Kurt has arrived in Rotterdam," she wrote to Ludwig. "I'm very happy for him, I can tell you! His situation after the war would have been extremely uncomfortable!"